iCraft Australia: Altered Trinket Box

For this project I wanted to try decoupage and have a craft box decorated with pretty florals as it was going to be a present for my 9 year old niece to store her trinkets in. Well, what I wanted and what I ended up with, were two very different things. I learned things during the creating of this project (like don't paint detailed items after 3 cups of coffee at 11.20 pm!) I have decided to include pictures here of its journey so that you can see that often designers of projects have big fails as well, but mostly they are salvageable if we stop, walk away and re-evaluate.

The picture above shows that I covered the box with iCraft decoupage paper first, then applied iCraft modelling paste through stencils before gluing on my iCraft wooden embellishments. I topped them with some paper clay embellishments from my stash. I then started to paint it all with iCraft chalk paint (iCraft products used are shown below, as well as links listed at the end of the post) I couldn't stop myself and kept adding more until I overworked it and it started to came undone. The more media I applied to it, the worse it looked and the more unhappy I felt. So I put it aside for a few days.

A few days later, I decided to cover the whole thing in iCraft black gesso to start again. I lightly sanded some areas to give it a distressed look. To finish it off, I dry brushed iCraft metallic paints in Blue Patina and Antique Copper over the raised elements and fell in love with the stunning shine of these paints. Here are some close up shots of the painted elements.

I am undecided if I will gift my niece this piece, as I don't know that a 9 year old would appreciate the metallic grunginess of a project like this. I may need to keep it for myself!