Altered: Beautiful Tins

All of us have used lots of moisturizes this winter, and surely there are some empty tins, and bottles lying around waiting to meet the bin. I wanted to use the empty Nivea Creme tins to store some teeny tiny craft elements and so I decided to give them a new look.

I started off by washing the tins thoroughly, leaving them squeaky clean and ready for the makeover. Once dry, I spray painted them Coca Brown and let the paint dry.

TIP: Spray paint the base and lid separately, this will ensure complete coverage. Do not touch the box until it is completely dry; If you do, the paint will just wipe off.

Next I chose some of my favorite stencils, and placed them on the box, in a manner that the design would cover the raised text.

I am using the Floral stencil from Tim Holtz's layering stencils collection - 2017. Once happy with the position, I stenciled modeling paste onto the box.

Since this is tin, and the base isn't flat, the stencil slips when applying the paste. You can tape it down if you like, but I just held it down with my hand as I wasn't looking for a perfect print.

While the paste was drying, I activated Bashful Blue, Chiffon Pink and Sea Glass Twinkling H2O's for coloring the stenciled design.

Colored parts of the design, and left it to dry.

I altered three tins, using three different designs, and each looks beautiful.

You can layer the inside of the base with felt -- if you like.

Linking it to Altered Eclectics monthly challenge. 

Happy Crafting!

 

Altered Stars

Hello beautiful people!
Hoping all of you are keeping well, and enjoying the amazing weather! Karachi rarely experiences "winters", so I am delightedly that we are finally getting our share of the cold winds. Enough about the weather, now about crafts.

Today Artful Crafting's Challenge 9 goes live, and our theme is "Altering". Me thinks, this is one of our best themes so far, simply because we all have something or the other stored away, with the intention of altering at some point in time. Well lovelies, this is your chance to get started on all those boxes, bottles, mason jars, and what not, that you have been holding on to since forever.

I altered two star shaped, Darice paper mache, boxes which were part of my kit.

My December Kit from Artful Crafting

Before I move on to my project, I have to say that this Kraftastic Glittered Cardstock (By Ruby Rock It) is absolutely gorgeous, and unfortunately the pictures fail to capture their beauty. If you like glitter, these are a must have; highly recommended by me.

The Altered Boxes

I started by first collecting some coordinating cardstock, which I could use to highlight the Kraftastic cardstock. Highlighting was required, to keep the box and cardstock from blending in completely (This was my personal preference, you don't need to do it).

White was used with the Pink Starry Night and dark blue with the Blue Polka Dot. For the side I cut out a 1.75" wide strip of plain cardstock, and another strip of the Glittered cardstock. The glittered strip was about 1/8th inch narrower than the plain cardstock one. After inking both the strips, I adhered the base strip followed by the glittered cardstock.

A picture of the adhered base cardstock

For the top, I just traced the lid out on the glittered Pink Polka Dot, and cut it out by hand. For the blue one, I traced it out on plain dark blue cardstock, and cut it out by hand. It was then adhered, and embellished.

Close Up of the pink box

For the pink box, I painted the square Prima Antique Resin frame, with "hot pink" acrylic paint and left it to dry. Once dry, the details were highlighted with Platinum stickles. Next I fussy cut some stars from the cardstock and adhered a few in the center of the polka dot, and some to the back of the frame. The frame was then mounted onto chipboard, and carefully secured, such that it stays at an angle. The frame was then surrounded with Fluffy roses, and glitter balls. The large stars were outlined with Start Dust, while Hot Pink self adhesive bling, from Want 2 Scrap, was added to the lid, along with Bronze Micro Beads, by Prima. I came up with the sentiment myself.

Close Up of the blue box

For the blue box, I cut out straight banners from White Starry Night, and Blue Polka Dots. White Starry Night ones were outlined with Ocean Blue liquid pearls, while the Blue Polka Dot ones were outlined with Star Dust stickles. I kept the original color of the rectangular Prima Antique Resin frame, and highlighted the details with Ocean Blue liquid pearls. I took some liquid pearls on the tip of my finger and rubbed them over the details. Added flowers to the base of the frame, and some Turquoise self adhesive bling to the empty areas of the box.

Close up of the sides of the lids.

I finished off the boxes by decorating the sides of the pink box with 0.5" strip of white card, which I covered with Clear Rock Candy Distress Crackle Paint, after pasting it on. Once it was dry I went over it with Vintage Photo Distress ink and added horizontal lines, using Platinum stickles. For the blue box, I just added horizontal lines using Ocean Blue liquid pearls and Start Dust, to the original base.

Supplies Used:

Darice paper mache

White Starry Night
Pink Starry Night
Blue Polka Dots
Pink Polka Dot 


Start Dust Stickles
Platinum stickles


Turquoise self adhesive bling
Hot Pink self adhesive bling


Bronze Micro Beads

Prima Antique Resin frame

Clear Rock Candy Distress Crackle Paint
Vintage Photo Distress ink


That's all Folks!
(Oh! and just to let you know, the challenge is open world wide. If you want to play, just hop over to Challenge 9)

Happy Crafting.

Craft March Challenge 2: Saba's Project

The theme was Vintage.

The thought behind this layout: The acrylic lock signifies the cherished memories locked in time, remnants of which are held within this 5" keepsake box

Its done is tones of pink and brown with lots of embellishments mounted on a rose paper base.

 

The letters were done using stamps followed by distressing the edges and all. 

The envelope was plain and I added the cherish sentiment to it. I got the print as a free printable, which I folded to form an envelope. 

On the top I added a metal filigree; I've had this since forever and I love it.

Organza ribbon added round the edges. You can also see that the entire box has been distressed and aged to go with the theme.

Happy Crafting!

Craft March Challenge 1: Khadija's Project

Here is a beautiful project Khadija did for Craft March Challenge 1.

Khadija briefly describes her project below:
 
"I used some punched flowers and that big flower is made out of heart punch and a regular flower die cut (well I cut mine free hand). I used 25 heart punch outs and curl their both round parts on a crochet hook. I, then, distress them and paste them one after another on the flower base. The center bud was a small 0.75cm circle punch out, I just rolled it and adhered it with some hot glue.

 
The box was originally yellow,

I gessoed it first and then adhered red cardstock and then yellow chevron paper from American Crafts. Added some butterfly punch outs, and some pearls here and there.
The box is 3.5x8.5 inches in size. And it can hold a large tag book inside easily. Well I made this box to keep all my keys, birdcages and punchinella in it.

This whole challenge thing is really exciting. I had heaps of fun altering this box. :D "
Khadija.

From a Simple Shoe Box to a Beautiful Fluttery Storage Box

I strongly believe that "Scraps are a creative minds treasure" -my wise words.

If you are fond of crafting, and you craft frequently you will agree that storage space is never enough. I, for one, am always in need of boxes, shelves, trays etc to keep the work space organized. So when I purchased some shoes recently, I decided to put the show boxes to good use.

This project was done with scraps of completed projected. Nothing new was purchased for this alteration; it was kept simple and all it needed was:
-colored paper
-cardstock
-die cuts (optional)
-ribbon
-glue
-scissors

To begin you need a box, this is what mine looked like:

This is a very sturdy corrugated box. If you look closely you will see 2 slits on the edges, these I wanted to weave ribbon through. *Note: when you begin working on any project it is always best to have a good understanding of what you would like the end product to be like* Because I had planned this project, I knew that when covering the box I had to keep the slits open.

Also I did not want a two piece box; this one was perfect as the lid is attached to the base.

A combination of lemon, yellow and white paper scraps and cardstock was used. The box was covered using yellow as the center, lemon on the sides and white to embellish. I had some left over pale yellow ribbon which was added for the bows.
Covering the box was relatively simple; just like wrapping a gift :) (If anyone needs a tutorial on that just email and i'll post one.)

Here is what it looked like once everything was done.

The inside:
You can see the ribbon going through the slits. Some die cuts added to make it pretty on the inside too :)

 To give it a neat finish the design was carried all the way to the back

And finally the front!

Now you see how useful scraps can be :)
From a simple shoe box to a beautiful fluttery storage box.

Happy crafting!

Round Altered Jar: Beauty and the Beast

Today as I made my way to the craft area, I was distracted by a huge stack of discarded old story books sitting in a corner. As I began going through them, an idea popped into my head, why not use one of these for my altered jar project!  and that is exactly what I did.

You can call it an Altered Jar project or a Recycling project; your call :)


All you need for this project is:

• Box / Jar
• Picture
• Sentiment
• Some trim and ribbons
• Contrasting cardstock

I used an empty Body Butter jar, washed and dried. I removed the top label too made it nice and clean. And the story book I chose was Beauty and the Beast. I cut out the picture of Belle and the prince for my project.

Next came the sentiment; I didn't want a simple rectangle, so I traced out the desired tag shape making sure that it covers all the text, and nothing is cut off.

 Once that was done all I did was cut it out as accurately as possible.

This was the hard cover, thus extremely difficult to cut; but where there is a will, there is a way. The rough edges did not worry me much because I was going to distress them, and thus they would not be very obvious.

Next came the layering. Layering in my opinion is one of the simplest yet most beautiful technique. It adds a lot of definition to a project. I used, roughly 4 layers, not including the picture in this count. A close up of the layers below.

The Kraft paper board layers were used to give the project a strong base. So I went ahead and embossed them, just to add some body to the board.

 






Once embossed they were distressed with Vintage Photo for depth and color.














In the above picture, can you notice the difference between the two? the top piece is distressed while the bottom one isn't. Well, I distressed both for the project.

Next came the organizing; putting it all together without actually sticking it, just to see how it looks and tweak it before gluing it down. This is an essential step!

Adding some floral sprays; no project is complete without them, now is it! This looked pretty good me thought. With the top done, it was now time to focus on the sides.

I was pretty decided that ribbon and trim would look best so I went ahead and began gluing it down.

Starting with the ribbon and then layering it further till I liked what I saw:

Next I glued the Kraft base to the jar, and added beads to embellish it further. Also added a cute little bow for finishing.

Once this was done the project was fairly over, glued down the top as was arranged earlier and embellished it with beads and rhinestones. Below is what the finished product looked like..

From an empty useless Body Butter jar to a cherished Keepsake!