Simply Shimmery Scraps: Altered Shabby Chic Box...

Hey everyone!

I have another project to share with you all! :D This was my last "catch-up" swap project for August. It's an altered box with a shabby chic theme that will find a home with my swap partner Yvette!

This was such a fun box to alter! And, because this was my first time altering a box of this type and size, I wanted to capture my process! So here's a series of pictures I took, along with a little "tutorial" of how I made this box...

I started with a plain wooden box that I picked up at Hobby Lobby. It looks kind of like a vintage trunk or chest - which is what really caught my eye to begin with! It'd be perfect for my project!

First thing I needed to do was to remove all the hardware so I could paint the entire box! The corners had to stay on because they were structurally significant to the box. So, I addressed this by putting some tape to protect the metal from the acrylic paints I used.

For my paint job, I knew I wanted to do a crackle effect. Big surprise, huh? Lols! So, I first put a coat of white gesso to prep the surface of the wood. After that was dry, I put a coat of dark brown paint for the base layer. Next was a layer of crackle medium, and last was a coat of antique white paint.

While all the paint was drying and crackling, I started getting things ready for the inside of the box. I knew I wanted to have felt line the box, but I didn't want it to look messy. So, to get and nice, clean, professional look, I used four panels of chipboard to wrap my felt over.

After wrapping the felt around the chipboard pretty tightly and gluing it in place, I glued the panels on to the insides of the box. I stated with the bottom, then the long sides, and finally the short sides.

Once the felt panels were all attached and the paint on the outside of the box was all dry, I punched out the corners of the paper that I wanted to mat to the outside of the box (so that the paper would look nice where the corner brackets were) and glued all the mats down.

I used a Fiskars bracket looking corner punch. The tip fit really nicely into the corners of the brackets already on the box.

I also cut out a mat for the inside of the lid of the box. All these mats were distressed with Frayed Burlap distress ink.

I wanted to do a little something extra on the inside lid. A few weeks ago, I had bought some circle mirror wall decor at a nearby Family Dollar store. One of the sizes were perfect for the lid!

So, I glued one of the circles onto the lid, decorated it with some flowers from I Am Roses and some pearl trim, and added some really pretty dark brown die cut corner flourishes.

I think it turned out pretty great! :D After finishing the inside, I re-attached the lid to the box.

And then I attached the rest of the hardware back onto the box...

Of course I wanted the box to have some feet! So, I used some really small candle cups that I got from Michael's (I think :D), painted them, and hot glued them in place.

For the top of the box, I wanted to put a frame. So I broke out some of my Kaisercraft Wooden Flourishes frames. To color it, I used a some Walnut Stain Distress embossing powder and some American Crafts Zing embossing powder in Vanilla. The result was this really grainy texture with a bit of shine. It's really pretty neat!