Altered Art Project with DANNII

Hello Everyone

Dannii here with a project which was a little different for me - altering a book box instead of 

playing in my art journal. This was one of those book boxes that you can purchase from a dissent store.

I gave the box a couple coats of gesso and while waiting for it to dry, I grabbed some of my favourite steam punk dies, and cut out a few die shapes from white card stock

Once the book box had dried, I glued the die pieces down on the front cover of the box with a gel medium, making sure I layered the pieces to create texture and interest.

I then gave them a spritz with Tim Holtz Distress spray stains

* Vintage photo

*Brushed Pewter 

*Antiqued Bronze

and

*Walnut stain

Any excess was sponged off with paper towel and dried off with my heat gun.

Then I added extra embellishments:  charms, resin flowers, crochet flowers and a aluminium frame which I ran through a clog embossing folder and then some staining 

 with  Ranger alcohol inks.

The picture was a photocopy of some old vintage post cards I found at a local church fete. They actually have postal stamps on them dated in the  1900's so I think they are actually antique and not vintage, which is why I didn't use the original card

Once I was happy with the placement I took a photo of the arrangement and removed all the pieces to give them a coat of gesso

and then a coat of distress spray stains

Once I was happy with the coverage of the pieces, I set them aside to dry

At this stage, I swapped out the post card picture for another that I thought would work better.

and gave the photo a coat of mod podgy to seal it.

I glued the frame over the picture and let everything dry

Using the photo I had taken earlier as a reference guide I glued down all the extra embellishments

with gel medium.

I then added some micro beads (Finnabair -  you can buy them here) to a few bits of the embellishments using a transparent texture paste.

I then added some texture paste and Tim Holtz distress spray to the paste and added it

to the sides of the box, using a palette knife to pull through the paste to make it  look like book pages

Once everything was dry I then added silks acrylic glaze in

*Iridescent gold

*solar gold

*periwinkle

and treasure gold in

*Olive Bronze

and * sapphire

to accent /colour

and a bit more of Tim Holtz distress sprays, spraying onto my craft mat and using a paint brush to add the extra colours.

  Adding the distress paint this way actually helped to layer the colour where I thought it was needed and I was able to tone down the sapphire on the book cover

The finished product

 turned out really well and this photo doesn't do it justice as

there is so much more colour in the original piece.

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial

and I look forward to showing you my next project soon.

For now enjoy what you do and why not try something a little different?

Crafty hugs