Shabby Sewing Room

I've been messing around with Paperartsy's new Fresco Finish paint and one of Tim Holtz Configurations boxes. The paint will be on line to purchase as soon as we receive our order from Mr & Mrs Paperartsy who are bottling this stuff as fast as they can. I'm soooo in love with this paint....it dries on anything!!!! Today I used it on all sorts of surfaces and it maintained it's great coverage on all of them, I was very impressed.

So here's what I did with my box. I started with tissue tape....lots of it! I covered the outside of my box, randomly applying the tape in all different directions....it looked a bit like a bandaged mummy, but I really quite liked the effect. Next, I lined the inside edges of my boxes and arranged the individual boxes inside the outer box. In true Tim style, I covered all the edges with yet more tissue tape and used some of Claudine Hellmuth's Matt Medium to stick down any dodgy corners before painting over the tissue tape with Fresco Finish white paint. I did add a little water to it to make it translucent, I wanted to be able to see the tissue tape still.

Next I cut paper from Tim Holtz Crowded Attic paper pad to fit the backs of my boxes. Before gluing them in, they also got the watered down paint treatment as the aim for this box was to have a white, shabby look.

I've taken pictures of all the niches and I'll briefly explain what I did in each one. First up, I sprayed some cotton fabric with Rangers Colorwash and when dry, I die cut it three times using Paperartsy Grunge Flower die and stamped the Grunge Flower image using Rangers Archival ink. Using a smaller size Grunge Flower die, I cut some netting and stitched them together with a bead for the centre.

This is my favourite box, I die cut Paperartsy's Tall Heart from Claudine Hellmuth's Sticky Canvas, painted it white and then dyed it with Weathered Wood Distress Stain. Edged it with a bit of Vintage Photo Distress Ink and after stamping some text, popped a few needles through it before sticking it in the box. Then I used Tim's new Alpha Parts to spell out "Make Do & Mend"

This is a close up of a word key with some gorgeous beads from a pack of Tim's Baubles. This makes a great embellishment to put between the boxes.

Here I've got a 1" x 1" Memory frame, a Facet with a butterfly picture glued behind it with Glossy Accents, some wings from the Adornments pack and another bauble.

My dress form, scalloped trim and the tape measure that you will see later were embossed using Ten Seconds Kabuka mould 14, I love this mould, it is one of my favourites. I used Pearl metal, popped it through the Big Shot, stuck it to some cardstock and cut out. Painted it with Fresco Finish paint to continue the shabby look. The trim and ruler were sanded to reveal the aluminium underneath but I added a little itty bitty bit of Weathered Wood Distress Stain to the dress form It doesn't show up that well in the photo though....sorry. I cut some wings using Claudine Hellmuth's Sticky back canvas, painted white and then added some more Distress stains when it was dry and added some text for interest. The Distress Stains also dyed the ribbon that I used for the belt.....loving this whole shabby look.

Leandra's new paint even worked well on one of Tim's Corked Vials which I then rolled across an inked stamp to get the text.

This is a close up of a cameo that I had......

.......the chains hang down over the box below which has some corked vials of beads.

Cotton reel and button box with one of Tim's crowns.

More beads and trimmings.

Here you can see the metal tape measure which makes a nice edge piece, a little pack of fabric and one of Tim's plaquettes.

This was quite a tricky box, it was tiny and all I had left to fit in here were buttons. Then I figured that it might be quite nice to stack up the buttons to make better use of the space, the colour of Tim's Shabby buttons were perfect for my colour scheme.

My last little niche contains a little pack of pink felt, tied with ribbon and you can just see a glimpse of the beautiful rose trim from the Lavish Trimmings pack, this covers the bottom edge of my box.

Phew, that was a bit of an epic but I hope it inspires you to start a box of your own.

Now here comes my unashamed plug for my website....nearly everything used (I say nearly everything, there are a few bits that I had of my own which are not available) in this project can be found here