Arty Matchbox Swap

I have been dying to share this project with you all for a couple of weeks now but had to wait till it was in the hands of my swap partner.

Have to say this was in part inspired by some matchboxes showed to me by a friend on a Ning stite Amazing Matchboxes. Which I shared with the extremely talented ladies at Jellybean Scrappers. Also got to see some other really cool Matchboxes with spooky bottlecap style keyrings in them.

Thus a swap was born for  ‘Arty Matchboxes’ of course being the eager beaver I can be I eagerly started working on a very pretty matchbox using Butterfly garden paper that is still half finished in my stash.

However when I found out who my swap person was I totally changed my mind as the request was funky rather than pretty.

I raided my charms, Found a great Gothic Cross that I had gotten as part of a pendant from ebay, pulled out my watch parts and went to town.

I used alcohol inks over all of the metal parts including both the skull charms and all the watch pieces. Used modling paste to cover the matchbox then rubbed Dusty Concord Distress Reinker over the cover and heated it with my heat gun. (It is the only way it sets into the Modling paste) I did that a few times to build up a nice deep colour.

I only Used the Pitch black and Slate alcohol inks then covered the metal bits with Multi Medium in Matt it reacted a little to give that great rust effect on some of the watch parts.

Also when I was finished it just felt like it needed something else so I made a velvet pouch for the Matchbox

The Matchbox

Opened (though not a great pic)

Whats that inside?

Why Yes it’s a book

The green on the edges of the Book is from setting fire to the edges it is how the Distress Reinker and modelling paste reacted to the heat instead of a burnt colour it turned green. As the book is a ‘Faux Grimoire’ it seemed fitting.

I also chopped up real book pages and burnt the edges to make the inner book. The skull on the cover has also been alcohol inked to age it a bit.

Have to say it was a lot of work to get this just right (took me 3 attempts to make the insert piece alone) but I love how it turned out. Not only that but the reaction of my swap partner and those who have seen it has just blown me away.

It was so much fun to do something a bit darker than what I would normally do. Never be afraid to try something new the worst that can happen is you really don’t like it the best well the above and my recent Masculine cards show you that sometimes you can create something truly special when you step outside of your creative comfort zone…..

A bit of Shabby Chic

Recently I participated in Two swaps (though was lucky enough to get the same partner for both which was a great blessing to my budget),

The theme for both was Shabby Chic, one was a card box filled with 5 cards in set themes. The other was a box swap (I tried everywhere to find a box the right size but just could not find one so I added in another small box and a small tag album to make up for the size as well as a few extra goodies for my swap partner)

So now that they have arrived I can share the pics with you all.

Here is the card box and cards:

and here is the two boxes and matching mini Tag Album

I of course had to gold leaf a little, and one of the cards is also on Jellybean Scrappers for a monthly Inspiration Challenge.