Wednesday 11 July 2012

I'm a little rusty today

I have had so much fun over the past week making myself a pencil box!  A few months ago I found a Bronnley soap box that was the perfect size and started to paint and stamp on it and then lost interest.
About a week ago, I decided it had to change drastically - and it did!
My lovely grungy rusted heavy metal pencil case was born.

I had no idea I was going to enjoy making this so much and didn't take many photo's during the process, but for anyone interested I'll try to document what I did.
For the box, it was a small box originally holding three Bronnley brand soaps.
Metal banding on the top and around the side is cut from Tim Holtz grunge paper
The Euscutcheon is a Tim Holtz grunge board element
The rivets are pearl half domes usually placed in the centre of paper flowers
Painted in a battleship grey colour
The rust is applied by placing glue where you want the rust to appear, sprinkle with Crafty Notions Rust powder and spray with white vinegar.

Above is the empty box after I had painted the outside Grey.  You can see the untreated eustucheon at the top of the photo.

The box is now glued and painted in grey but no rusting is done yet.  Even now it looks heavy and is a shock when you pick it up and find it's just a light box.


More views of the eustucheon as I worked on the rusting process.  Before I applied the rust powder, I covered it completely with Distress Ink in Rust (what else!).  I made sure I covered all of the cut edges to that no grunge board was visible.
This is the eustucheon after the first spray with white vinegar.  I think I sprayed it three times by the time I finished

A close up of the rust, it looks real because it is real.
Once completed I covered everything with a layer or two of clear Golden Mat Medium to seal it.  I applied it with a brush but then stippled it with a cloth to removed brush marks on the rust.  The brush marks are only on the painted surfaces,

It is now full of markers and pens and sitting proudly on my book case.

3 comments:

  1. Woo Hoo--I am your first follower!!! Hello, I found your site through the mixed media site. I love the box that you created--your rust is so "real" looking. Also skipped around your blog and love your use of color. Hope to get to know you better.

    Faye

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, I'm reading this from Perth. Now I'm making a pencil case of my own. I might use glue to create the texture. I can't find that here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, this is gorgeous. I have so many boxes this size, now I can try to do what you did!! TFS ;)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking the time to leave me a comment, I really appreciate it - Liz