Tando Creative: Art Box by Bernadette

Good Morning Everyone, Today I am showing you one of the new art boxes which will be showcased on the Craft Store during the Tando show on 4.3.22 at 9.00am.

When my art boxes arrived, I decided to put them all together first before I decided what to make with them. They are really easy to put together with a good PVA glue. The boxes come in 2 widths and 3 sizes, this is the smallest of the boxes.

After gluing the box together, I measured the sides I was going to cover with cardstock and cut the card to those sizes.

I used a mixture of distress oxide inks and sprays to colour the card: vintage photo, frayed burlap and walnut stain then ran the pieces of card through my die cutting machine in a Tim Holtz 3D embossing folder.

I then took some salvaged patina distress paint and dabbed it over bits of the embossed card using my finger. Once the paint was dry, I lightly ran a clear embossing ink pad over the embossed letters and heat embossed some walnut stain embossing glaze.

When I came to stick the pieces of card to the box, I found that they were slightly smaller than the surfaces of the box because of the embossing so I painted the box with black gesso. I chose black gesso so that when I glued the pieces of card to the box, there wouldn't be any gaps showing bare greyboard. Once the glue was dry, I ran a walnut stain distress crayon along the edges where the gaps were between the pieces of card to fill in the space.

I then stuck the pieces of card to the sides of the box and decided to use the die cut wings, a Tando heart and a clock face mould as my embellishments. I painted the heart black mixed with some red to make it really dark but with just a hint of red. I used my fingers to add some cream, brown and turquoise paint to the clock face which I had moulded using air dry clay. I die cut the wings with a matte gold card then rubbed a distress crayon over the raised areas to give them an aged look.