Pencil Box

I had lots of fun decorating this pencil box today. It's a birthday present, I think I'll keep who to a surprise. I started with the inside. I wanted to toughen up the paper mache box and make the inside shiny and bright. I mixed two colors of mica powders with glossy gel medium and brushed all the interior surfaces. Wasn't sure if the gel medium would be enough of a fixative, so I brushed on a wet layer of water with gum arabic. Let it dry. Here's a close up, you can see the hint of blue with the gold:

I mixed dark brown Color Wash with gold mica powder and gum arabic in a mini mister and sprayed the outside surfaces of the box. I let the liquid bead up, and set it with a heat tool.

To richen the color, I sprayed on some watered down Butterscotch Color Wash and set it with a heat tool.

I also sprayed some of the watered down butterscotch Color Spray on the inside of the box.

I randomly stamped some text over the outside of the box with black StazOn ink and heat set it.

I stamped on some pear images on the top of the box with thick layers of gold and green olive Lumiere acrylic paint (wash stamps off soon after using acrylic paints).

I sprayed the dark brown with gold mica powder spray over the top to blend in the pear images (and make them appear more antiquey). And stamped some of the text over these pear images with black StazOn ink. I think the outside looks good. There is a great shimmer in the dark stain that shows up as the box moves in the light.

I wanted to add some pear imagery to the inside of the box as well. I stamped pears on to a pliable speckled lined paper with Distress inks and then over stamped the pear images with the text in black Archival ink and cut out the images.

After adhering the images to the inside, the seemed too light. I sprayed them with a lovely color that was in a mini mister from another project (so I'm not sure what I used to mix it up). Once the color absorbed into the linen paper, I decided to brighten the interior by giving it another coat of glossy gel medium. This photo doesn't show it, but you can still see some of the blue highlights. I love the contrast of the dark exterior of the box and the bright, shiny interior.

Hope "someone" will enjoy this box and put it to good use.