A Shabby Box by Mark Gould

Thanks for stopping by, Mark here with my last post as July's Guest Designer, I want to say a great big thank you to Jennie, Emma and the rest of the full time DT, it has been great fun working along side you this month.
 My last piece is a little wooden chest that started life as a plain pine box.
 I love to alter 3d items and Shabby/Vintage is a look I really like to play around with.
 I knew straight of the bat that I wanted to use the Katy Fox Numerical Plate, there are so many great stamps on this set I know I will be using them for a long time.
 This box had been kicking about for a while and I was not happy with what I had done so I started over, I gave it a coat of gesso and sanded it back to smooth out the texture of the wood grain a little.
I base coated the box with Decoarts Americana Blue Mist, When dry I stamped with coffee archival ink several of the numbers over lapping the top and bottom section of the chest.
The coffee works really well for the shabby look, black can be a little to stark for images.
The white numbers have been created using Frantage embossing powder, I love the little flecks of gold and a more antique looking white.

 To add more of an aged look I used Decoart Traditions Quin Gold as a wash and after a little bot of drying time swipped the colour back with a wet wipe to bring some of the blue mist back and to still allow you to see the coffee coloured stamps although now nicely faded.
The edges of the box need some work so they were treated with some black archival ink applied with some cut and dry foam.




The chest sat like this for a while, I quite liked it but it was still lacking something, I decided it needed more age so grabbed the two step crackle from Decoart and covered the chest. When it had done what it does I rubbed some dark brown acrylic paint into the cracks and again after a little drying I used a wet wipe to clear it from the surface and to leave the brown paint in the cracks.

The inside of the box was given a coat of a light tan acrylic paint and then a coat of weathered wood, when the weathered wood was touch dry I applied a top coat of white, the weathered wood acts straight away and you get the lovely peeled paint look, the sizes of the cracks vary depending on how thick it is applied.

Finally, the hinges and catch were aged with a little alcohol ink.


Thank you all so much for stopping by and making me feel welcome, I hope you have enjoyed my 3 little posts this month, Again a great big thank you to Jennie and the rest of the Artistic Stamper team it has been a blast and an honour.
Ill see you all in blog land xxx