Flights of Fancy and Amy's Box

Discovering RetroCafeArt's exploding Victorian boxes throughLinda Cain's blog via PaperArtsy inspired me to create these boxes for my friends and to begin this blog. I have always loved making things, but blogging was something of a mystery. Now I hope this blog will take flight.

 Textures, colours, bright and shiny bits and bobs all find their way into our home - a friend has suggested we call it 'The Magpie's Nest'! And my passion for hunting and gathering magpie bits inspires not only my craft projects but also the name for this blog. This first box, for a friend's upcoming sixtieth birthday, uses Paper Artsy stamps, RetroCafeArt cut-outs, washi tape and Fresco Paints from PaperArtsy in Mermaid and Butternut. The paper is Prima and Graphic 45.

Here it is, all ready for the earrings to be placed inside on their card. The friend who I created this for and I had recently spent a magical day in London's Natural History Museum. We stepped out of the dark, freezing day, struggling against gale force winds and sleet and we re-discovered the beautiful collections of moths, birds and butterflies so vibrant and glittering - flight just had to be the theme for this special present!

The image on the base is one of my favourite PaperArtsy stamps of a winged Victorian lady; I imagine her as an intrepid natural historian and shape-shifter. My friend is a keen cyclist so the washi tape bicycle surrounded by birds just had to be added!

I used narrow ribbon and embossed golden birds from a 'Crafty Individuals' stamp sheet on the lid.

The earrings - a charity shop find are on a piece of PaperArtsy 'smoothy' card coloured with blended 'Portfolio' pastels.

   After this 'f'light of fancy', a friend asked if I could do a similar box for her son's girlfriend, Amy's eighteenth. Amy is a fan of 'fifties glamour, so having found a stash of vintage knitting patterns in my local Oxfam, I scanned them into the computer, re-sized them and printed them out, punching them with an X-cut punch to form mini postage stamps. I painted the Tim Holtz dress-form with Fresco Very Berry, a layer of Crackle Glaze and then Rose.

The image in the centre of the base is cut from some 'Bo Bunny' paper and the golden wings are snipped from one of Kris Hubick's Dresden foil birds. For the lid I attached a Tim Holz tattered pine cone with a glue gun and finished off with ribbon trim. I coloured the seam binding on the dress form with distress inks and added tiny tags attached to a Tim Holz vintage pin. Amy's gift, a voucher for a vintage make-up session, will be written on the reverse side of the dress-form. These boxes are great fun when they spring open to reveal a gift or message!

I painted the lid with Fresco paints and stencilled flowers from PaperArtsy selection of stencils using distress ink in Broken China. As Amy is also a fan of oriental images, I cut out the lanterns from the Graphic 45 paper and collaged these on, painting a background in ice blue Fresco paint so that they looked more professional than merely 'stuck on' shapes.

These boxes were such fun to make. I have some of the triangular ones all ready to try out and I mean to experiment with Spring colours and images on these in an attempt to conjure a feeling of Spring time even if the actual weather is far from it! Perhaps next time I post the skies will be as blue as the boxes!