Anything goes

Happy July - that's half of the year gone already - it's true what they say the older you get the faster time flies 

So it's time for a new challenge over at the Claritystamp challenge blog and this is my offering for July

Have you made a cuppa?  this post is like war and peace!

Some time ago I went to watch a demo being done by Pauline Wheeler and one of her ongoing projects was this box - she was covering it with some papers she was demoing at the time. It is designed to hold the Tim Holtz mini inkpads - now I have these and I use them when I am demoing so I thought I would get one and do it up my way and this mnth's theme fits the bill perfectly so two birds and one stone!

I decided to make my own papers to cover it with so out came the gelli plate, some acrylic paints and of course my Clarity stencils

I used the large Gelli plate and made several prints 

I used the same colour paint sequence

the same stencil sequence

and yet each and every one 

was different  lol

I covered every section in black gesso - twice, let it dry, then each layer I masked off  the edges of the underneath side with some low tack tape and sprayed spray n shine from Crafters companion to seal the underneath.

I then proceeded to cover the surfaces with my gelli prints, then I added a bit of black soot around the edges 

 I wanted to add a bit of something else and decided to put some words on the front so using my letterpress word set and some tissue I stamped out the words

cut around them and then stuck them on the front of the box 

I then used a sealer with a brush  to seal the insides of the box - I didn't want to use the spray as it would get on the outside of my box which I didn't want to be particulary shiny 

On the lid I added some metal corners that I picked up in that craft shop near Glasgow airport when we were on holiday.  I used some purple guilding wax on them - but it was a bit bright so toned it down with black acrylic paint 

Job done , put my ink pads in and there is room for more yet and the bottom one is a bit bigger so I will store an archival black and a versmark with a couple of blending tools  so all my stuff will be in one box!

finished - quite chuffed with how it turned out