Hi all,

I hope that you are doing well and have been enjoying some fun creative times!

Its been a hectic time for me these past few weeks both good hectic and bad hectic – which has left very little time for crafting. Over the past 3-4 days however, I have been making myself go into our little craft room, (Playing fast and loose with word room lol – it does for us though!),even it’s for just ten minutes here and there. The result of this is that I have been able to enjoy spending time in there without worrying that I should be doing other things other than enjoying myself.

Anyway, enough chat and down to business…

Here is a  photograph of a gift that I received for Christmas:

The blank ‘canvas’ of my Jewellery chest project.

You can imagine my delight – and the rush of ideas – that literally bolted through my mind before I could even grab a pen!

I only recently had the time to get started on Altering my blank canvas of a jewellery chest – would you believe it that my mind went totally blank!? All those ideas had disappeared. I guess it can be expected with so many other things going in my life – it happens even in the best artsy circumstances.

I figured that the best way to get started was to go through my papers and decide which ones that I would like to use. Before I got them out however, I gave most of the areas that I knew would remain visible, a good coat of White acrylic Gesso and a lighter brush over most other areas. I did this to provide a decent base and to help prevent any adhesive I used from simply soaking into the porous surface of the chest.

Base coat for the drawers – White Gesso.

Base coat of gesso plus the beginnings of paper being added.

My craft mat is very well used 🙂

I knew that the chest would be going in my bedroom on my dresser which was the starting point for my colour scheme. I wanted to use neutral based papers with light Teals, aquas plus hints of lilac and possibly Pink. So to paper searching I went.

I chose a selection of papers which used text print, butterflies and clocks and cogs for a light Steampunk feel – I love Steampunk! I didn’t want the Steampunk effect to be dark or Gothic, which some people seem to think that Steampunk has to be. Like most genres and themes, you can use as much or as little as you like and use it with the colour scheme of your choice. If  someone tells you that you can’t then ask ”why not?”, creativity has No limits as far as I am concerned!

A selection of my chosen papers.

I hope you like what I had achieved up to this point. Next time I will share how I started layering texture and adding dimension to the jewellery chest.

Thank you for stopping by,

Take care and happy crafting 🙂

I started adding the papers to the different areas of the chest. I didn’t want to make it to uniform and structured in design but knew that the complementary papers would keep the overall look cohesive.