BACK ON TRACK!

At least for the moment I seem to be back on track with my crafting MOJO! It feels so good.

I am currently continuing to work with the items from the Summer Craft Kit. Part of it was a nice wooden box to alter. I have worked with these before and love turning them into decorated containers to hold a pen and scrap paper for notes. They come in handy on a desk or by the phone.

This is what I did in altering this plain holder. Before I painted the box with acrylic paint I did need to do a bit of repair work on it. A portion of the handle was splitting apart. I find this often happens with these holders. (After all you can often find them for only a dollar a piece.) I used some crystal effects squeezed down into the crack that was pulling apart and then held the glued part together with a large binder clip while the CE dried. It worked like a charm. I used the CE because of the narrow tip of the applicator. It was easy to squeeze just what I needed in.

I used a foam applicator brush to paint the box and to give it a nicely finished look I painted the inside as well. It took two coats to get it nice. Then the holder was decorated with the paper and the letter stickers. I used a decoupage coating to give everything a nice shiny finish to it. After that was dry I tied some ribbon from the kit around the handle and placed the three flowers with brad in there centers on using the pop up glue dots from SU. (The big ones that I never seem to know what to do with. They worked really well here.)

Inside the holder is a stack of paper I cut down to size and an RSVP pen with a roll of the patterned paper in the barrel so the set is coordinating.

I really enjoy making these and think I may just need to check out Michael's and AC Moore to see if I can find some more to alter and decorated for Christmas gifts.......Christmas is coming sooner than you think!