Project 11. . .

The Sewing Box. . .Re-loved

Ages and ages ago I bought this old battered sewing box on legs from a boot sale. It was a bit of a silly buy because it’s quite large but I just really really liked it. Think of it as the craftaholic’s unnecessary purchase. Much like those shoes that sit in the box forever because they just didn’t quite fit the way they should.

Damn. No matter which way I looked at this silly box I couldn’t make it fit in the studio properly, plus it was a bit battered and I couldn’t get to my sewing tools easily. BUT I did need a new display for Deco Paste for the Autumn season of craft events. HELLO solution.

Ingredients

1.) one extremely bulky & quite battered sewing box

2.) a multitude of paints

3.) screwdriver and brute force

4.) peacock stamp

5.) Velvet fabric

6.) hot glue

Method

First I dismantled the box, drawer by drawer. This required one husband, one screwdriver and brute force. As the screws were quite rusted some of them practically fell out and some of them needed. . .persuasion.

2. Then using a scouring pad, I scuffed up all the paintwork on the drawers, this made sure the paint would take.

3.) Then I painted all the boxes in different hand mixed metallic colours. All inspired by the lovely peacock feather.

4.) Once all the frames of the boxes were painted in my nice bright colours, I painted all the insides black.

5.) Then I stamped them all over the outside with my super Peacock stamp which is normally used for business packages. (I couldn’t get a good photograph of this detail though so I’ve included a picture of the stamp on my labels to give you an idea of how it looks.)

6.) Then I changed my mind about the black insides as it just seemed to hard and decided fabric would give a softer finish. Hello sexy old blue velvet fabric. Hello hot glue burns on my wrist. But it was worth it, I’m really pleased that I have managed to make a stall display that reflects the personality of me as a designer and I didn’t spend a penny! BRILLO PADS.

This is the box as I originally bought it, broken door, rusty hinges and somehow, totally enchanting

I had thought this bottom layer was another drawer but it was actually just nailed onto the trolley, unfortunately it wasn’t usable so I took it off to leave just the trolley bit.

I got four drawers, two with compartments, two without, they were all in really good condition though and ready to be transformed into something new

You can see that I painted the outside of the frames in my bold handmixed paints. This one was dark metallic blue

Sadly I couldn’t get a decent picture of how I stamped the outside of the frames, but here’s a picture of the stamp in it’s normal use on labels – just imagine this all over the outside of the boxes and you’ve got it.

This box is yellow gold and you can see that I had painted the inside black. I changed my mind as it didn’t look soft enough and used a rotary cutter and cutting mat to cut squares of some old blue velvet I had.

Once I had cut out all the bits of velvet I needed, I rolled over them all with a lint remover and hot glued those beauties to all the compartment bottoms of my painted drawers

Here we go, the boxes in action. They are all loose so I can arrange them however I need to on my stall and they stack easily for transportation. I think they look really nifty and a bit different, but they still allow the stock to be the most eye catching part of the display.

I’m really glad that I opted for velvet, as the hair pieces & jewellery look so much more inviting on soft velvet than against a hard black surface

The compartments are really handy too and mean that when I’m transporting to and from events the stock is going to be much more protected that way. Also with the velvet bottom I think it’ll stay in place and not slip around too much.

***sigh*** look at the sparkles. The autumn/winter 2012 collection for Deco Paste will be on Etsy very soon.

Hope you enjoyed reading this project as much as I enjoyed making it, see you next week for project 12 in Re-Loved 52

Jessica

www.decopaste.co.uk

xoxo