Rusted cardboard

Hello, crafty friends!  I had so much fun using the contents of A Vintage Journey's travel bag, I wanted to give it another go. Sue would like us to use cardboard, rust, metal and lavender in our projects.  I love rust, and many of my storage containers in my craft room are old rusty yard sale finds.  I keep all of my DecoArt products in a vintage lunchbox, but my supplies are growing, so I wanted to make a larger storage container.  This started out as an orange juice box from the warehouse store (cardboard). We drink a lot of orange juice!

I started by tearing off most of the outer paper and applying gesso, which I scraped back with a credit card to reveal some of the cardboard which adds a nice vintage texture.  I added vintage book pages and Ideaology Tissue wrap, then various paints and sprays and water to blend for my rust and lavender background. I can't really recall exactly what colors I used, because I was texting back and forth with my good blog friend,  Niki of Pawsatively Creative at the time.  It's our way of getting together to craft even though we live at opposite sides of the country. When dry, I added glass bead gel and DecoArt Crackle medium like I did here on my rusted tag and paints, alcohol inks, and antiquing cream to highlight these mediums. I did some stamping on tissue paper (Stampendous image/Watering Can Archival ink) and adhered.

It was a bit too shiny for my liking (left), so I gave it a coat of DecoArt Dura Clear Ultra Matte Varnish (right).

Next came the embellishments. Frilly and Funkie wants to see three of a kind on our projects for their current challenge, so I made three rusted belt buckles. I only show 2 in my process shots because I had already experimented on the first, larger one.  The two larger ones from my stash and layered on top of each other are made of plastic, and the smaller one you might recognize as being Ideaology (metal).  To rust my buckles, I first applied a coat of Mod Podge in Matte, and while wet add a sprinkle of cinnamon and instant coffee. When completely dry, I coat with more Mod Podge.  This is also too shiny, so I added a coat of DecoArt Utra Matte Varnish.  I patted on DecoArt Quinacridone Gold to give it a look of old rusted iron. I threaded some hand colored vintage seam binding through the buckles and tied it off with a piece of hand colored twine. Excuse the next three photos--not so pretty, and Blogger wouldn't cooperate with the placement.

  

Since we're looking for three of a kind, I decided to make three kinds of faux rust on my project...the first is the glass bead gel rust, the second is cinnamon and coffee, and for my third, I rusted some metal pieces (metal) from my husband's hardware drawer using household chemicals.  Actually, the nails and nuts were already rusted, but the washers and key rings were faux rusted using a bath of vinegar for 24 hours, followed by a  soaking in a mixture of salt and hydrogen peroxide for another 24 hours, then a sun bath for another day. Time consuming, but I just had to try it. Notice there are three washers, three nuts, three nails and three key rings.

Since we are  on the subject of trios, I decided to embellish just three sides of my box.  The other side will be against a wall anyway.  For the third panel, I added three clocks.  (Shhh! There's really 4, but the tissue paper stamping (which is a clock) didn't look enough like a clock once I was through with it, so that doesn't count.) Two of the clocks are Tim Holtz Remnant Rubs and the third is an old watch face  (metal) from my stash (yes,  I have a box of old watches, too!!) I painted the face with Rusty Hinge Distress paint and DecoArt Q-Gold, then Ranger Rock Candy Crackle paint, and finished with DecoArt Antiquing cream in Raw Umber. I kept all my embellishments simple and flat, because this will be a functional piece, and it will sit on a shelf when not in use.

The fourth side is left unembellished, but has enough going on with the torn top layer of cardboard, the tissue, book pages, crackle, and rust. I also left the inside unfinished as it will be holding messy paints anyway, and will develop a scene of it's own soon enough. Below is my old DecoArt storage and then my new roomy box.  Now I can get some more supplies!

And now for a quick tour of all four sides:

I would like to enter my rusted box into the following inspiring challenges:

-A Vintage Journey Destination Inspiration Travel Bag

-Frilly and Funkie Let's Make It a Trio

-Country View Challenges Industrial

-Mixed Media World # 12 Vintage

-Mixed Media Place Creative Gym # 17 Coffee  I used coffee along with cinnamon for one of my rust techniques.

-Happy Little Stampers March Mixed Media Challenge Water I used water to blend my background colors.

-SanDee and Amelie's Steampunk March Challenge Anything Goes Steampunk/Industrial (second entry)

-Creative Artiste Challenge 12 Anything Goes

-Altered Eclectics March Challenge

Thank you for stopping by today and for all your lovely comments!  I read and appreciate each and every one of them!

Hugs and Blessings!

Sara Emily