A Mermaid's Chest - for the Happy Daze Love Challenge

Sometimes it is easy to get carried away with new projects.  There are so many wonderful ones to try!

And often one will laterally lead to another, and so it did today.   After reading the  Happy Daze Design Team Blog.

It has a challenge with the title of  Love - a technique that you love to use.  And here is mine!

I decided that I'd go back to my earlier 'basic' crafting of painting and stamping and getting mucky!

With a little wooden box I bought a year or two ago from Happy Daze

 

Out came, some paints, and silver rub and buff.

 

Inks, embossing powders, blue glitter........

 

And my all time favourite stamp - a Mermaid 

I painted her eyelids with a deeper shade of blue.

Her lips a blue-red colour with a hint of extra shimmer.

Each pearl bead of her necklace I painted individually, together with her shell arm band.

The lid is edged with lots of crushed blue glitter and really glistens in the light - I love it!
And on the outer edges I smoothed on silver and then buffed it until it shines.
The box has been stamped on all sides - vintage shells on a swirly pattern at each end, and larger swirls on the sides.  All the stamping has been embossed with a shiny wet look black embossing powder and softened with a silver rub here and there, and pearlised blue swooshes of rubbed on paint.
I have had such a fun day going to back to basics.

Rubbing on three layers of paints with my fingers, roughing up the wood, swooshing and buffing  of silver rub and buff, stamping, polishing and re-establishing the joy of getting inky, sticky, and messy!

The photos don't really show you how absolutely shimmering wet it looks.

I think I'll keep this little Mermaids Chest for my own little treasures.

Thank you for visiting