WOYWW - 9 May

Back on the main crafty desk this week for WOYWW!  (See Julia's blog for information about What's on Your Workdesk Wednesdays)

I bought a set of three nesting boxes some time ago and they sat in my stash waiting to be transformed. I love little boxes. I've always loved little boxes that look as if they have a wonderful treasure inside - an enchanted jewel, or a magic potion, or fairy dust - and there are boxes everywhere you look in my house (usually hidden under the craft stash, but let's not go there).

This is the middle-sized box of the three. The big one was Croco'd and is now being used as a jewellery box, the small one was painted pale turquoise and claimed by my husband as being just the right size to hold his wireless mouse and earphones for his laptop. (The cat likes to push the mouse off the desk and we had an incident where he left the earphones on the laptop keyboard with the lid almost shut - the cat jumped onto the laptop and closed the lid. It did the screen no good at all, and if he hadn't forgotten to cancel the "whatever happens" insurance it would have been expensive!) Husband isn't a big fan of heavily-embellished stuff so he let me stamp the lid once with Opalite and to stamp and emboss ONE Clarity corner. ("Let me do all four! Please!" "No!")

Anyway, this one I've painted with Viva Precious Metal paint in Rose. I've covered the lid with some silver fishnet mesh which I stiffened by painting it with a PVA/water mix (enough water to make the PVA runny - about like single cream). I left the first piece to dry on the non-stick craft mat and found that, when it dried, the PVA formed a transparent film in the spaces in the mesh - interesting, but not what I'd wanted, so the next piece I moved to a second sheet after I'd painted on the PVA so it was stiffened without filling in the spaces in the mesh. (Fear not, gentle blogger, I have plans for the first piece....and what if I PVA some tulle...hmmmm!)

Back to the box - blodged on some Ferro in silver and blackberry and gave it some texture with the free stamp from this month's Craft Stamper (by Jennie from The Artistic Stamper, one of my favourite places to shop) and added a bit more mesh.

Remember the first bit of mesh? I cut the butterfly's wings out of it (Tim Holtz Alterations die, Fanciful Flight) and backed them with a bit of fabric painted with Precious Metals in Blackberry . A bit of hardware and the job's a good 'un!