Filigree Box

I have two excuses for my late post today.  First off, I have some wonderful little visitors at my house, which is always fun.  Also, my Silhouette machine somehow developed a mind of it's own and went a little off the deep end taking me with it for a short while.

All in all it's worth it though, because here's what I ended up with:

The shades for my new bathroom lighting fixtures each came in it's own little cube box and I couldn't bear to throw them away.  I figured that eventually I'd come up with a use for them.  I had plans to cover them all and make a set but as I said above, my Silhouette machine h

ad other plans.

Here's what you need if you want to make your own Filigree boxes.

Materials:
-small box
-Mod Podge, sponge brush
-several sheets of plain paper, several sheets of small print paper
-acrylic paint that matches the colour of your plain paper
-Optional: Brayer

Steps:
1) Paint all of the edges of your box.  If you want, go ahead and paint any flaps and the inside top as well.

2) While that's drying, cut out 5 pieces of your printed paper the same sizes as your sides and top of the box.  Also, cut 5 in a filigree type design.

WARNING: here's where things went a little haywire for me.  At first I tried a very intricate pattern with some Silhouette adhesive backed paper.

It cut but I had to poke out most of the little tiny pieces manually, which caused me to rip the paper from time to time, leaving little white edges everywhere.  Not pretty.

Then, I found this lovely butterfly background in the Silhouette catalogue and tried it.

 No go, still too much detail.  My Silhouette just chewed up the paper.

So, finally I tried this lacey looking background.  It worked!  sort of.  My Silhouette decided to cut the outside border anywhere it wanted to, usually right through the middle or off centre.

Argh!  I fiddled with it for several days, so sure that this box design was going to change my life (kidding), and eventually I got it to cut properly, at least every second time I sent it through.  I have no idea what's going on with  my machine.  It may be time to move to the States so I can start entering all the Silhouette Cameo machine giveaways I see all over blogland~

Anyway, enough ranting, now we're onto my favourite part of any project, the Mod Podging!

3) Once your paint is dry, slick a nice heavy coat of Mod Podge all over the side of your box.

4) Lay down a sheet of your printed paper.  If you have a brayer this is an excellent time to pull it out and put it to use.

5) Repeat for the other sides and the top.  Once everything's in place, go back over everything with another layer of Mod Podge.

6) This time, lay your cut pieces on top.

You can use your brayer again for this if you don't mind it getting a little Mod Podge on it.  I used mine and the mess was minimal.

7) Lastly, just for luck, throw one more layer of Mod Podge onto the whole thing.  This seals everything down and gives it a nice finish.

And finally, at long last....you are done!

It's actually pretty simple, and if your cutting machine doesn't go crazy you can make this project in about an hour.

It reminds me of the cut stone work that I saw all of India while I was travelling there.  If you're brave, you could try this with vinyl and that way you could change out your designs if you felt like it.  Try a solid colour behind or some gorgeous sparkle paper!  oooh!  I think I'm going to do that for Christmas!  Look at that, I just inspired myself~

Have a crafty week everyone!