I love CRACKLE!

Hello everyone! This is a little project i did with the youth group at our church.

The youth group leader wanted to focus on CREATIVITY for the month and asked if I would be interested in sharing with the youth. Um, YEAH! I love sharing what talents God gave me, especially with those younger than I am. That is my gift back to Him!

So i wanted to keep the project fun, purposeful, easily to do both feminine and masculine

but at the same time not too terribly difficult.

Here is our project!

This is one of those little paper mache boxes you can pick up at a craft store (in this case, i got mine at Hobby Lobby, but they all carry them!) And while it retails for .99cents, this is one of those items that goes on sale ALL the time. I picked them up for .50 each.

To keep in line with the "use your own creativity" idea, i brought ALL of my acrylic paints so that they could chose colors that inspired them. There were clemson boxes, girlie boxes, black and rustic boxes. And they were all fascinated at watching the paint CRACKLE!

I do loooooove crackle!

I also brought ALL of the Paper Makeup Stamps wordart (wow, didnt realize we had so many)

in order for them to each choose a quote that spoke to them.

And i brought embellishments in every bits and sizes so that they could doctor up their creation.

All in all, i think it was a success! They had a blast and i got a few thank you calls from parents.

Now to share with you details on what I chose to do!

First i painted the entire box with brown acrylic paint and let that dry. Then i painted the crackle medium over the box and let it dry slightly (the longer you wait, the more fine cracks, the less time, you get be fat thick cracks. I like mine somewhere in the middle).

Here is an overview of the top of the box...

This quote is from the Believe Scripture set from Paper Makeup Stamps.

I stamped it, then cut it out with the small long rectangle nesties and matted it with brown cardstock cut with scallop long rectangles nesties. Before adhering, i distressed the edges with Antique Linen Distress Ink.

To adorn the top of the box, i took a SUPER cute button that is in the shape of a flower (Creative Cafe) and threaded some DMC floss thru so it would look sewn onto the box.

Using a martha stewart branches punch, i punched the same brown cardstock and glued to either side of the flower button.

More distressing...

To get this dirty and weathered look on the box, i use an antiquing glaze which you can find in the same area of the craft store as the paint and crackle medium. The natural textures of the paper mache box (uneven edges, etc) are PERFECT for this since the glaze doesnt go on quite a smooth.

So thats it! if there is enough interest, i'd be happy o do a step by step or even video tutorial on this process. :D Just leave a comment if you'd really like to see it!

I have a really big announcement from paper makeup stamps tomorrow so be sure to check back in!