The Splendidly Imperfect Miss M!: Faux Vintage Box

I was working on decorating the little table in my entryway when I realized that I needed something to put under one of my newest bits of Halloween decor to elevate it a bit. I didn't want to use books, because I already had one under something else. I started to think that maybe if I could find some sort of little box that went with my decorations, that would be just the perfect thing. I looked at a few stores but nothing looked right to me.

Then I realized I could just make my own. Duh.

I went to Hobby Lobby and bought one of those plain brown papier mache boxes with a lid. It was about $2 with my 40% off coupon. I brought it home and painted it black with acrylic paint.

After that was dry, I painted a coat of Crackle Medium around the edge of the lid only. I let it dry for a few minutes. You want it to be kind of tacky, but not all the way dry.

Next, I took a 3/4 inch wide paint brush and some tannish/yellow colored paint.

I placed the brush in the middle of the edge, then made a stroke up. For the next one, I painted the stroke down. I alternated in this way around the rim of the lid.

I took a pin with a ball head and just dipped that in a little orange paint. I used it to make a dot in the middle of each rectangle.

While that dried, I repeated these steps on the body of the box. Instead of painting the antique gold color in rectangles, I went ahead and painted a solid coat of Pumpkin Orange. While that dried, I dug around in my supplies and unearthed these:

Yeah... the $20 set of foam stamps that I had to have and I was going to use on everything... Um, right. Whoops.

I took the E and the K out of the package and used them to stamp the word EEK on my box with black paint. I did the center letter first and then the other ones around it to ensure they were centered. I also made sure to take into account the depth of the lid so that it wouldn't cover them up when it was on the box.

I used a small paintbrush to fill in any places where the stamp didn't do an even job, and also areas where the paint was thin. This made it look more hand painted and less stamped.

Since I think everything is better with a little glitter on it, I used my Stickles in Diamond to outline each letter.

While I let that dry, I dug around my paints some more until I found this:

I gave the entire lid a nice wash of it. It made it slightly shiny so that you could no longer see fingerprints or rubbing marks on the matte black paint on the lid. It also toned down the gold a bit and made it look a bit older.