Shabby Halloween box for AVJ

'Tis the season for all things eerie, mysterious, curious and weird. As it's the beginning of October then what better than some challenges to get you in the Halloween mood and A Vintage Journey is one of them to help you on your way. Anne is the spectral host this month and she says - 

As we approach All Hallows' Eve we want you to create a vintage, shabby, industrial, steampunk or mixed media project to celebrate the spookiness of Halloween, don't limit yourself to black, orange and purple - just 'Make it Spooky'!

Me? I just decided to alter one of those hard paper maché type boxes to hold some of my spooky supplies and to make it seem even more weird I have gone shabby creepy.

Quick process steps

• Paint a coat of rustic chalky finish paint over the outside of the box and dry. 
• Apply random areas of weathered wood and leave to dry. 
• Paint a coat of white crackle paint. Leave to dry.

• Sand back some of the edges and ink with ground espresso distress ink.
• Rub over with a damp babywipe and a dry cloth to expose some of the burnt umber areas as well as the darker crackles from the ground espresso.

• Main focus for the lid - stamp the skull on a piece of tissue paper - dry.
• Take a wooden frame, ink the edges with ground espresso, stamp with a texture image and black archival ink and paint on a coat of transparent crackle glaze - leave to dry naturally.
• When dry paint over with white antiquing cream leave to dry again dry and then rub over with a babywipe to remove the antiquing cream except in the crackles.

• Adhere the stamped, crumpled tissue paper image to the box lid with Decoupage glue which is a sealer as well as an adhesive. Apply the Decoupage to the top of the paper and the whole top of the lid to seal it, heat dry.
• Paint a watery wash of titan buff over the skull but leave the teeth white.

• Give the rest of the box a coat of the Decoupage glue/sealer.
• Adhere the frame over the stamped tissue paper.

• Line the box and lid with tissue wrap and when glue is dry give a watery wash of titanium white acrylic paint. This helps it look more ethereal and gives the insides a finished look.

• Seal the base of the box with the Decoupage, I didn't worry about the inside as it had been sealed before it had been given the ethereal look when I glued over the top of the tissue wrap.
• I had intended to add borders, labels and embellishments to the lid and base of the box, but when it came down to it I just preferred the look of the remnant rubs on their own.

Over to you now to enter your projects at the new spooky challenge on AVJ but before you do I recommend you pop over to the challenge post to see all the incredible inspiration from some of the team, I promise you it's well worth a look.

Have a fabulous spooky month.

hugs Brenda xxx

On Hallowe'en the thing you must do

Is pretend that nothing can frighten you

And if somethin' scares you and you want to run

Just let on like it's Hallowe'en fun.

~Author unknown