Upcycled Wooden Box: Faux Leather

Created especially for the recent Sheena Douglass design team call out, I turned this wooden box into something that will never end up on a craft stall!  The paper technique is called Faux Leather by Sheena Douglass and involves turning kraft card into a soft chamois leather effect using a mix of water and glycerine. 

Here’s a photo of the sorry looking box before starting… this is NOT a second hand box, this is exactly how on found it on the graveyard self in my supermarket – heavily reduced, scratched, chipped and dodgy decoupage peeling off.  It’s a good size and made from wood, so as a crafter I had to save it!

On the night before the renovation began I made up five sheets of A4 faux leather.  You can find a tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfunaRazSSo or on Sheena’s messy crafting DVD.  The next day I took some measurements and cut down some of the pieces to the right sizes for all of the panels on the box (with a little bit of overhang to get a nice finish later on).

For the background panels I used Sheena’s A4 embossing folder with the ivy leaves on it.  Using the remaining faux leather I die cut and embossed using Sheena’s fence, daisy border, briar rose and day of the dead dies.

Next came colouring up the pieces… normally I do a red-brown colouring (which I did do for the background) but I wanted to try making up green, blue, purple and yellow leathery pieces too.  To get that effect ink up using the base colour first, then go over with at least two different shades of brown.  I use distress inks. 

Then at long last came the assembly stage.  I adhered the background with Colall tacky glue and sanded off the edges with a sanding block. Then I went around the sanded edges again with my darkest brown ink.  Then I stuck down the fence, daisy border and ivy leaves before I sealed everything with Pebeo’s Bindex medium.  This is the part that gives it durability and a shiny/satin finish.  You can use gel medium or spray varnish for paper. 

It was this point that I realised that the original tassel on the box was half decent so I poked a hole through my lid leather and reinserted it.  Then I added all of the diecut flowers but only after sealing with the bindex separately (so that I could paint it on flat before shaping later on the lid). 

And here is the finished result…