Lovely trinket box decorated with blue spring birds and crackle effect.
What you need:
- wooden box - brass handle - rice paper with birds (selection of rice papers, including this one - available here) - brown paint - white acrylic paint - decoupage glue - varnish (matt and gloss) - 2 component crackle (available here) - flat brush - piece of sponge - dark wax - sandpaper - strong glue for handle (l used epoxy glue)
1. Before you start, sand your box to remove any unevenness of wood.
2. Paint two sides of the box and lid using diluted brown acrylic paint. Tip : you can also use wood dye
3. Wider walls, back of the lid and inside of the box are painted with the white paint.
4. Now select images from rice paper.
5. Apply glue on box an place paper in the desired position.
6. Add some glue on top of the paper, starting from the centre to remove any air. Repeat on other side and on the lid.
7. Remove excess of the paper using sandpaper. Cover decoupaged surfaces with few layers of varnish (I used matt varnish). Let it dry.
8. Paint the lid. Use piece of sponge to add some shadows.
9. Add some dots using brown paint and brush with stiff bristle (for example stencil brush or old toothbrush).
10. Add shadows and dots on side walls of the box.
11. Now is time for tricky part - crackle.
First apply step one. I'm using my fingers to get smooth surface, but you can use brush. Remember - brush must be dry!
Wait till step 1 dries (it becomes clear)
12. Apply fairly thick layer of step two- once again I used my fingers to this job. Leave to dry.
If cracks do not appear (which happened to me earlier with this crackle), use a hair dryer (but not too close). Cracks are very thin and almost invisible, so check from time to time the effect. Once you happy with result fill cracks using dark wax applied using piece of cloth. Please remember - two step crackle can't be finished with water based varnish. You can use wax, solvent based varnish. polyurethane varnish, but after use of water based product it might peel off .
If you like my tutorial, feel free to use it in your work, but please remember to give credit where credit is due.
All photos are Reverie-Art property and protected by copyright. Do not copy any part of this tutorial without permission.