The Illustrious Order of the Dirty Hands

A big thank you to everyone who attended this class and hence joined the "Illustrious Order of the Dirty Hands" (my new title awarded to whoever is willing to sign up for my messiest class of the month!)

Altered Tool Box: "Play, Learn, Grow" (box from Creative Imaginations)
Box is in my favourite colours using lots of scrap strips of patterned paper.
Love that little squirrel....and the spinner trees.

How to PLAYalong:

1. Squeeze white PVA glue (I used Elmer's Glue) on edges of box making it a little drippy... Dry with heat gun. (glue will fester and bubble in a most delightful manner, making pockmarks and blisters on your box)
2. Using a candle, rub wax onto the surface of the lid of the box. (make sure you don't 'draw' with your candle like you would with a pencil, but rub it with the length of your candle pressed flat against the surface)

3. Slap on some brown paint. Leave to dry then rub with a dry tissue or kitchen towel. will find that the parts with wax will rub off leaving nice wood grain texture (see below). Rub in a little Distress ink if you find the grain too 'white'. Adjust colour of wood by rubbing in some Staz On ink. (I was going for mahogany - can you tell? haha)

4. The parts with your blistered glue will look like this (level of blistering is directly proportional to amount of glue used):More trees and another squirrel. The clock face tree with the safety pin reminds me of a nipple ring somehow.....erm....let's not go there.
I have LEARNed that:

1. If you put some modelling paste on the corner of the box, pat it a with an ice cream stick to make 'peaks', let it dry, then colour it with Distress inks and Staz On ink, you get a rather lovely texture like this (A bit Freddy Krueger....haha) :
2. If you use some letter stencils (e.g. Tim Holtz's), place them on your box, slap some modelling paste on top of them, then lift the stencils away, you can make cool dimensional words, like the "grow" below. (They need to be coloured after they're dry of course):
By the end of all this messing about, you will GROW to be immune to the fact that your hands are mucky, messy and good ol dirty and will have officially been inducted into The Illustrious Order of The Dirty Hands! Welcome to the Club!