PAPER COVERED BOXES

BOX WITH EMBOSSED PAPER AND PAINTED EDGES

BOX WITH HANDMADE PAPER WITH LEAVES AND FIBRE

 Marvin has been out in the shed making me some MDF boxes so I can experiment with different finishes.  I'm not totally happy with any of these examples but I have learnt quite a bit along the way, and they aren't so bad that they can't be used.

The first box was edged with gold paint and covered with a highly embossed paper. I used doublesided Jac paper to stick the paper, which worked really well.  The only issue was that as the paper was quite highly raised, it didn't sit nicely on the bits where it joined the wood.  A lot of sanding with an emery board and retouching helped a lot but I think gorgeous as this paper is, I'll use a flatter one in the future.

The second box was a real surprise.  I had some small squares of  different coloured handmade papers with leaves and fibre that were not big enough to cover any of the panels.  I didn't think obvious joins would look good so I ripped it into small pieces (with hindsight not the easiest thing to do to paper with so many "solids"), and stuck them to the box with Mod Podge, each slightlty overlapping the other.  The "surprise" element was that whilst the coloured papers covered the surface, the the white paper disappeared completely once the glue was applied, so that the "raw" box was visible with the leaves etc appearing to sit directly on the surface.  It added a really interesting element.  I finished off with about three coats of Mod Podge.  I hadn't really factored "disappearing paper" into my plans but will now test all papers if I'm gluing them on to a particular surface.  If I can find enough of the paper I might have another go at this one as it has potential.

The third box is painted, and decorated with a Kaiser wooden flourish.  The "paper" bit of this one is the lining - simply suede paper applied to very thick card and cut to a very snug fit so glue is unnecessary. I did this in case the lining needs to be replaced at some stage.  (Its not sitting quite straight in the photo but it just needs a little push on the front edge to fix it).  The edge of the cardboard looked surprisingly brown (I just used packing board) so I ran around the edge with a marker (permanant) in a green to match the box.

PAINTED BOX

SUEDE PAPER BOX LINING.