Keepsake Box by Julie Lavalette

 Hello
 Let me introduce myself to everyone. My name is Julie Lavalette and I stay in Scotland in a small town situated between Glasgow and Edinburgh. I was overwhelmed with excitement when I was asked to be Guest Designer for the month of April. I have been papercrafting for about 8 years now and  would say my style has developed into Shabby Vintage and I find Cheery Lynn dies always work beautifully with my projects, be it a card, scrapbook page or using them in mixed media. Over this month I will share my knowledge and hopefully inspire you to think 'out the box' with your dies.

Todays project is a Keepsake box that I intend to keep little memories my children made or gave me as they were growing up. I started with coating my plain wooden box with a coat of gesso inside and out to seal it. I then applied various colours of paint blending and applying to my box with a baby wipe. Finally. stamping script and crackles onto it also with paint.












For the top of my box I cut out the French Lattice Small Frame die x 2 with kraft card. I then dry brushed some paint over it to give a shabby feel.  I sliced a section off both cut outs so they would connect together at the right size for the top of my box. I saved the small shapes, these were distressed and stamped with crackles. This gave me a contrast when I paper pieced them back onto the lid. I cut out my flourish and again distressed the edges and applied to the lid with multi medium. I then edged with Cuties 3 strip around the edge of the box.

The centre piece I wanted to give a look of petals  wrapped delicately around my topper. I die cut the Cuties 3 strip with kraft card and edged with distress. I then pressed my embossing tool into the centre of the petals to give texture and put a tiny little cut into the strip with my scissors, this makes the paper now more pliable to go around the topper with ease and makes the petals sit perfectly. I layered 2 rows around the centre.

I love making my corner dies  look like a metal embellishment. To do this, I firstly cut out with kraft card and double embossed with a metallic copper embossing powder. If you heat from underneath and you will get a smoother finish. The base of the box is supported with wooden beads painted.

Now lets go inside my keepsake box. Can you see I used the little shapes from my lattice frame die again and down the side and I have used the Cuties 3 strip as an accent once again.

I used the Expandables Tiny Borders strip into my little sections. This is an amazing die, that gives you lots of different decorative strips all at once and the length is only determined by the size of the piece of paper you use, as it has little markers on the die to expand it. Clever !!

Cheery Lynn Dies used:

FRM132 French Lattice Small Frame Die

B165 Lace Corner Deco E

DL151 Victorian Romance Flourish

B215 Expandable Tiny Borders

B387 Tiny Fanciful Flourish Left and Right

B339 Gardenia Strip

FRM135 Swedish Spring Oval Frame

B151 Cuties 3

B179 Iris Leaves

Well I hope you have enjoyed my first post here at Cheery Lynn Designs as much as I have and feel inspired to enter this weeks challenge.

Hope you have a creative weekend,

 Julie x