Box No.2

I enjoyed making the poppies box in my last blog so much that I've been busy working away on another one.

I took an absolutely gorgeous piece of shimmery silk and needle felted all kinds of woolly and sparkly textures to it.  I then stitched on lots of tiny beads in complementary colours.

Next I painted a pine box using chalk paint, waxed it and rubbed it to a lovely smooth finish.  The silk was stretched over a tiny canvas and fixed into the lid of the box, et voila!

Poppies

When I first bought my wonderful embellishing machine I made this poppy picture but was never quite sure what to do with it!  It was too small to stretch onto a canvas and I wasn't sure that it would look as effective from behind glass, so it has been lying in my sewing room for a few months, waiting for some inspiration to come my way.

That inspiration came through an art materials catalogue in which I found plain wooden boxes with a small canvas inlaid into the lid. 

So after carefully painting and waxing the box, I wrapped the poppies around the wee canvas and this is the result.
 

Another recent project has been the rennovation of a box given to me by a friend.  I think it's made of bamboo and the gaps between the uprights made it tricky to paint. 

I painted it using pale blue chalk paint and used a stencil to add the seed heads.  Then I waxed it and lined the bottom with some wadding and a complementary fabric.

I plan to put both boxes into the shop for sale, but I always struggle with pricing.  It's so difficult.  Do other crafters have a formula for pricing their work?