Tracy Krueger

The Plain Box Society

Hello friends! Today I'm going to share with you a collaboration that Tina Walker organized.

Everyone started off with a Plain brown box and we were instructed to decorate this box with StencilGirl® stencils. We could use other art materials, but the only stencils we could use were StencilGirl® (is there really any other?!?!😀). The main stencils I used were L591 Vintage Typewriter Numbers and the big one from the February 2017 Stencil Club.

After much thought of how I wanted to decorate my box, I decided I was going to create a person using the box as my "body". I came across some deli paper sheets that I had gelli printed using stencils. I began to rip up the deli paper into small strips and using matte medium I collaged the box with those strips.

Next I knew I wanted the box to have hinges instead of the normal closure, so I sorted through my stash of hinges and finally found some small ones. I cut off the lid and used brads to attach the hinge to the box.

When I was looking through all of my metal pieces I came across this piece that I believe was used in a lamp and I knew it had to be my "feet"! I heated up my hot glue gun and slathered the metal to attach it to the bottom of the box (and boy did the metal get hot!).

As for the body, I had recently purchased some of vintage clothes pins and figured that would be the perfect shape. I cut out a face image and covered it with Amazing Clear Cast Resin to give it a little dimension. After I allowed it to thoroughly cure (about 24 hours), I knew she needed a "crown" so I dug through my metal once again and found a gear. I adhered the gear then the image to the top of my clothes pin with some E6000. Once the glue dried, I drilled holes at an angle on the sides of the clothes pin so I could screw in some screws for arms.

I knew she needed some clothes and I had the perfect idea! When antique shopping I found a bag of the old school Christmas bulbs. I picked out some blue ones and if they had the actual bulb in them I removed it. I strung them together with wire and made her a little skirt!

The crown looked a little off and needed to stand out a little more, so I took one of the clear vintage Christmas bulbs and 2 of the blue bulbs I had removed from her skirt and glued them to the top of the clothes pin. Perfect addition to balance out the blue skirt. I wanted to give her some fingers so I pulled out my go-to blue resistors and wrapped a couple around each screw. She was really coming together!

I cut a hole in the top of the box, making sure it was tight so that the clothes pin wouldn't move around too much. I again used hot glue on the inside of the box to make sure it wouldn't wobble around.

Now she is done! See below for the final project and a couple of close-ups.

Thank you for visiting my blog!