An Altered Chest

I have some little cardboard chests and decided to 'alter' one. I painted it with a pale green emulsion and aged it with light dustings of black ink. I needed small 'old' pictures so went back to an old trick I used to use. I split a 3 layer paper serviette and cut small pictures from the top layer. These were applied to the top and sides of the chest and a thin coat of matt varnish painted over the whole thing. The varnish wrinkles the pictures slightly and ages them.

I added gold strapping to the top of the chest and a mock catch. Then just for the fun of it I stamped a dragonfly onto shrink plastic and tinted it with chalks. The 'shrunk' dragon fly was attached to the corner of the chest.



























Just to finish things off I made a tiny book on the meaning of plants to store inside the chest.