Creatve Jump Start 2014 - Altered Box

I was quite pleased when I saw the subject for this next video by Carmen Sanchez on Creative Jump Start - it was an altered musical box:

My finished music box showing box and lid.

The reason I was pleased was because, lurking in my giant box of 'crafts I must get round to doing someday' just happened to be a do-it-yourself musical box kit.  I bought it at a charity shop quite a while ago and had never got round to putting it together.  

After I'd constructed and glued the shape of the box from the flat cardboard it came in, I set about the decoration.  I decided to make the theme of my box as 'memories of my parents' so that I can use it to add some of my personal momentos inside.

This picture shows the underside of the lid

Keeping with this year's CJS2014 theme of using household items that we happen to have around, I decorated the box and its lid with some ripped up pages of old sheet music.  I  also liked the idea of adding ripped up passages from a battered old story book because all the photographs that I added would have their own story to tell too. 

This side shows the key to the musical box.

When staining the paper (with antique linen distress stain) I even deliberately left some parts of the original story book so that it could still be read.  

For the inside, after painting it I had a go at distressing it with some crackle paint like Carmen had done in her video and then to that I added some gold paste in order to highlight the cracks.

It is now on display with my other family photographic artefacts that I have made.  This is the only one that plays Mozart though.  

Thank you for looking today.  See you again tomorrow for some more CJS2014 projects. 

Nicky {Creative Flourishes}