My Vintage Shoebox

Good morning and welcome to my marvelous Monday post for Simon Says Stamp and Show.  This week, we are asking you to show us some ephemera.  Vintage ephemera is close to my heart and I use it constantly in my art.  For this project, I wanted to do something over and above my norm.  I finally settled on the idea of altering a cigar box that I have had sitting around for ages.  One of my favorite forms of ephemera is vintage advertisements and I love shoes so this project became a personal expresison.  I was able to find several great vintage shoe ads through my free on-line sources (see my sidebar for my favorite vintage clip art sites).  

I've never done a project like this so I had to feel my way through it.  I don't even know if I have broken any cardinal rules of mixed media art, but here is what I did.  I first painted the entire cigar box, inside and out with gesso.  When dry, I gave it another coat, this time with Adirondack acrylic paint.   I used Snow Cap and mixed in several drops of reinkers to get a shade of blue that I liked.  When the paint was dry, I lightly sanded all the edges and ink distressed them with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.  Next I distressed some designer paper with scissors and Vintage Photo Distress Ink and adhered them with Claudine Hellmuth Multi-Medium Matte, then did the same with the clip art. "My Love Affair With Shoes" plus the Hero Arts French Post stamp were then stamped on the cover.  

On the inside lid, I stamped a corner flourish from Tim Holtz's Mini Classics in Ranger Jet Black Archival Ink, adhered a vintage shoe advertising poster and did a little distress painting with the Snow Cap paint dabber.  A flourish was cut from Grungeboard, embossed with the Collage texture fade and inked with Pine Needles Distress Ink.  The flower was made from canvas cut with the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals Die (of course). 

For the inside bottom, I took four heart doilies (2 large and 2 small) and misted them with my homemade glimmer mist.  When dry, I stamped words describing shoes along the scalloped tops so the words ring the entire inside.  The collage alphabet stamp set is hard to read, especially when stamped on the doilies so here are the words that were stamped:  beautiful, ugly, fun, staid, flashy, playful, painful, old friends.  

And what would a shoebox be without a shoe?  I found a shoe template on line and made a sweet paper shoe. It has a silver "buckle" on the front made from a Spellbinders die and a little cream rose made with the smallest flower in the Tim Holtz Tattered Floral Die.  NOTE:  I just realized in looking at the one I copied, that I made a small mistake which you can see in top photo - the connecting flap inside should have been flipped DOWN not up before glueing - oh well, live and learn. 

So there you have it.  This project took up my entire Saturday from the time I got up until late evening.  My DH was away for the weekend and I had no other calls on my time so I just poured it on continuously energized by the artistic drive to see this project realized and by a generous supply of coffee.  It was really a fun experience to be so captivated by creating that I barely noticed the time going by.  

Now it's time to hurry on over to Simon Says Stamp and Show to check out the rest of the ephemera projects created by my talented colleagues.   Again this week, our ever generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 to a lucky randomly selected winner.  You can't win if you don't play so get in gear and make an ephemera project to share with us this week.