A Vintage Sewing Find

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and a joyous Easter for those of you who celebrate the Resurrection.  I attended a beautiful Mass and then had a relaxing family day.

Thank you for starting your week out with me this week.  I have a fun project I did for this week's Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge.  This week we want you to show us Buttons.  Can't go wrong with a button project, right?  Above you can see the end product of Saturday's crafting session.  I decided to alter a wooden box below that I picked up at Tuesday Morning quite some time ago.  It's been calling out to me, but just the right project hadn't come along.  I thought I'd alter it into a box for my desk that I would just dump all my buttons into.

I have to warn you, this is a long post.  If you really want to know how I made this project, it's all here.  If not, skip the text and skim the photos!

The first thing I did was to give the top of the box a good coat of Golden Fiber Paste.  Ever since I saw my team mate Lynne's box that she altered with fiber paste, I have wanted to give it a go.  This box actually took three coats of the stuff before it really disguised the original top.  Between coats of fiber paste, I covered the sides of the lid with Tim Holtz Tissue Tape.  The lower sides were covered with the new Kraft Resist designer paper, glued on with Claudine Hellmuth Multi-Medium Matte.  After the third coat of fiber past was dry I gave the entire box a nice color wash with a reinker blend and water, and then a little spritz of my homemade glimmer mist.

To get the stamped image on the rough texture left by the fiber paste, I stamped onto tissue paper (a la a sewing pattern) and then adhered it to the fiber paste with plenty of the Multi-Medium Matte.  Since I seem to be totally hooked on hand-dying everything, yes, I did dye the jumbo ric rac.  It was a sky blue to which I added a bit of aqua reinker and a nice squirt or two of the homemade glimmer mist.  I also dyed a strip of crinoline which I gathered to make a ruffle and then layered a piece of Tim Holtz's Ruler Ribbon over top.

The Haberdashery stamp set has a needle book cover stamp and I couldn't resist making an actual needle book with it.  I cut Grunge Paper and muslin with Spellbinders Mega Curved Rectangles, layered them together and did a bit of distressing with Vintage Photo distress ink to both the muslin and the baker's twine.  Oh, and on the inside of the needle book cover the Grunge Paper was swiped liberally with Vintage Photo Distress Stain (if you haven't tried it, you should!).  And I also stamped a couple of other Tim Holtz stamps in the inside to make it look a little more authentically vintage (from Curiosities and Mini Holidays).

The Haberdashery set also includes two thread spool label stamps which I stamped in Gold Encore ink on black CS - love the vintage feel of those stamps!  And of course, I have to have a Tattered Florals Die cut flower on all my creations lately so I cut a number of layers of crinoline and then tea stained them for this project and topped it off with a button,

And now for what I'll be storing in this box.   A couple of months ago, I was browsing in our one and only junk/antique shop and found an old sewing basket.  Inside were some awesome vintage sewing products including a few wooden spools of thread, snaps, hooks and eyes, a couple of crunched up vintage button cards, a paper tape measure and that metal needle threader thingy that I put on the top with the needle book.  And there was even a little glass vial of teeny brass buttons.  All in all, a very cool find that I got for about $5.

Thanks so much for stopping by to check out my Simon Says Stamp and Show project.  I love to hear from my visitors and any constructive criticism is more than welcome - especially on my mixed media projects.  

I hope you will stop by the Simon Says Stamp and Show blog to see what my team mates have created for this challenge - always truly amazing stuff over there!  And how about showing us your Buttons this week?  You just might win a $50 shopping spree randomly given to our of our players this week by our lovely sponsor Simon Says Stamp.

Have a wonderful week!