Red box

This is a little wooden box that I bought at Michaels for, I think, 99 cents.  The kids wanted to do woodburning, and once I got the tool heated up, it sounded like a fun thing for me to do too. 

My original plan was to put a wood veneer in the inset parts of the box, but I couldn’t find the veneer in my studio, so I put silver leaf on it instead.  By the time I found the veneer, I’d already painted adhesive on it.  The problem with silver leaf, and gold leaf, is that when you spray or paint any kind of sealer on it, it loses its sheen.  I thought with a spray sealer that wouldn’t be the case.  Perhaps if I had a gloss spray rather than matte it would work better.  I’m not terribly fond of leafing, because of this and because of the lack of control.  You can see in the picture that the leaf stuck to the oil paint as well as to the adhesive.

 The color is a wash of oil paint mixed liberally with linseed oil.  I wanted extra oil since the wood was completely unfinished.  It made the color bleed in parts, but it adds extra protection (not that I’m going to use the box for anything, as it’s only 2″x2″x3″)

All in all, this was a fun little project.  I can’t believe how cheap those little boxes are.  Tomorrow I’m thinking of heading to Michael’s to get more of them, because the kids like to paint them too.