A Little Change of Pace...

Happy Saturday, everyone.  I took a little break from cardmaking this week...it's been a while since I did that!  Since my leg is making improvement daily, I spent time catching up on some light housekeeping chores that hadn't been done for the last month since I was healing, and a "girls' day out" with a couple dear friends. Add to that a broken washing machine, and a car with a check engine light that had to be addressed and fixed, and cardmaking took a back seat to other fun and not-so-fun things. :)

But I did finish one project, with a little help from my woodworking-loving husband.  For a while, I've been looking for a new storage solution for my Distress Inks and reinkers.  Currently I have a great work cabinet with shallow drawers on one side specifically for wood stamps, ink pads, and other stamping accessories.  But as you all know, storage solutions can be perfect one day, and overflowing the next...and my existing solution was overflowing. More importantly, storing them stacked in a drawer meant I had to pull them all out every time I wanted to find a specific color...I couldn't see at a glance where things were.

I have a lot of Distress Inks that I use often...and I have reinkers for every color of ink pad I have, both for reinking the pads, and for making my own "shimmer mists" for ribbons, laces, etc.  I wanted something to store those inks and reinkers...and found a prefab solution online with a price much higher than I was willing to pay.  So with a little design collaboration, and custom sizing, my husband built a storage unit for me from plywood (outside) and luaun (inside dividers).  Here are a couple photos of the raw cabinet...note that the vertical pieces hadn't been slotted yet, so they're not shown here:

The top has 6 sections for the reinker bottles...6 bottles can fit per section:

The slots in the vertical sections got routed this week...and a layer of clear coat was added to the whole cabinet.  Now it was my turn to get to work.

I wanted the piece to look like an old crate that had been turned into a storage solution - I didn't want it to look new, or perfect.  So after all his work, I went to town making his creation look a little aged and beat up...LOL.

I painted a single coat of light tan acrylic paint to all the exposed edges.  For the insides of the top section, I diluted some white acrylic paint to resemble the "pickling" technique.  Using some (older)  K&Co Life's Journey floral patterned papers for the piece across the top front, I cropped a French sign that I found at The Graphics Fairy and printed the text onto the floral patterned paper on my printer, ran some Picket Fence Distress Stain around the edges to lighten them, then decoupaged it to the front.  (The label translates to "commercial locksmiths," I think.)

Crackle paint was applied over the tan painted edges, and around the edge of the patterned paper (to blend the edges of the paper, since it was only 12" wide and my cabinet is wider). When that dried, I rubbed full-strength white acrylic paint into the crackles, and wiped off the excess.

For the sides of the piece, I used a postcard paper from the same K&Co stack. I chose this paper specifically because the sides are 17-5/8" high, and my papers are only 12"...so I wanted a paper that wouldn't show the seam of the piecing quite so much.  The postcard paper was made up of rectangular shapes, so it was easier to accomplish this.

And here's where my lack of time (ok, lack of patience...LOL) led me to actually use an old stamp I'd forgotten I had.  I knew I wanted to crackle the sides, too...but didn't want to wait for dry time between coats.  Then I remembered I had an older crackle pattern wood stamp...and I had white pigment ink...and I had white embossing powder...and I was off and stamping.  I stamped and heat-embossed the crackle pattern onto the postcard paper pieces, ran the Picket Fence Distress Stain around the outside edges, and decoupaged them to the sides of the piece.

The final touch was to cover the slots on the sides of the dividers. After looking at a few options, I found a package of silver snaps from JoAnns that I had never used...until now.  I pulled out 24 of them, and my E6000 glue, and applied one in each open slot left by the dividers...then when dry, "smashed" each one with my Tim Holtz hammer for a battered look.

And here's an idea of how it will look in use. It's going to be mounted to the wall, but could be left free-standing.  The slots are wide enough to accomodate inkpads as large as the Stampin' Up! inkpads, and I'll have 6 empty slots for now, so I may put some of my other often-used inkpads in there to start.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.  I'll be back to cardmaking next week, so I hope you'll stop by again for a visit!