Trzecia gościnna projektantka MMW | Third MMW Guest Designer

Hi, I'm Katarina aka kamadesign.

I've been crafting for about 16 years and when I started I tried everything from sewing, making my own soaps and candles to later jewelry, stamping and altering. Stamping and cardmaking always stuck with me as did jewelrymaking, sewing and mixed media altering. Lately I've been upcycling and repainting things like furniture. 

I never know where my creativity is going to take me, but I'm always excited to find out. My motto in crafting is to try everything at least once. I started blogging 2008, took a long break a few years ago, but now I'm back in blogland. Check out my blog for all sorts of projects and tutorials: kamadesign.blogspot.com

I started by painting the whole box with gesso.

 Then I added smears of ranger's distress crayons in the colors rusty hinge, fossilized amber and peeled paint. I also used distress ink in the color evergreen bough and vintage photo here are there. I rubbed it all out using a stiff brush.

I then chose different papers from Graphic45's line"Voyage beneath the sea" and used ranger's matte collage medium to glue the pieces onto the box. Before I glued them on I distressed the edges and rubbed them with vintage photo distress ink.

After that it was a quest through my embellishments to find odds and ends that would fit this steampunk underworld scene. I found things like small gears, pieces of glass, goldwire, seashells, stones, mirrored mosaicpieces, pearlstring, a glasscabochon with fitting and a tiny handle that I colored with Annie Sloan's chalk paint. Just to name a few. 

The hardest part was to put it all together and it took quite a while to get it right. I focused a lot on the tiny details like painting one of the pearls black in the tiny glass vial, making a custom glass cabochon and a seastar"flower" to add to the corner. 

The box measures about 15x12.5x3.5cm and can be hung by the handle on top with a pearlstring.