Good evening to those who have taken the time to wander through the halls of this old place. I’m adding another piece to the collection today, a piece related to the Blue Pagoda Project.
See, the thing is, once I finished it, I realized I needed a worthy gift-box to place the finished piece in. The first instinct was, of course, to dive into the mighty internet and find something suitable to what I had in mind. I started the search with an optimism that usually doesn’t suit me very well and, to the smug satisfaction of my more pessimistic side, the search came up with nothing I liked or I deemed similar enough to what I had in mind.
What would one sane person have done? Probably just wrap the gift in some other way, or stuff it in a gift bag and be done with it.
Alas, many things could be said about me, but that I am sane is not one of them. I decided the correct way to solve the problem would be to make my own, personalized gift-box.
As any person in full possession of their sanity would do.
I didn’t think of taking pictures of the process until I had finished the bottom part of the box, but as you can see from the photo, I decided to go the extra mile and personalize the inside too.
The person the gift (and consequently the gift-box) was for has a name starting with C so I went with a monogram at the center of each side in a font called Royal Initialen that I found here, with the addition of a frame and some flowery decorations thanks to Photoshop brushes downloaded a lifetime ago.
I printed everything on parchment-colored paper I ordered on a whim on Amazon back in 2019 and glued it on the already cut out cardboard. I did the same for the inside of the top of the gift-box, but this time in a light blue-gray-sh color. The color change was not intentional at first, but it came out quite pretty nevertheless.
The outside of the box was painted with blue and gold acrylic, but something was bothering me about it. It was too plain which, in itself, is not a problem.
However, in this particular instance, too plain was not an option.
I started with cutting out another square of cardboard and using it prepare a monogram of the same C that was on the inside of the top of the box.
You can see some of the process here. I worked with the tiniest paintbrush I have, something I bought more than 15 years ago at a flea market’s stall.
I think it was meant to be for calligraphy, but it works great for tiny details too.
I then cut out the cardboard square to a shape that echoed somehow the frame around the monogram and pasted it at the center of the box top.
In the image you can also see some pencil lines (that will be covered later on, before I sprayed the sealing paint on everything) I drew as a guide for another frame I had in mind.
Here you can see that the pencil lines to center the monogram have been painted over and the rectangular frame has been painted gold and glued to the box top.
I then added some other details cut out of cardboard and painted gold, following the curved lines I drew.
And this, my dear visitors, is the finished gift box. It was a process because not everything came out perfectly the first time around.
Are there things I would do differently? Yes, of course. What artisan doesn’t look back at their works and see only the flaws in them?
But it was a learning process for me, and a welcomed addition for the person who received it, so in the end, the task I set out to accomplish was, indeed, accomplished.
I hope this new addition to the Mausoleum interested you for at least a minute dear visitor.
I hope to see you again, the doors are always open for those who enjoy pretty crafts.
