"Meeresschätze" / "Treasures from the Sea"

I have been storing some driftwood for quite a long time now and after the oceanic stamp set from Artemio had arrived a few days ago an idea for a project to finally use them started to take shape in my mind.

This is the result, which I am going to enter to the challenges from Catered Crop "No Stress to Distress"-Challenge, the StampotiqueDesigners Color challenge and  Simon Says Stamp and Show 's Challenge "Inspired by Summer Distress" as the new Distress ink "Salty Ocean" turns out to be my new favourite...

 

It's a box, were I can store the driftwood which I covered with stamped tissue paper. And because one of the wood pieces looked like a handle, I made it a handle by screwing it onto the lid of the box. But first I gave this screw an aged look by dyeing it with AAI "rust". 

 Here is a picture of the most important materials used in this project: 

For a start I distressed the white washed driftwood pieces with Distress inks "salty ocean", "walnut stain" and "antique linen". 

 Letting these dry, I stamped the oceanic images from the really coooool Artemio stamp set with black archival ink onto a single layer of tissue paper and let these dry too.                                                                                                            

I crumpled up two sheets of ordinary white copy paper, inked the crumpled edges with "salty ocean" Distress ink and sprayed the sheets with water from the Mini Mister afterwards to let the colour bleed out a little. I also added some dashes of Glimmer Mist "Moonlight" and Maya Mist "Espresso brown", to create a beach-sandy impression. 

While letting this paper dry, I tore the stamped images from the tissue paper sheet and glued them onto the wood pieces using Art Podge. After finishing that, I had a lovely collection of "treasures" for my box:

In the meantime my self-coloured paper had dried and I cut the stripes with which to cover the outside of the oval box and lid, giving it one additional centimetre width to glue around the edges to the inside. For the upside of the lid I glued the lid directly onto the selfmade paper, cutting around the edges afterwards. Then I inked all of the edges using Distress ink "walnut stain". On the outside of the lid I stamped a "word border" saying "Ocean" in various languages with a darker blue colour.

On the outside of the bottom section I stamped a fish (using "salty ocean" again), "swimming" around the box and it's treasures inside. At last I made a tiny tag, saying "Treasures from the Sea" and fixed it with rough cord onto the handle of the lid and glued two more wood pieces to the right and the left of the center wood piece. 

As the inside of the box was already pale lilac, I sprayed some Glimmer Mist and Espresso brown to the inside, to give it some texture. Done!

Here are some close-ups which I hope you will enjoy: