An Emerald Creek Treasure Chest

 Hi and servus!

Today sees the second round of January project posts from the Emerald Creek DT and they are all about the new products Kim will be introducing at Creativations (formerly known as CHA) tomorrow! (There will not only be a lot of awesome new products to check out at her booth but also some of my projects I made for Emerald Creek, which makes me a very proud and happy bunny! Yay!)

One of the most impressive new goodies are the lovely gemstones Kim sent me - and I knew immediately what I wanted to create with them.

Last November I went to Munich with my son and husband and there we visited the residence and the treasury. I was deeply impressed by the wonderful treasures and by how much love, skill and labour had gone into their makings! There were crowns, golden boxes, house shrines and many other wonderful things - and all of them were outstanding pieces of craftsmanship!

So I decided to create my own little treasure chest using the lovely gemstones and Emerald Creek's fab embossing powders!

My treasure chest is not that shiny and golden, but you know me...I am a grunge crafter and love all things old and heavily worn...which is why I wanted to go for an aged look with my project (imagine that the chest has just been found in a dusty attic or crypt!).

But let's start from the beginning...lol.

I dry embossed a piece of black cardstock using a Spellbinders embossing folder and my Sizzix. Then I painted the embossed card and the balsa wood box with DecoArt Venetian Gold Dazzling Metallic paint.

 The dry card was glued to the chest's lid using matte DecoArt Decou-Page. Then I dabbed on some clear embossing ink directly from the inkpad and heat embossed the lid using Emerald Creek Charred Gold embossing powder. I used it on some die cut fleurs de lis too.

I also die cut two metal fittings from black cardboard and heat embossed these with Emerald Creek Hammered Metal embossing powder. 

The box was toned down using DecoArt media black Antiquing Cream.

Then I glued on the closure and the other pieces.

I added two of the new Emerald Creek Circle brads to the metal fittings. As the balsa wood is quite soft I just had to poke a hole first with a pokey tool and then insert the brad.

The gemstones were fixed to the lid using a hot glue gun.

Voilá! 

Some close ups:

Inside the box the balsa wood is still in its original state - so you can see what a little bit of paint and media can do to turn something new and boring looking into an aged looking artefact... ;)

I love the look of the gorgeous gemstones against the Charred Gold!

If you want to find out what my teamies have used the gemstones for, simply hop over to Emerald Creek Dares and check out their makes too! I hope you like my treasure chest (and the CHA projects if you happen to stop by Kim's booth during the next days ;)!!!

Thanks for visiting and 

hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia 

xxx