I'm Back!!!

 Hello!  If there's anyone still there??!!

Wow, it's been so long since I have blogged, or even crafted until this week!  There are about 3 long stories about what has been going on, the incredibly short version is that my mum had a knee replacement so I spent 2 or 3 weeks helping out there and I had some treatment on my sore shoulders, which turned out to be a disaster and is still on-going.  So skip a few other chapters and I'm back and hopefully over the next week or 2 I should be properly up and running again (or at least at a leisurely stroll pace!).
I want to add a massive thank you to Mari, Shaz and Elaine for being so lovely and understanding and letting me have some time off from DT duties, it was great to not have to worry about anything.  I have also decided to step down as the leader of PunkYouGirl, but I'm still staying on the DT and the lovely Kay has graciously taken over the reigns and is doing such a fantastic job at breathing new life into the challenge blog, I wish I had've passed it over sooner!

I meant to do a post showing pics from when I was on the set of Game of Thrones - I wanted to do that after "our" scenes were broadcast, but of course that was aired just at the start of when everything kicked off here so I never got the post done - the series has even finished now!  But I'll still do up the post at some point cos it's too cool not to show off! :P

So anyway, I'm actually here today with something I have made!
It's the midway reminder today at PunkYouGirl and our dark (as always!) theme for this challenge is...

Skeletons and Secrets!

And our new boss Kay is sponsoring us with fab prizes for both 1st and 2nd places!!  Double reasons to get entering!

So I had a good rummage in my stash and found the bits and pieces I needed to decorate a box - to hide your secrets in, see?!

 The box itself was a plain white trinket box that I got in Tesco.  I started by thinking I'd like to use ink to colour it, but after trying and failing several times to open my old pot of ink, I used my pot of black Pebeo paint (which I thought I wasn't going to be able to open either cos all the power had gone out of my hands from trying to open the ink!).  I painted stripes up the sides of the box and lid - I purposely didn't line up the stripes, cos life's just too short!  And the underneath of the box and top of the lid were fully painted black.  I then used my wee old pot of gold ink, which I did manage to get open, and painted over the whole thing with it - it gives it a lovely grubby but shimmery effect.  I then took to attaching some feet to the base with glossy accents.

 The feet and the skeleton have come from a set of Halloween decorations that I bought years ago, I think you're supposed to scatter them over the table.  The foot and lower leg bits were the perfect size to stick to the corners and still leave room for the lid to go on!  They were a bugger to get to stay on though!  I also dirtied up the box sides with some Walnut Stain and Black Soot Distress Inks.

I pulled a page out of an old book (GASP!) that I bought in  a charity shop, (Charles Dickens, Bleak House) and tore it into strips and crumpled, aged, distressed (with inks) and stuck it to the box lid.  I then aged and distressed it a bit more with a sanding block and black and gold embossing powders.  I then attached the "body" with glossy accents.  I coated some round studs in the gold and black EPs and also attached them.

I printed the sentiment (or maybe its the inventory of what's inside the box??!) from the computer using the font Cardinal Alternative, cut out the words, dirtied them up and attached them to each other with some brass jump rings.

So there you go, the perfect box to keep anything you don't want people to find!

Make sure you check out what the rest of the DT have done, I can't wait to see what you do!

I'd like to enter my altered trinket box into the following challenges:

Creative Inspirations; Distressing
Just For Fun Challenge Blog; Anything goes
Crafty Girls Challenges; Anything goes
Creative Fingers Challenge Blog; Anything goes
Creative Moments; Anything goes
A Step In The Dark; Anything goes/Use metal - jump rings & studs
Altered Eclectics; Anything goes

Thanks for looking!