
When the creative mind LISA over at tarnished and tattered announced the “Outside the Box” art challenge, I knew I would like to participate. The task was to alter a “Pure and Natural” soap box. The soaps of this company come in different shaped boxes and the one I got to play with was oblong and had a “window” that would just make a perfect picture frame.
So my first thought was to use a lovely vintage photo, adhere old book pages to the box and add some pieces of lace and fabrics as well as some buttons. It was really tempting but would that have been a challenge for me? No, not really since these are the things I usually love to play with.
Therefore I went through my stash of junk treasures, trying to come up with another idea. I picked a lot of different things, just to lay them aside pretty fast. Then there was this doll head that seemed to reappear on my working table consistently and all of a sudden told me that it wanted to be “steampunked”. I got hooked on that idea and took out my small collection of watch parts, some nuts and a tiny screw wrench. First I had to prepare the the box though. I painted it black and then put a layer of gesso on, letting some black and bits of the original box color showing through.
The doll head had a hole on top which inspired me to let something “grow” out of it and the first thing that came into my mind was a light bulb. I didn’t have such a small one that would have the typical shape but I had Christmas lights. I took one of those, removed the plastic part, cut off the lower glass end and filled it with tiniest watch parts I had. I added clear UTEE powder and heated it up with my heat gun, so that it would look like the parts are floating inside when cooled down. On top of it I put a screw. Unfortunately I couldn’t get any better pictures of it. I’m sorry!

I added snippets out of a vintage schoolbook for physics education, more watch parts


and this is the finished result


It had been lots of fun to participate in this challenge. Thank you, LISA for coming up with this great idea!
To see the amazing soap box creations of our our challenge hostess and the other participants please click
Have a wonderful week, dear friends!
Hugs,
Julia