Travel keepsake box

This summer one of my neighbors, Nancy, asked me to make her a keepsake box for her boyfriend. He’d been keeping the mementos of their travels in a shoe box, and she wanted him to have something special to keep them in. Nancy provided me with the wooden box and also gave me some nice paper and travel themed embellishments she’d been saving. After playing around with some ideas, I decided I wanted to go with a worn leather luggage look, and Nancy loved the idea!

For the lid, I folded over  and stitched the edges to make it look like sewn together leather. For the photo, I used a trick I learned at a Creating Keepsakes convention…to ink the photo…which gives it a nice aged look, and helps it coordinate with the box. In fact, everything on this box is generously distressed with a sanding block and inked edges.

For the sides of the box, I used some nice handmade paper that had little leaves and flowers in it.

Inside the box I glued lots of pieces of Stampin’ Up!’s First Edition DSP.

And I covered the whole thing with Mod Podge to protect it and after it dried attached the travel embellishments.

I made this so long ago (June!) that I’ve forgotten what ink colors I used to distress the paper and what brands of embellishments I used. Bad blogger!