craftgrrl | Pocket-size treasure chest

One of my favorite crafts is covering tins with Sculpey. I find it incredibly addictive, and the possibilities are truly endless. However, I rarely come up with anything to put on the inside of these tins, until this time.

This tin is about the size of an Altoids tin (I found blank tins of several sizes at www.polymerclayexpress.com) and I’ve covered it with Sculpey. I stamped the top of the tin with a pretty vine pattern, and I’ll probably highlight that part with rub ‘n buff at some point. I used a clay extruder to create the more-or-less uniform ropes around the top and bottom.

I am most proud of the inside, though, and it took a lot of trial and error to get it right. I got these tiny glass bottles at a rubber stamp convention for use in altered books but I thought they’d make perfect treasures to go in little tin shrines. I took some 3/4 inch foam and cut it to the size of the tin, then traced around the bottle and cut out a hollow in the foam for it to rest in. Then I placed a piece of velvet over the foam, and pressed the bottle into the hollow. Since I used panne stretch velvet, this worked well while staying roughly smooth on top of the foam, however, this did not last when I tried to glue the velvet to the foam. So, I got out my trusty friend: fusible interfacing! I love this stuff. I find it so useful. I cut the interfacing a bit larger than the foam insert, and cut out the hole where the bottle would go. Then I put the interfacing down on the foam, put the velvet on the interfacing, and pressed the bottle into the hole, then ironed right over the bottle and foam to get the interfacing to stick to the velvet and keep it from stretching all over the place. This also prevented the glue from soaking through to ruin the pile of the velvet. I also cut another piece of velvet backed with interfacing to glue to the roof of the tin.