1. I am broke. Yesterday my health savings account did not have enough funds to pay for a routine maintenance visit. I had to say an unexpected goodbye to $140. Today is not the day for random Halloween shopping.
2. It is still hot here. I kept hoping that since the daily highs are no longer above ninety degrees Farenheit that it will actually be pleasant to be outside more of the day. When I attempted stepping out in the eight-eight degree day, it felt Very Bad ™: not a good time to take a random photography ramble.
3. Solo adventuring is harder. My dearest love has to write a book. The deadlines are looming. This has a recurring limitation since the book's inception. The thing about a book project is that the author has to research, write, and edit every single page. I am learning a lot about entertaining myself (and I thought I was good before).
After failing to enjoy even thirty seconds of the great outdoors I returned home to my craft closet. Fall is a good time for crafting and I usually want to do about forty more craft projects a month than I have time to do. A quick rummage revealed two things. 1. My craft closet is a total disastermess. 2. Ooh, I have lots of cool stuff to play with!
What inspired me first was a random rescue from my hometown. When my dad bought a ramshackle house next door to his (for a price that is so low I would probably be assassinated by the cheapness Black Ops team for revealing it on the Internets) it was not entirely devoid of random junk. I found kinda neat looking beat up and very dirty old box. When I picked it up, I had the idea that I would send it to my artist friend up [http://brokenumbrella.com] in Pennsylvania so she could cannibalize it into a shadow box or who knows what. I am probably a bad friend for not yet sending it, but when it is still being squished between needle felting supplies and a box of my grandma's vintage wrapping papers, it is time to be re-rescued and finally crafted.
The box looked grim. At once point it had been a lovely stationary or jewelry box made of heavy cardboard but covered in a thin embossed leather-like paper in darkened mint and gold. Many types and colors of dirt, dust, and crust were clinging to it. I saw one scraped area and one set of small punctures right on top of the liftable lid. I had to see what would come off through a few rounds of gentle cleaning with some canned air, one wet cloth and one dry cloth.
Here's where it stands at this point. A lot cleaner, but still with some tricky repair issues.
I'm stopping temporarily at this point. After doing a bit of research on how people have fixed and re-lined various jewelry boxes in the past, it becomes clear that I have too many jobs and too many options to plunge ahead with no plan. Here's what I have to decide.
1. How do I fix the loosening of the paper on the back of the box? This paper layer holds the lid on and is currently tucked in too beautifully at the bottom to simply cut and re-affix entirely. I need to glue what is loose without taking apart to much of what isn't broken.
2. How much of the lid damage do I want to hide? I can either simply add on a new beautiful complete layer to the top and hide the punctures and abrasions but also the pretty patina of color and embossing, or I can go for a more collage look.
3. What will be the new destiny of this box? What purpose? What aesthetic?
Time for lunch and thinking and work. The next installment will hopefully answer some of these questions.
