Travel Keepsake Box

I picked up this old handmade plywood box at a yard sale for $1.00 last week.

What to do.....

Well, how about a keepsake box?  Hold pictures and postcards and misc travel memorabilia. Why not?  I started by using a liquid distress stain in Walnut, just to darken the wood.  I'm lazy and didn't want to take off the hardware, so I discovered that a Q-Tip worked nicely for getting the stain into small places. Turned out like this.

I then tore up several pieces of travel-themed scrapbooking paper and used a brush on Distress Ink in Antique Linen to age the paper a bit.  Then I used Modge podge to glue the papers to the interior of the box.

For the embellishment on top, I used a journaling card with an old fashioned print on it, and aged the edges using Distress Ink in Vintage Photo. I punched a whole in the upper corner of the paper and tied a piece of rafia through it after sliding a small rusted star onto it, and then just tied it in a bow. I affixed it to the top of the box using glue dots.

And the end result