Altered Matchbox for Altered Eclectics DT

Hi, today I'm sharing my first Design Team make for Altered Eclectics.  It is an altered matchbox that I made for a swap.

I started off with an everyday, kitchen sized matchbox.  Here's a little picture of it, you can just see that I was already sizing  up some paper alongside it.

I stayed with the butterfly papers to cover the matchbox, and inked them with a couple of distress inks.  Then I've added some lace tape to the edges of the top and sides.

The large flower is a Kusudama flower which is made using an Origami technique; I've used a different piece of designer paper from a co-ordinating collection for each segment of the flower; the centre is a Prima paper rose.  I've also lined the match tray inside and out with a paper, and added a little metal drawer handle.

The word band says 'Where there's a will, there's a way' (that was one of my mum's favourite sayings so I always think of her when I see it).  I wasn't completely happy with this at that stage, I knew it needed something else but I wasn't sure what.  I tried a few things, more flowers, cogs and things until I remembered some little bottle caps I got with images under resin on them.  I chose one of those, it still didn't look quite right on it's own, so I added a square piece of metal filigree under it, and that did the trick!  It was just the finishing touch it needed.

I'm really pleased with it, and hope that my swap partner is too :o)

Now I can't wait to see what all my new teamies have created over at Altered Eclectics, do pop over and have a look too.

Thanks for reading :o)
Steffi xx

I would like to enter this into the following challenge:

Challenge Up Your Life - Challenge 7 Box - here : http://challengeupyourlife.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/challenge-7-box.html#.VM1OgiusWSo