Cigar Box Project

The "offshoot" group from my Artful Journaling class (we call it "Artful Adventurers") got together recently to alter and embellish cigar boxes. I couldn't attend the session, but worked on mine at home. I tried to give it a bit of an Asian flair so I could display it in my family room with some decorative items from China. I decoupaged scrapbook paper onto the top, painted the rest of the box with acryclic paints, and embellished it with Asian-style jewelry components I had left from my jewelry-crafting days. The "feet" are goldtone beads antiqued with some black ink to dull them a little. I let the original cigar box printing show a little through the paint, and left the inside mostly unfinished because I liked the look of the bare wood.

The box sits comfortably on a dark red table, in front of three embroidered Chinese folk-art embroidered pictures that we bought in Shanghai, and next to the small terra cotta warrior reproduction figures Ryan sent us from China while he was there.