Turn a Plain Unfinished Wooden Book/box Into an Antique Looking Book
I needed a gift for my nephew's baptism, so I decided to make him a keepsake box with a book/box I bought at Michaels.
My friend Mary came over to help me since she is the expert with the rust/patina products. You can get these on Amazon: Modern Masters Metal Effects Iron Paint and Rust Activator Kit.
There is an order of how you use these. You first paint with the Iron paint. I had a wooden cutout cross and I found a little wooden mirror frame (for tiny houses).
We disassembled the box so that the hardware wouldn't get damaged from the rust. We painted the lid, the box and the individual decorative pieces first. Let it dry.
I then painted the bottom of the box with an acrylic aqua/turquoise color to mimic the patina.
Then came the copper paint which had to be wet for the next step...
You spray the activator which will cause the paint to rust and patina will start to apear.
After several minutes, you can start to see the reaction. It is so cool how this happens and how it takes on a design of its own.
We let it all dry and moved on to the smaller pieces.
Since I wanted the color to be on the box and just rust on the small pieces, we used a different reactor.
I had bought letters to put on the side to "customize it".
The next day the colors had come out beautifully and I proceeded to glue on the small pieces, including 4 metal corner edges.
For the inside, I just painted it with acrylic and then added a nice soft fabric liner.
I then added the hardware and here is the finished piece. I must say it came out better than I expected and the family loved it.
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