Hand Painted Wedding Card Box from Frozen Treasure Chest - Tutorial

This is a Frozen cardboard treasure chest that I painted into a custom card box for my wedding.

I have a Fall-themed wedding so these colours will fit right in.  Also, this image matches my wedding card image perfectly.

If the back of the box faces the guests on the sign-in table (so that the receptionists can put the cards in), then you would see this lovely heart-shaped leaf branch with falling leaves.

I needed a cardbox for my wedding that could close securely, was big enough for cards (but not TOO big), was easy to lug around, and that looked great.  Ideally, I wanted it to match my wedding decor.  I looked at lots of different boxes for sale online, but nothing really matched.  

However, one day, I found this nifty cardboard treasure chest for sale at Michaels.  It's a Frozen-themed Anna box and it's the perfect size.  I think it was about $15 after a discount coupon.  However, I didn't want Anna being the star of the wedding.  The solution was to cover the box Modge-Podge style or to re-paint it.  I chose to repaint mine over only some of the box images.

If you want to know how to do something similar for your wedding.  Here's how I repainted my box.

Materials needed

- acrylic paint

- watercolour paint

- clear, glossy outdoor sealant

- paint brushes

- water and container

- painting palette

- black sharpie markers

Before you begin, protect the cord straps.  Open the box, and pull them into the box.

Use small strips of paper to wrap around the cords.  Tape the paper closed.  Pull/stuff the paper into the holes so that the exposed cord is completely covered. 

Grab a reference image and have it handy beside you.  I printed out an enlarged image of my wedding card image and had an extra copy of my wedding cards beside me.  

Use a black sharpie marker to start drawing your image onto the box.  You may find that your sharpie marker doesn't like the coating of the box and may die out quickly.  So have a few extra markers handy.

Make sure to cover up all the images on the box that you don't want - sorry, Anna! 

Make sure to extend your image all over the box so that your guests will have something to look at from all angles.  Or you may want to do this for your own enjoyment since you can use the box for something else later on.  Maybe to keep your wedding trinkets! 

When you are finished drawing, you are ready to start painting! 

I did not have a lot of acrylic paint available, but I did happen to have all of my old watercolour paints from elementary school!  Because of this, I was able to mix acrylic paint with watercolour paint (and water) in order to get all the colours that I wanted.  The most important acrylic colours for me were white, red, and gold.  I mixed red paint with red watercolour paints to get different shades of red, and I mixed white with orange and yellow to get the different shades of yellow and orange.  It is important to mix acrylic paint with the watercolour because watercolour by itself is too transparent to cover the images on the box well.  Also, acrylic paint sticks onto surfaces better. 

I filled in all the darkest red areas first. 

Then I painted in my orange and yellow areas. 

As the first areas dried, I added on additional layers of paint to make it more opaque. 

I started to create a gradient on some of leaves so the bottom tips were yellow and blended up into orange and red at the tops. 

More blending 

Smoothing out the blending.  At this point, I let the whole thing dry through dinner.  Before I went to bed, I painted over the images with glossy sealant.  Be very careful when you paint the sealant.  The paint may rip off if you paint over areas repetitively or with too hard pressure.  Use a soft flat brush and paint a generous coat of sealant in smooth, gentle single strokes.  Get rid of bubbles by blowing on them so they pop.

The next day, I painted over the entire image again.  You can see that the colours are now much brighter because it is layered over the original paint layer.  The sealant you painted on the night before will hold the original layer in place so that it doesn't rip off when you paint onto it. 

I added highlight spots onto each leaf, and used a sharpie marker to darken up all the lines that were either too light before, or accidentally got painted over. 

I let it dry again over dinner and painted a glossy sealant over the paint before I went to bed. 

Next morning, I'm ready to paint the tree details. 

I used pure gold acrylic paint for the heart with M+V and mixed acrylic gold paint with brown watercolour paint to create more subtle gold highlights on the bark.  As you can see, the end result is quite pleasing. Finally, I mixed red acrylic paint with purple to get a very similar colour to the box and painted over any bits of Anna still remaining on the box around the tree and elsewhere on the box.  I chose to leave "Radiant Heart" on my box.  It seemed to fit in okay with a wedding theme.

Touch up any other paint areas on your image, darken the sharpie lines as needed, and then coat the box with sealant again.  Dry and then re-coat as needed to get a nice, glossy surface all over the box.

My box is done now, and I like it very much.  I hope you will be happy with your card box too if you are making one!

Good luck, and Happy Wedding Planning!

Update: Some of the paint started to flake off when the temperature changed when we took it outside to the wedding venue.  In hindsight, I should have primed the surface of the box using fine sandpaper to make the surface rough so that paint would adhere more securely to it.  Most of the paint stayed on so it I was able to cover any bad areas with a glued on paper leaf just before the wedding - phewf!

DIY Fall Leaves Tutorial

Here's a tutorial for how to make realistic Fall leaves for decoration.

You will need the following supplies:

Cardstock paper in Fall colours

Black Tea

Watercolour paints

Pencil crayons

White chalk pencil

Scissors

Tissues

First, cut Fall leaf shapes out of your cardstock paper.  I used a Silhouette Cameo paper cutting machine to cut mine.  If you need these shapes, you can contact me through my store to order some.  Otherwise, just use a scissor or edging scissors to cut out more simple leaf shapes.

As you can see, you can use different colours of cardstock paper.  The ones with a mottled or textured design (not texture of paper) tend to work best as the design will show through the paint later on.

Rich colours are nice.

Next, make some really, really dark tea.  Use very little water so that it is murky.  Use this murky water plus dark brown watercolour paint to paint an outline around each leaf.  I used a Q-tip to do this.  

Note:  The tip of the Q-tip will get all loose and droopy, but that helps with drawing into tight corners.  If it starts to get annoying, just use a new Q-tip or pull off the loose end.

Now rinse off the Q-tip in the tea, and use just the tea to blend the outline so that it is a soft blur towards the middle of the leaf.

The goal is to create a shaded outline that helps the leaf pop out from the other leaves.  Plus it helps the leaf look like the edges are starting to wilt.

Bunch up tissues to use for sponge painting.  Use the tea as the water if you want darker leaves, or use regular water in a low tray.

Use water colour paint to create some colour in different areas on your leaves.  For example, put red around the tips and yellow in the center, or green in the middle and yellow on the edges.  

Take your white chalk pencil and draw veins on your leaf.  

Tip:  You can also use a bright yellow pencil crayon.  Also try some variations with green pencil crayon and brown pencil crayon to create different kinds of leaves.

 In this example, add yellow pencil crayon towards the middle portion of the leaf. You don't need/want to colour right to the center line.  So do it roughly and colour in the direction of the veins.

 Take an orange pencil crayon and colour roughly over the leaf.  Press a little harder around the veins or in corners towards the middle so that it makes the veins pop out a little more.

Take a green pencil crayon and look for any areas where you already have some slightly darker patches from the paper design or the shading around the edge was a bit darker.  Add patches of green colour to make it look like slight changes in colour on the leaf.  

Real leaves are not perfect, they have blemishes and spots.  So feel free to add some random patches of colour, dots, etc.  Colour the stem parts too.

Depending on how vivid you want your leaf colours, Add brighter colours to different sections of your leaves.

Now create some dimension!  Crease your leaves where you have drawn big veins so that the veins are indented and the leaf edges curl towards you.  

A good way to do this is to put your thumb nail where the vein is, and to use your other hand to press the other side of the leaf towards your thumb nail.

You can crease just the middle vein, if you want. 

 Or crease all of the main veins for a very curved and realistic leaf.  

 You can pinch the tips of pointer leaves to give them a more curled up look, purposely bend the tip of leaf in the direction it's bending already, etc.  

 I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

See this other blog post for ideas on how to use the leaves as wall decor.

If you would like to purchase these leaves pre-made or just to get the leaf shapes, contact me through my store.

Watercolour Place Card Ideas

Here are some great ideas for using watercolor paintings as place cards.  These are taken from https://www.etsy.com/shop/jenAitchison