A box of greenery

When I gave my reindeer-themed donation box to my friend as a Christmas present, I couldn't help but get my hands on his old box that was falling apart already. I knew I would one day recycle it into something useful, but somehow, the day never came. 
For one part, I never really took the time to start crafting, and for the other, even if I had a spare moment, I just couldn't get myself into crafting mood for some strange reason - a fact that can be easily confirmed by my recent blog inactivity. 
Anyway, the box in my storage was still waiting for my attention until I've found some bright coloured jungle napkins which I thought might go with what I had in mind. But what did I have in mind actually? Not much, to be honest. The only thing I knew for sure was that I'd have to use darker colours this time due to ink stains in the wood. And as I've finally settled for a dark brown interior, I thought the jungle napkin with some brown accents might complement it nicely.

After removing the clasps and some proper sanding, the exerior of the box looked much better, however, I decided to stick with the dark brown for the inside as those stains just wouldn't go away.

Once the interior was done in a way that covered all but one nasty black ink spot, I painted the outside of the box white in order to cover it with the napkin once the paint was dry. 

Unlike my usual gluing of pedantically cut out details, however, I decided to go for the full napkin this time. Because, obviously, one wouldn't be able to cut things out from this vivid pattern, and maybe even because after a while of inactivity, I needed a crafting challenge. 
To prevent desaster with tearing and wrinkles, I actually started my project by watching a couple of youtube tutorials. Turns out I'm far from the masterpieces that some can create using napkin decoupage, but apart from a tear in one of the corners I actually managed to finish my piece without major incidents. No major wrinkles either.

Since I've thrown away the old worthless clasps, I now had two options with my box bottom and lid: use them as they are (two individual boxes for open storage) or dismantle another box in my stash to re-use its clasps. Obviously, the other box would then be without clasps, too... 

Long story short told, I found a box that would be quite useful without its lid, and screwed its clasps on my little jungle box.

In the end, I'm not sure what will be hiding under the foliage, or even if I'll keep the box at all. I do like it somehow, but maybe there's just a little too much jungle? On the other hand, I'm still not quite through with cleaning up my room and among the things that need to be tidied up, there might as well be some items that will need a storage place.

Peekaboo. I've never worked with so much colour on the inside, but I might use this approach in my future projects as it really gives an interesting "extra".

A little contribution to the August collection of Create in Austria - artwork created by Austrians and/or in Austria.

Another kind of greenery - a strip of nature reserve by the Vrbsko jezero/Wörthersee...

... and a lovely swan family on their morning swim.

Not as elegant as mom yet, but working on it :)

challenges:
- 4 crafty chicks: ATG
- 613 avenue create: ATG
- a bit more time to craft: ATG
- crafting with an attitude: ATG
- crafty gals corner: tropical colours
- crafty sentiments: ATG
- creative moments: ATG
- friendship challenge: ATG
- kreativtanten: summer
- love to craft: ATG 
- pile it on: new technique (napkin decoupage with whole napkins)
- scrapping4fun: ATG
- through the craftroom door: ATG
- wortartwednesday: ATG