Pretty in Pieces

If you’re anything like me then you hang onto things, seemingly useless and insignificant things, as a means to ‘remember’ each moment. The problem comes in when you realize you have mountains of memories and no place to keep them. Enter the memory box.  So, a year after returning from my trip to Greece, I finally completed a memory box for all of my keepsakes. 

This was (obviously) inspired by Pinterest. I first saw this pin over a year ago and knew I had to create one for myself. The pin itself redirects to a 404 page not found error, but it’s a simple enough process. If I can do it, anyone can.

My supplies: a box, various paintbrushes, paint, painter’s tape, and stencils. Not pictured: my cat who loved chewing on said tape.

I started off by placing painter’s tape on the inside edges. I didn’t want to risk paint getting in between the top and bottom making it stick shut. Was this necessary? Maybe, maybe not. But I didn’t want to risk finding out the hard way.

Next up: about a million coats of bright blue paint. I picked this color because it just screamed ‘Greece’ to me. I also chose to use a satin finish paint in the hopes that it would leave a glossy finish. It didn’t end up quite as glossy as I had envisioned but I’m ok with it.

Now for the stencils. I outlined each letter with pencil before going over it with white paint. I also used painter’s tape to keep the box closed while I propped it up to work on the letters.

Halfway through this project I came up with the idea of tracing a map of Greece on the inside of the lid. This involved me doing a Google search and printing out the best outline I could find, carefully creating a makeshift stencil on scrap paper, outlining everything, and going over it with a black paint pen.

 

Tada! My box is complete and ready for as many memories I can make fit in it. Thanks for reading!

~xo~

Rachel