Assembled Boxes

After a huge studio clean out I realize that I still have to live to be about 1,000 years old to put a sizable dent in my accumulation of stuff. A stashbusting project beckons.

This project was inspired by the assemblage boxes of Joseph Cornell. His work has influenced more than one of us. Check out his art here.

This is more of a guide than a tutorial and I am breaking a blog promise I made to myself to only use materials that are widely available. I am assuming that most of you have drawers, closets or entire rooms of things and can follow along, improvising when necessary.

Materials:

small, shallow box (a cigar box is ideal)

old book

foam core board

hardware cloth

small brads

Mod Podge

Black spray paint

Goop glue

stuff!!!

Tools

paint brush

old credit card

tin snips or strong scissors

exacto knife

small hammer

Tear out the pages from an old book and using Mod Podge, glue the pages to the sides of the box (mine are old sewing machine drawers), lining one edge of the paper along the outside edge of the box and allowing the other edge to overlap onto the back. Measure the back of the box and cut out another piece. Glue in place. If you need to piece 2 sections together, tear the edges that abut each other as the feathered edges blend better than cut ones and the intersections don't show as much. Smooth in place with an old credit card. There may be some wrinkles but you can disguise them in subsequent layers or chalk them up to the handmade look.

I found that clip art illustrations made a more interesting background to work with. I was lucky that my book was full of clip art pages, but if you don't have this, cut out individual clip art and collage it to your background book pages.  The Graphics Fairy is a good source of clip art.  

The next step is to divide the space using book page covered foam core board cut into appropriate sizes and glued into place with hot glue. Vary the sizes of the sections for some added interest.

To vary the depths, I cut foam core board to fit a small section then wrapped it in an old map. I layered pieces of foam core scrap and glued them to the back of the selected section. My map-covered piece was then glued to the scraps making a shallower area to work with.

Look for items to fill the smaller sections. For me it was wooden spools of thread and small bottles. I downloaded labels from The Graphics Fairy here and glued them onto the bottles with Mod Podge. I punched out black butterflies using a Martha punch and glued them onto the old maps. Glue the heavier items with Goop.

Next, I cut out a piece of hardware cloth (that wire mesh available in any hardware store) to the size of one of the sections. Trim the piece so that no little points are sticking out and make it big enough so that you can attach it to either the wooden edges of the box or the foam core or both.  Spray paint the cloth black and using small brads, nail the hardware cloth to the edges of the section, capturing the cloth with the heads of the brads. (oops - put your items inside before you attach the cloth) I dipped the points of the brads in Goop before I stick them into the foam core to insure adhesion. I also held the brads with needle nose pliers while nailing them to save my fingers from hammer bashing.

Joseph Cornell filled many of his boxes with paper birds but I had some reproduction paper dolls in my stash and decided to use them. I cut out foam core in the approximate shape of the dolls (not an easy task) and glued the dolls to it, making sure that the board was smaller than the doll so that it was invisible. I then layered pieces of scrap foam board on the back of my dolls so that they could sit proud of the background. I glued the whole mess to the back of the box in the largest section. Tin bird pins were added for color.

Whew, 3 boxes down, eight million to go. Maybe then "Hoarders" won't find me and put me on their TV show.