Retro business-card boxes

The last creation of 2011 I wished to publish earlier but I went for vacation to the Netherlands. Now I'm back with mind full of new ideas and I already announce a new kind of jewelry which will be presented very soon! Meanwhile - as I mentioned in my previous post - I start with Hipstamatic photography and decided to use it with my handicraft creations...

For the very first attempt I present the-end-of-the-year retro business-card boxes made using decoupage technique, shabby-chic and crackle. For those I used two famous classic portraits: the blue one is the portrait of Princess Marie Adelaide of France by (probably) Perronneau. The red one is the portrait of Lucretia Panciatichi by Agnolo di Cosimo (Bronzino):

The entire surface has been painted with black enamel paint and then varnished to the high gloss. Then it has been aged with shabby-chic technique and varnished again.

Boxes are painted inside using rosewood stain and aged with shabby-chic technique. Both classic paintings have been printed over a regular ink office printer and preserved against any externals. Then they've been treated with 2-step crackle sottile liquid and left for 48 hours to dry. Next step was rubbing porporina powder into visible cracks and preserving it all with a polyurethane glossy varnish.

It was a lot of work but it was definately worth it :)))