Safari Suitcase

 Faith sent me a lovely suitcase to decorate this month,  I have gone in a very different direction from what I normally do for this project.  Check out the fabulous kits at Faith's on line shop Faith Pocock Craft Studio.

Here is the blank kit assembled.

The lid on this kit fits very tightly over the base so I used ink around the areas where the lid overlaps the base rather than paint which would have stopped the lid from closing properly.

I used wallpaper and wallpaper borders to cover this project.  

Firstly I covered the inside edges of the suitcase with the dark leopard print paper, taking care not to cover the tabs.

I then assembled the bottom and the sides.  Because I was not going to use this as a suitcase and I wanted it to sit on a desk or dresser I added four door wooden knobs to the bottom of the case as feet,  I marked where they were going to sit and screwed them on to the base, after painting the feet with black acrylic paint..

I marked where the sides of the lid came down to on he sides. I then inked the top part of the sides and glued the pale border paper over the remainder of the sides. 

I cut the brown strips off the top and bottom of the border and glued these around the base and the sides of the lid.

I inked the handle with vintagre photo distress ink and then I covered the handle with twine.  The pieces on either side of the handle were also inked to look like leather and I glued small circles around the edges to make it look like rivets.

I then covered the inside of the suitcase and the inside and outside of the lid and the inner border with leopard wallpaper.  I cut out the lion, leopard, and tiger heads from the wallpaper border and glued them to the outside and the inside of the lid.

 

To make this project extra special I then covered the lid with clear coat resin which has given it a wonderful depth and shine that looks amazing and is hard to capture with the camera. 

I am pretty pleased with how this turned out and I encourage everyone to check out Faith's kits and let your imagination take flight.