Spring wooden box / Cutie de lemn ornata de primavara

Hello all,

For today's post I prepared my latest wooden box project. Actually it is a special order for a friend. She asked for a box that would have on the lid the biggest possible red flower...very red in fact...:)

So, I started by making the center flower from handmade paper. For the petals, I used the peony template from Martha Stewart's website.

The tough part was to obtain the bright red I needed...I started with am mate red acrylic paint which became orange when diluted with water...:D. So, after the petal dried, I colored them one by one, on both sides, with a red aquarelle pencil. After this new coat of paint dried again, I still hadn't  the red I wanted, so I applied one last coat of food dye. The making of this flower took me a week in total.

I used punches for the rest of the flowers, so they were a lot easier to make. To color the cream and yellow ones I used chalks.
Here are some photos with details of the box:

 For the sides I used a Sizzix die cut to make the arabesque template (you have here just the front view of the box).

Finally, I sprayed the flowers with a matte varnish so they last longer with respect to their shape and color as time passes.

I hope my friend will like the final result...:)