New Technique for Crackle Painting

I love designing decorative boxes, but I can't get enough free cigar boxes to keep this habit/hobby going. So off I went to Michaels and found cute little white shiny cardboard boxes for $.99!

I have 3 boxes and decided to try something different, although I still wanted the crackle look. I decided to skip the white basecoat and applied the crackle medium directly to the white shiny box with a sponge brush and let it dry. Then again using the sponge brush I applied the contrasting acrylic topcoat (blue). The color crackles as it dries, but not so much as when I painted the other boxes with white first. I think it worked enough to make an attractive surface to use of these inexpensive boxes.














 Also since this box is small and short, instead of Tim Holtz feet I bought and painted wooden plugs from Michaels which were on clearance and glued the to the bottom of the box with E6000. My hubby drilled a hole at the top of the box and I used the smallest of Tim's curio knob as the pull to this lovely mini box. I embellished the top with flowers and a butterfly.

Wanting more of the crackle look, but not willing to paint white over a white box, I tried two more boxes. With the pink box I tried doing a few more strokes backward with a dry brush and it did add more crackle, but for the green box I used a wet paint sponge brush and painted in the opposite direction all around the outside of the box, while the green topcoat was still wet. This technique added enough crackle to have a similar look to my original mini cigar box, which I had painted white as a basecoat!

Of the 3 small boxes from Michaels the green has the best crackle effect, but all are pretty nice!