story box for mom

I

Hello Hello
How are you my friends? Taking each day one at a time I hope and spending a moment here and there to thank Mother Earth and Father Time for their very important role in each of our lives. 

For today I want to share something I did earlier this year for my mother-in-law...I call this a story box. My thoughts behind this project are multifaceted as well as the steps to create it.

It starts with a story... 
My mother-in-law is a middle child and her and her older sister are very close, they lost their baby brother while he was still at a youthful age and therefore learned very quickly how much family and time truly mean.
I wonder at times did his family know him, did they have the chance to hear his stories, his thoughts, his beliefs...

I struggle myself with telling my story, it seems unimportant yet daunting. But I still strongly believe that someday I should write it down, maybe not so much as an autobiography-no nothing to that extent-but perhaps bits and pieces here and there.
 So there you have my idea brought to life, a place to jot down those bits and pieces as they come.
Because I feel this is an 'in the moment' type of documentation I did not make any prompts as I have in the past with similar projects because I wanted this to be completely random.

What I did instead was create some tabbed sections to just give direction, so one section is family, one is friends, one is even labeled dreams. Although I didn't want specific prompts I did want my mom to have some ideas as to what to include in her story box. Not only are our stories comprised of family and friends but many of our stories include dreams or goals that we've either accomplished or forgotten about altogether and so we can use those as a jumping off points.

As for the box it's self I used a die from Sizzix here to cut my box from a heavy chipboard then I covered both pieces with white Gesso and continued on with several stencils and texture paste. Once I had the foundation established I adhered the box together. 

After the box was completely set and the texture paste dry I moved onto embellishing the sides and the top. I used several items including paper die cuts, wood veneer, crochet trim and metal charms. After I added the second coat of white Gesso I picked out a few spray mists and set to give it some color.

Since my mother-in-law has a Spring birthday I went with a Spring color theme and well I know for a fact that she likes the bright brilliant colors. Besides she fits the color theme very well, she is a very generous and bubbly personality so it fits her.

For the final piece I did add in a pen so that she could keep it with the box, that way when the story comes to her she doesn't have to worry about searching for something to write it down with.

I think now after having made this piece and then several others along the same line, this has become my favorite type of project: some sort of home decor that also includes ways to document our life, our story. I think that it's very important to share who we are with those we love no matter how scary or vulnerable we feel, if they truly care about us then they will accept us exactly as we are.
Don't you agree?

Thanks for stopping in, I hope you are inspired in some way to be creative - be yourself - tell your own story. 
You are worth it!  
just B