How to fit a whole world into a suitcase – by Asia King

Hello Stampendous friends – BlogStar Asia King here. Today I am taking you for for a trip around the world. And all you need is one suitcase :). So hold on tight and enjoy the journey!

To start you will need: 3-4 mm thick foam board, PVA glue and glue brush, pencil, craft knife, metal ruler, white tissue paper, acrylic paints (turquoise shades and gold), heat gun and the Encrusted Jewel Kit – Turquoise.  (for our US Customers, The Turquoise kit will be available on our website in April, currently you can do this in Blue, Pink, or Purple)

To make the suitcase follow the tutorial that you can find here. Instead of covering the boxes with paper I used tissue, crinkling it gently while I was gluing along, to add texture. Allow the glue to dry. Next, paint the outside of the boxes with turquoise acrylic paints. When dry, gently dry brush some gold paint over the creases to highlight them. Next, randomly swipe some embossing ink over the surface and sprinkle some Aged Teal Embossing Enamel. Heat set the powders with your heat gun.

TIP: when heating the powders keep the heat gun far enough to avoid overheating as this may cause the foam board to bubble up. Unless you like the ‘popcorn’ like texture :).

To line the inside of the boxes I used some old textured wall paper but you can use any patterned paper.

Next, using an embossing ink stamp the Old World Map, Suitcase World, Beautiful Life, Ruffled Bloom and Fresh Bloom onto pearlescent cardstock/paper. Cover the images with the powders from the Detail Basic Embossing Kit and heat emboss.

Now colour the images with Inktense (or water colour) pencils by picking the colour from the tip of the pencil with a water brush. The pearlescent card will allow the colours to blend and layer easily. When done, heat it shortly with the heat gun to set the pigments.

Trim the stamped panels to size and matt with black cardstock. Fussy cut the blooms and burnish in circular motion the underside of the petals using a spoon over a foam/mouse pad. This will give your flowers more dimension.

To adorn the centres of the flowers and the suitcase compartments use a selection of pretty brads, Teal Mica Flakes, Teal Colour Fragments and Champagne Crushed Glass Glitter. Just add generous layers and blobs of Beacon’s 3-in-1 Advanced Craft Glue and sprinkle your sparkly jewels over the glue. Set aside to dry.

Adhere your flowers and stamped panels within the compartments using glue, foam pads or Action Wobbles. Cut some hinges, keys and the lock plate from Tim Holtz Hardware Findings die and PaperArtsy Harware #1 and heat emboss with Shabby White and Aged Teal Embossing Enamels.

Adhere the hinges to the back of the suitcase and embellish the top with the embossed keys.

Cut a couple of panels from brown cardstock, one for the handle and one for the lock panel. Emboss the cards with Sizzix Texture Fades Cracked set, swipe with embossing ink and heat emboss with detail clear embossing powder. This will create a faux leather effect for your suitcase trims.

Attach the trims to the box using brads and glue. Embellish your suitcase further with additional elements if you so wish :).

The links above will direct you to our favourite UK’s retailer for Stampendous products – The Stamp Man. But don’t forget that you can also browse and shop for all the lovely goodies directly on the Stampendous website.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip :). I have to say I really love this selection of the stamps and the Suitcase World sentiment is simply fabulous. If you could pack your suitcase tomorrow and start your travels around the world, what would be your first place you’d like to visit?

Let me know in the comment below – let’s see how far our imagination goes!

And if you’d like to see some additional close up pictures, please visit my blog here and let me know you’ve been so I can visit you back!

Big hugs

Asia