Pirate chestFashion Easter

Easy peasy tutorial on making over the inside of a pirate chest. You can view the Faux leather tutorial I did on the outside of this pirate chest here.

The supplies: a map, some glue, scraps of paper, scissors & paint. Also, if you wanting to make an embossing on the inside lid your going to be needing a stencil and some joint compound-- oh and some spray adhesive.
I pulled out the perfectly good black velvet fabric out of the trunk I just made over with the faux leather treatment.

With the inside bare, I made a paper template for the sides, bottom and top of the trunk-- cutting a smidge bigger on each piece. It is so much easier to cut away extra than to have to recut a whole new piece if its to little. Once all the pieces were cut I dry fitted the pieces just to make sure everything was cut just right.... then I got out my map paper. The map paper I am using is actually from a roll of wall paper that I picked up from a thrift store for .95cents. You can use a regular map that you find in your glove box as well.

Lay your paper templates of each piece onto the map, keeping in mind that your wanting your cut map pieces to be "right reading" not upside down or cock-eyed. (unless thats the look your wanting) Once all your map pieces are cut...just glue them into place inside your chest. You can use regular cheapie glue or use Modge podge. I always have to trim away my paper as I cut everything larger...so to get a super clean edge on your map -- let it dry-- then trim away any excess paper with a razor. (I think this is why I always have so many projects that I work on at one time, I don't like to WAIT) Anywho...Now, the fun part. Distressing and aging the inside of your pirate chest. I use several different colors of brown and black paint to age the seams and edges of the trunk & lid. I apply the black to the very seam of each inside piece and then the brown fades out into the trunk getting lighter and lighter~

Once it is looking aged, the next step is to add some depth to the trunk. (this is in keeping with my philosophe of "more is better") I of course pulled out my trusty joint compound! I adhered a small stencil to the lid with spray adhesive (the lid is bowed and wouldn't let the stencil lay flat) I applied the joint compound to make the embossing. I turned the trunk over to make it easier to work on.

Next, I globbed a bunch of joint compound onto the stencil. Seeing how it is a curved lid, I couldn't use a putty knife...so I used my finger to spread out the joint compound evenly over the stencil.

Next, I pulled up the stencil. At this stage I used a pencil to add more detail to the embossed area. I just pushed & pulled the joint compound to fill in some areas... and pressed deeper to take some of the joint compound away from other areas. Here is a photo of the skull with the stencil removed and after I had worked my pencil magic on it lol.

Once dry, I went over the raised area with a base coat of brown paint.

Then I just kept adding browns & some black until I liked it. Once it was all dry, I dipped my finger tip in a light brown paint and went over the raised skull design to give it more depth. Now it looks like its a piece of carved wood on the lid.

I then measured and cut a piece of burlap fabric to fit inside the lid of my pirate chest. I used a pin to pull up some of the threads to make it look old and worn. I then used my sewing machine and zig-zagged around every edge to keep it from fraying in the future once I attached it to the trunk.