Painted bead box

This is a recent project and I was thinking of sharing a "how to" for it. But partway through the project I got really vexed with it so I'm not sure I'd recommend it. It's quite fiddly and fairly messy. On the other hand now that it's done I really love it, so maybe it's worth it after all.

I forgot to take a "before" picture, but it's basically a Bombay Company box made of rosewood and lined with a yucky black velveteen fabric. I found it at Goodwill for $4.99. I've never really liked it.

First of all I ripped out the old lining, and lightly sanded the box and then primed it. The outside is painted with latex paint leftover from the house painting I've been doing.

I wanted to line the box with fabric, so I glued it to paper using PVA glue, which you can find at art supply stores. Doing this makes the fabric easier to work with when you want to attach it to something else - a helpful technique for covering books as well. I paint the paper with glue then smooth the fabric over it.

Then I glued the fabric into the box. There are two pieces of wood that support the tray, so I covered those separately and then glued them in place. I used the old lining as a template to get the size just right, otherwise you need to do some careful measuring.

The picture at the top of this post shows the finished box before I added dividers in the tray. Some of them broke (there was wood inside the fabric) when I removed the old lining, but I didn't want all of them anyway. I added extra glue around the edges to secure the dividers in place. They need to be quite secure if you want to use the dividers to hold onto when lifting out the tray.

And this is the finished box. I put the supplies for my recent jewellery making inside so it's nice to have that organized. Redoing this box was a lot of work in the end, but I love it now!