Dora's Box

Dora's box is the art side of the project I've been working on for the past couple of days for an upcoming RR in one of my art groups. The box is accompanied by a story prompt that tells why we meet the people who are most important to us in this lifetime and how those meetings are set up.

The box is a cardboard cigar box. I needed something light, because the project will travel across the Atlantic and back again as it runs its course.

The red strips are corrugated paper covered with gesso and colored with chalk inks. The starfish is a plastic toy rubbed with gold Rub 'n Buff. The photo (Dora) is part of a cabinet card I printed out on transparency film, and the 3D frame is a scrap of foam core board covered in paper. The inside of the box is covered with scraps of old book pages, ledger, etc.

I then made a simple loose leaf journal to fit the box. The cover is card covered with wallpaper. I rubbed the covers with Ranger Distress Ink (Tattered Rose), to age them a little, and stamped seashells on top. I finished the covers off with a little of the corrugated edging, too.

The filling is a collection of loose sheets of watercolour paper (190g/m2) cut to size and pockets made of wallpaper scraps. The idea was to recreate the kind of thing a young girl would do with leftovers in an age in which children were not provided with off the shelf materials--an age in which no one had off the shelf art materials, in fact. The binding is simply torn strips of cheap red silk poked through five sets of holes. It's beautifully shabby, if I may say so. In fact, I think I'll make some more of these in large for myself.

One of the pockets contains a small articulated paper doll (not Dora) which is central to the story. You can just see her poking out.