Semi Hand Painted Cigar Box

Often time's inks don't work well on wood or a dark pre-painted surface. If you're as talented as I am there is no way you are ever going to be able to hand paint the same detail you could stamp.

I found a solution. I got an unfinished cigar box from the local cigar shop, did some light sanding, and even wore one corner down for a slightly different effect. I then base coated the whole box with a metallic silver acrylic paint. I followed that with a coat of charcoal paint. Next came cement gray acrylic. I completely covered the sanded down corner with this to give it a lighter effect than the rest of the box then I crushed up a paper towel blotted it into a pool of the cement colored paint and tapped it all over the top of the box. To give it the appearance of stone, or something like it. Because I was using a loaded wet paper towel it not only put paint down but also lifted some of the charcoal color as I went, this allowed flecks of silver to show through. Adding a few drops of charcoal to the cement color I used it at the corners and the edge of the sanded area for shading. I allowed for several hours of dry time between each successive step using the hanger method explained in my previous articles on cigar boxes.

I decided first that I would like to have corner decorations in each of the three level corners. I came up with a rubber stamp I thought would do nicely. I tried copper ink but it wasn't dark enough and too much of the black was showing through. I realized I would have to paint this area out. Using the stamped image as a guide for size and shape I used a brassy brown to fill in with a small brush. I tried the copper ink again. It still didn't show up. I came up with a Versa Mark pad and copper embossing powder. With the help of my heat gun I put the stamp on in the spot in the Versa Mark ink, shook the powder over and heated to a wonderful dimensional effect. It worked so great I decided to add some corner embellishment to the sides of the box using the same method. These were striking against the charcoal color! I was thrilled.

I rifled through the stamps again now that I had this new method and came up with a morning glory set I thought would be perfect climbing up the stone façade I had created. I grabbed my embossing powders and to my chagrin I didn't have any color combinations I could use to make this flower somewhat realistic. I did however have acrylic paint. I started with the coiled stem piece in a bright green and quickly realized why people didn't use rubber stamps for this. The image was spotty at best. I could see the outline of where it had been but the stamp had picked up the paint in the middle of the piece so I could see the background inside a faint green line. I grabbed my handy dandy fine bush, added a little water to thin out some of the same green paint and filled in the area. I then decided to free hand the rest of the major vines.

The stamp set I had chosen had a large background stamp for each element along with a smaller stamp to create dimension and detail. I started with the leaves. I lightened up the green a little and stamped them all over the place. This was as successful as the initial stem I tried but again I was able to see the outlines so it was easy to go back and paint over them. With the lighter green bases in various stages of drying I went right to my detail stamp. I was thrilled to discover that the now darker green I was using went on smoothly over the lighter base coat. I did the same thing with the flowers starting with a lighter blue, filling by hand and stamping the darker blue detail on. I used a small brush to make the sepals of the flower dabbing on an angle on each side of the trumpet and then connected them to the vines by dragging the brush along the path of what I thought the stem should be, this is how I ended up with the twisted effect for the vine. After everything was connected I went back in with a lighter shade of green and some white to highlight certain areas of the stems and leaves to add to the dimensional effect.

I added yellow centers to the flowers with the brush and white highlights around them as well. It still didn't seem to have enough depth so I went back with a mix of charcoal and cement paint watered down slightly for flow and dabbed it on under stems, leaves and flowers to add a shadow. I kept a paper towel close by and when I thought the color I had on the brush was not right for the area it was in I just soaked it up with the paper towel. Sometimes the resulting effect was perfect, sometimes I just remixed the color and painted over it.

Once it was done I added three coats of clear water-based acrylic. To clean the rubber stamps I quickly ran them under warm water and brushed them with a soft fingernail brush. I dried them with a hand towel and then left them out in the air to be sure they were completely dry before storing them. I plan to use the same stamps to create stationary to fill the box.