Mad Hatter Book Box for The Altered Alice CHAPTER 8

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The Hatter shook his head mournfully. `Not I!' he replied. `We quarrelled last March--just before HE went mad, you know--' (pointing with his tea spoon at the March Hare,)
`--it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing 
"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!"
You know the song, perhaps?' 
`I've heard something like it,' said Alice. 
`It goes on, you know,' the Hatter continued, `in this way:-- 
"Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle--"'
-- Chapter 7, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Here at The Altered Alice we celebrate Mad Hatter's Day twice a year as the date is taken from the price on his hat - ten shillings and a sixpence or 10/6. That means it is on October 6 here in the United States, and on June 10 in the United Kingdom. But mainly it is just a great reason to party with the Mad Hatter twice a year! Your challenge is to celebrate the Mad Hatter, and as OPTIONS you can use something that twinkles or shines AND/OR you can bring some spookiness into it since we are all having a "Twinkle twinkle little bat" sing-along around our mad tea table!


Our prize this month is an A5 sized unmounted stamp set from IndigoBlu (a £13 value), or an equivalent amount of A6 stamps. IndigoBlu is a fantastic new British stamp company that makes "Quintessentially English Rubber Stamps" right there in England.

In fact IndigoBlu is sponsoring The Altered Alice for October AND November, and the design team will be working with these two fantastic Alice stamp sets, titled appropriately "Alice I" and "Alice II". Most Americans don't know what A5 and A6 mean so I'll just tell you, these sets are really big!

I encourage you to go visit IndigoBlu.com. All stamps are on sale right now with their introductory pricing, but that won't last forever, and the designs are all wonderful! In addition, the Head Honcho Alfie says
"The Altered Alice readers can take 10% OFF during the challenge; just use coupon code AlteredAlice in the voucher code box at checkout!" 
Thanks Alfie!


Enter by Friday, October 28; our randomly drawn winner and the honorable mentions will be announced on the last Sunday, October 30. Multiple entries are encouraged, but each must be on a separate post. As always, entries that feature Wonderland in some way will get two chances in the drawing instead of one.


Mad Hatter Book Box

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My project starts with a paper mache book box. I painted it with gold and copper, then I painted the outside with crackle medium, then ivory.  Wherever the crackling was not very good, I filled in with the wonderful IndigoBlu crackle stamp in rust ink. I love this IndigoBlu image of the Mad Hatter looking pensive; a nice change from the Tenniel and Disney versions! I stamped it in brown and colored it with Copic markers and trimmed it out. I stamped the raven image on tissue paper with gray ink and used the back side as this softened the bird image even more and let me flip it to face the other direction.  The raven riddle, another IndigoBlu image, was stamped in brown and trimmed out. Because I used a waterbased dye ink to stamp the rust crackles, I sprayed the whole box with a fixative, which prevented the ink from running when I decoupaged the two images onto the front with matte multi-medium.

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On the spine of the book box, I decoupaged the Alice in Wonderland title, another IndigoBlu stamp that I stamped in brown and trimmed out. I colored the raised bands on the spine with gold and copper Krylon leafing pens, then added a row of bumps with a Viva Decor pearl pen in copper.

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Of course I had to show off my ultimate favorite IndigoBlu image, this whimsical March Hare! I can just imagine him defending his attempted repair on the Mad Hatter's watch, saying that he used the best butter to lube the works! I love the distressed font on the IndigoBlu quote stamps, this one and the hare were stamped in brown, the hare was colored with Copics, and they were decoupaged onto the box. The IndigoBlu flourish was stamped on the front and back with Versamark and heat embossed with gold detail powder. The box is not perfectly flat, so the impressions were not perfect but I think it goes with the crackling and distressing!

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I painted the inside of the box black and added a strip of brown striped ribbon and this IndigoBlu image of the Mad Hatter's tea party. I think this would be a really great place to keep all kinds of Alice-related charms and trinkets for use on projects.

Supplies: (Note: If you are viewing this in email or a reader, you will have to click on the title of this post to go to the blog.)
I hope you enjoyed my project to celebrate Mad Hatter Day in the U.S.; I'd love to read your comments! I also hope you will visit IndigoBlu to see their wide variety of wonderful stamps; remember they are already on sale plus you get an additional 10% off on top of the sale price!