Painted Saints Church in a Wooden Box (Part II)

Recently, I used the Cathedral Clipart Craft Kit to convert this wooden lunchbox from Michaels…into a Church for our little Painted Saints!

Check out Painted Saint Church TO GO!

Just to prove that our craft kit is versatile…and after converting a Michaels wooden barn and a Goldfish Cracker Box to a Church, I picked up a couple other boxes from Michaels to make a few different styles of Church play sets for our Painted Saints.

This time…I used a more common hinged wooden box from the craft store. My only requirement was that it would be tall enough to accommodate the little standing Painted Saints. My Painted Saints are only 1 3/4″ tall…so it wasn’t too hard to find the box I needed!

Because there are lots of stained glass windows in the Cathedral Clipart Craft Kit, I decided to furnish the inside of the box with it standing on its’ side…to give maximum surface area to the Church side wall and sanctuary wall. This box becomes more of a backdrop for play.

I sketched the arches in pencil…to the proportion I liked…loosely referring to a couple old Gothic Architecture books. I think my Great Grandmother actually helped with the printing of the black and white German textbook on the left!

I painted the arches yellow and the ceiling portion navy blue and added a little trim in gold for the columns and the edges of the arches. I didn’t worry about the imperfections in my paint job…I’m pretty sure it adds to the charm.

I set the clipart in place where I wanted it…ensuring there was enough surface for all 14 Stations of the Cross. All of the Stained Glass clipart is in little arch shapes, so I improvised a bit to make long skinny stained glass windows.

I added little dot stars to the blue ceiling, because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that kind of treatment in some real cathedrals. I didn’t want to overdo it with the Saints clipart (even though I could borrow from the Saint Stickies kit!) because I didn’t want the little Church to be too cluttered or busy.

I improvised with a few scrap pieces of wood for the Tabernacle and Altar…expecting to paint them.

…and then I ended up printing a tabernacle I found on Google images…and mod-podging it onto a painted base.

A full coat of mod-podge seals in the clipart and adds a shiny surface and durable finish!

The next phase will be to tackle the exterior of the box…probably painting an exterior of the Church! I’ll decide if the stained glass windows will reflect the inside ones…or if the exterior will offer a completely different backdrop…maybe with one of the rose windows in the Cathedral Clipart Craft Kit.

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