Random Valentine's Day Craft: Dinosaur Matchbox

I'm back with another easy little craft that I made a few days ago... Decorated matchboxes! Not just any kind of matchbox, one that stands upright and is carried by a little painted Triceratops!  What does it mean?  Nothing, it's just funky and cute.  Warning: you'll be seeing lots more painted plastic animals + crafts + art in the near future (I'm officially obsessed). 

I photographed this random creation in the same Valentine's Day decor setting with the heart-shaped doily garland that I made and showed you in this post. Since I had just finished making that garland and I wanted to keep chooglin', I grabbed a pack of matchboxes from an old dollar store pack of twelve that I've had lying around for ages and put my thinking cap on. I have quite a few metal decorative boxes that are made for matchboxes, you slide them on and they serve as a decorative functional piece to have on coffee tables for candles, incense and so on. I've also seen many decorative matchboxes while browsing Pinterest, so I've been wanting to make my own and you know it had to be unique. I've been working on an art project that involves painted plastic animals (oh you gonna hear about that as soon as I'm done,) so I've had a bunch of those scattered about...  As I laid eyes on the plastic dinosaurs in the pile an idea started to brew! This is what I came up with...

Catherine

xoxo

I cut that little dino in half - I recommend using a great little tool called a Dremel Rotary Tool Kit

 After you make the cut you'll have rough edges, so take an x-acto blade and carefully shave off or even out any snags or drastic imbalances in the plastic.   This is a picture of a different animal, but you can see what I mean...

Then you prime and spray paint that little guy whatever color you like...  For the primer I chose Rust-oleum Painter's Touch 2x Coverage and for the color I chose Rust-oleum Metallic Gold to match the detail in my decorative paper...

I am using the turquoise color for another project, though I almost used it for another dinosaur matchbox - another day perhaps.  So after after a few light coats of gold, I had this...

That Triceratops became very charming little guy, especially once I glued his head and butt to the front and back of a matchbox that I covered in pretty pink and gold craft paper.  He's a little crooked because the super glue dried faster than I had a chance to notice...

Now that I'm looking at it in photographs, what brother me more is not that he is crooked, but that the front looks a bit plain, no?  I should add something to it...  I did contemplate adding a witty phrase to tie the dinosaur in with the love theme, but I couldn't think of anything except "Dino Love" and my man said that was ridiculous.  Ha!  Any suggestions? :)

I created a little handle/pull on the interior part of the matchbox using ribbon, for easy access.  I  used an x-acto knife to cut a small slit in the top of the matchbox, then pilled through a piece of looped turquoise ribbon and glued it down.  I later covered that glued down part with a piece of decorative craft paper, as you can see above.

Then I made another matchbox, but I made it normal (horizontal that is) and filled it with Valentine's M&M's...

Of course, then I stacked 'em and continued to snap away...

The backside of the matchbox features the backside of the Triceratops, along with a felt "LOVE" decal from a dollar store craft package, and small piece of a pink heart-shaped paper doily glued towards the bottom...

In the words of my darling Larry David, pretty...pretty...pretty good!  I love him!

  

(All images in this post are my personal photographs, please do not reuse them without my written permission - InspireBohemia(at)gmail.com - thank you!)