Making a Vampire Hunter Kit case

Here is my finished product, however, yours can be any design you like.

Materials:
* Hard suitcase
* paper towels (the expensive cloth-like ones work best)
* craft glue (Elmer's)
* thin  cardboard (I used the cardboard from a 12 pack of soda)
* A print out of your words
* a cup of tea
* 2 shades of paint

First, I printed out my words and placed them in a plate of black tea to age it.  I let is soak while I moved on to step # 2










Second, I cut out my designs in thin cardboard. I found that the cardboard case from a 12 pack of soda worked perfectly. Plus we always have tons of these around the house.  Lay them out and glue them down.  Let dry.



Now is a good time to check the paper to see if it is dark enough and ready to be placed on paper towels to dry.






Pour the glue into a container and add a little water to make it thinner to spread.  Place the paper towels on the suit case and paint on the glue mixture.  Use your paint brush as you go to bunch up the paper towel into wrinkles to give a neat texture.  I found that tearing the paper rather than leaving it in squares will allow each piece to blend seamlessly into the next.





I placed several wooden clothespins on the bottom half of the open suitcase and then let the top rest on them.  This allowed me to get right to the edge of the lid.  You can see  I also covered the handle.

Now its just a waiting game for everything to dry.  It took mine overnight.

 Once everything is dry it is time to paint.  On this project I started with the light brown and then added the darker color later.  You can do the other way around too.  Here it is with a good coat of the first color.








Once that dries it is time to drybrush on the second color.  If you have never done this before it is so easy.  Pick up a little bit of paint on your brush and then brush it off into a paper plate until very little is coming off.  Then brush the suitcase using really long strokes.  The paint will stick mainly to the raised surfaces and really make those details pop.  As long as you use very little paint you can't really mess this up.  Less is more and you can always go back with several coats.

Once that dries use the  same glue/water mixture to attach your words and its done!