Finnabair: Vintage compass by Aleksandra Mihelic

I love searching for antiques, old vintage objects that hold so much history, so many secrets and have so much soul in them. A few months back on a sunny warm Sunday I visited this antiques fair in the center of Ljubljana. I enjoyed my walk by the riverside admiring all the beautiful vintage things that people brought along. There were a few pieces that I just couldn’t resist and so they’ve found their new home in my apartment. One of the special ones was this old, vintage compass, which was stored in an old wooden box. Box itself was already gorgeous but since I wanted to give the compass to someone special, I decided to alter the box, to make the gift even more special and personal. The “message” that I wanted to give to this special person was to always be guided by heart.

I added several metal pieces and some chipboard pieces to the box. I used 3D gel to adhere all the embellishments to the box. It’s the most perfect glue for such a thing, since it holds really well and it dries transparent, so I always use it for such projects. I had this beautiful composition in my mind and I’m quite happy with how it turned out. I let the composition dry completely before coloring it, so that the box was sturdy enough and nothing was falling off. I then started adding colors. I decided to go with a rusty finish, so I used gorgeous Rust paste set to color my box. I first added a coat of brown rust paste. When the first coat was completely dry, I went on top of it with a red rust paste and after that with the yellow shade of a rust paste. I wanted to dry-gesso it a bit, but then decided to use Cream rust paste from the Old Walls set to highlight some parts of my altered box.