Every pirate treasure hunt must have a treasure at the end, right?  I mean, what fun would it be to traipse all over an island, dig under the hot sun, and come up with nothing?  Not much, in my opinion!  Therefore, I decided to make a cool treasure chest for the hunt we’ve been talking about recently.  This was such a simple project, that I actually did it while visiting my father-in-law last weekend.  He didn’t seem to mind me making his card table into a craft table for the afternoon.

I started with a plain box that looks like a treasure chest already.  I know, I know, I could have chopped down a tree and whittled the wood to make my own chest, but I decided to cheat and start from something that was pretty close to what I wanted anyway. I took some Distress Ink and applied it around all of the edges and then I even let Little Jo have at it for a bit.

For the next part, I used some light brown paint on a paper towel to “dry brush” it onto the entire chest.  I even went over the metal parts to age the gold a little bit.

The finishing touch was using the black paint to go over the trim and then I used some pirate rubber stamps to add a few details. Then I just filled it with a bunch of pirate booty and now it’s all ready to bury in the sand!