Suitcase Jewelry Display......

Welcome to part one of "Suitcase Renovation" also known as "pimp my suitcase"! So I'm looking for a cool jewelry display that has to be relatively light, sturdy, portable and cute. Kind of a tall order, eh? One time of Flickr I saw where somebody turned an old suitcase into a jewelry display although not to the degree that I have cooking up in my noggin'.

Part 1: The stripping and painting of LulaMay

Enter.....the "PDU" suitcase, (that's sort for "pretty darn ugly). It's one of those hard-sided old suitcases that were typical in the 1950s-1970s. Well I suppose I should name the suitcase at this point, so I'm going to call her LulaMay. LulaMay has good hardware that works, very little wear on the trim and the sides are in good shape.

The inside of LulaMay was pristine, too bad I'm going to tear it all out! Kind of reminds me of the inside of a coffin....creepy!

The anatomomy of a suitcase......padding, wood, pleather trim and canvas. As you can see here I tore out the lining and the thin cotton batting that was underneath it. The glue that was left over on the top of the lid flaked right off with a puddy knife. I'm not worrying about any bumps because I'm going to faux finish and collage the inside of it.

I painted a coat of Gesso the the entire outside of the LulaMay being careful to go around the trim.Next I painted the inside with a base of Gesso. I worked on both the outside and inside at the same time.

Here I'm applying a coat of sandy beige to the inside of the suitcase over the Gesso.

I applied a coat of "spa blue" in the Delta acrylics line to the outside of the suitcase over the Gesso. It covered remarkably well with just one coat.

I decided to do a vintage faux finish in the inside so here it is with just a few layers applied. I have yet to put on the darker brown because I was losing light last night as I finished up around 8:45 PM.

Oh yah! Now LulaMay is starting to look "PDG"......pretty darn goooooooooood!

So hop back over tomorrow to see the inside of the suitcase. I started on it this morning and it's looking "PDA".....pretty darn awesome! Until you visit again...... SMILES!