Maker Post: Lucas North Heart Box

Another crafting post!

oooh and it’s another Richard Armitage inspired item (what a surprise!)

So i discovered recently that it was my twitter friend Laura‘s birthday coming up. I met Laura last year as we actually at that point , worked quite near each other. She’s a lovely lass and with all this lock down stuff I felt she needed a little pick me up.

So firstly I always ask about favourite RA characters. One of her favourites is the delectable spy Lucas North from BBC drama Spooks. So i start thinking about the character and their personality, identifying features and memorable scenes from their screen time. This process brought me back to an earlier crafting project where I had made Lucas cross stitches based on his many Russian prison tattoos.

for science obviously!

I don’t like to replicate projects if at all possible, so had to think about how i could incorporate his tattoos into another piece of work.

Luckily for me my boyfriend owns a laser cutting business! We also had some little jewellery boxes lurking around so i thought about engraving one of his tattoos on a box.

Boring box

I went with his chest tattoo as i felt it was his most spectacular one and the best shape for the box. After it was engraved I used a fine pen to give it detail and then used shellac to colour the box and also seal it from dirt. A gentle sand smoothed the surface and some sticky pads attached to the base finished the outside.

Laser engraving

However, i knew alone that wouldn’t be enough, plus you can’t give someone an empty box!

So after some mulling I thought to make a padded felt heart because there is definitely something very romantic about Lucas. But again, just a heart wasn’t enough.

Thankfully inspiration hit, and i decided to stitch the meaning of one of his tattoos across the heart…something which had positive connotations…”Dum Spiro Spero “which actually means ‘While I breathe, I hope’. I decided to stitch the words on an ivory ribbon background which replicate a common vintage tattoo motif.

The final design aspect was to make a Lucas collage/ backdrop on the inside of the lid to finish off the design. Thankfully we have a shiny new colour laser printer, so i could print a fairly iconic image of Lucas looking vulnerable and beautiful . The reason he’s shirtless is to tie the box design together…honest!

ay papi

I used some Tim Holtz cards from my craft stash that Michele had gifted me a while back. They fit the bill precisely with their great vintage feel. Plus the imagery of passports and ‘field notes’ seemed fairly appropriate for a spy. I glued with UHU and used Mod Podge as a finishing layer to seal.

Not boring box

I met Laura a couple days ago for socially distanced pizza and so I could pass over the box to her. I think she likes it! But let me know what you think!