how to age a wooden box

Sweet friends,
I got a wooden box from the flea market over the weekend. I altered it into a shabby white box and thought I'd share a tutorial of it today :). 

This is just another way of making a box looks old. I first glued brown tissue paper all over the box, and let it dried.

Tissue paper still wet with glue.

The original box.

After tissue paper has dried.

Then I dry-brushed some gesso all over the box, with a single objective to get imperfect brush strokes, LOL. Just go crazy, left a patch here and there :). I dried this first before moving on painting inside the box. [That way you won't leave finger prints on the wet gesso].

Painted the inside with leftover gesso.

I then, sanded off the surfaces and all the edges. 

In doing so, I partially torn off the tissue paper, do you see it?. Think I like that :).

Further distressed the box by inking all the edges with Timber Brown Stazon.

Then I stamped some butterfly & flower motives on multiple sides. You may add word strips, or decoupage or layers of collage with ribbons and fabrics for more colors and texture. 

The front.

The back.

I even stamped the inside edges.

And that's it. This is the new home of my winter ATCs!. Hope you'll give this a try. Hugs.