Painted wooden box

I meant to keep this simple, but as usual I got carried away.

unfinished wooden box

To start with I pained the entire box yellow, then I used masking tape to cover the yellow I wanted to keep. Then I painted a blue strip adding a darker blue at the corners. I added a stripe of green on the lid, than I pulled up the masking tape and put little blue dots across the bottom.

On top of that I added more dots and lines. I painted some flowers freehand on the blue. That was my first mistake. I should have sketched out the flowers on paper first to see how they would fit. I don't hate the flowers, I just think I could have come up with something better.

The next mistake came when I went to spray varnish on the box. The can I got out of the closet was labeled varnish, I sprayed some cardboard and it looked clear, but it was not.

I had to sand the entire lid and then repaint most of it. One good thing, I like the second flowers better. The first flowers were round yellow with red in the center. when I repainted, I painted the flowers to look more like the flowers on the blue strip. Having fixed the lid I sprayed the box with actual varnish.

Next I made a needle point flower on blue fabric for the cut out on the lid. The petals are detached chain stitch and the center is satin stitch, the green is a running stitch.

I like how the box turned out, very bright!