The Largesse Box: Part One

So, for a looooong time I've been planning on decorating this wooden craft chest I've had kicking around for the better part of ten years, and then filling the damn thing up with largesse and inflicting the resulting craft monster on An Tir's Largesse coordinator (because no way am I presenting this thing directly to whoever the sitting royals are when I finally get it filled - it's taken like two years to get THIS far, so lord knows when I'll actually FINISH).

I've actually made a start on the contents - the painted drop spindles and the viking hats are meant for this undertaking, after all.

A few days ago the bug to start getting serious on at least finishing out the box bit me hard, and I drafted up an initial plan on how this stupid thing would be painted.

Promising, but of course later on I ran into problems and had to rethink this, HEAVILY.

So anyway, today I found the chest, emptied it out (incidentally I found 1. my missing grey hoodie and 2. some more fake linen to make into HAT LININGS) and started pulling off the hardware.

No, I have no idea what the hell discolored the top and front of this box SO badly. It looks like it got wet, but the wood doesn't show any swelling or warping. It's weird, but, I mean, it's good? Because it means I can just do a cleanup sanding job and get straight to work.

Also I swear this stupid thing had slightly different screw sizes for each category of hardware, so I used so many sad little plastic baggies to keep everything organized.

While I was doing this, I was also getting busy with a measuring tape, and quickly realized the dimensions on this box are weird AF on the outside, and I was seriously going to have to rethink my painting design idea.

What I've come up with looks like this, translated through the medium of my terrible MSPaint skills:

I would still leave the big white circle around the lion's head but I was jittery and making this at 2:30am and an angled circle was beyond my measly skills at this hour. I mean the lion's head on the box is literally a scribble so... yeah.

I honestly like this idea better? It feels cleaner, for sure, and it lets me use black borders around the white and yellow checky in order to avoid WEIRD PARTIAL CHECKS.

I'll probably just paint the entire inside solid black unless someone has a better idea.

But yeah, step one is completed. Next will be sanding, and then applying the first layer of paint aka my solid white primer layer because even black paint looks cleaner if I slap it down over a white layer.

It's happening! Slowly, of course, but shit is actually happening!