My New Treasure Box - How to Fix The Finish

I found a treasure box that is good size at a second hand store. I have a similar one but it is in horrible shape. 

I have shared a few times that I play a game that is fun with my extended family that I named, "Either / Or" or "The Box Game." Here is a link to that post.

I really want all the boxes to be nice boxes and you can see in the pictures in that post that the boxes are not all in great shape. So, when I found this treasure box that is in better shape than the one I had, it wasn't hard to pay $4 for it. 

It has the fake crocodile skin coming up on every corner and someone had tried to glue it down using hot glue but it peeled and then it looked like they tried to use double sided sticky tape but I think the cold, it also came up. 

I took a few minutes to pull all the hot glue off the bottom side of the "skin" and it isn't hard to do because it dries in a line for the most part if it isn't super hot glue and you spread it out immediately after putting it on. 

I used Elmer's glue for the most part on gluing the "leather" down and then held it in place to dry using masking tape. Blue painters tape would probably be the best tape for the job but I didn't have any handy and figured there wasn't a finish it would ruin using masking tape. 

I took packing tape and turned it into a loop with the stick on the outside and used it to get any dust and dirt out of the velour / velvet finish on the inside of the box. It took about ten loops to get all the dust and dirt out of the box as it had some sparkle glitter in it but it didn't take long to get that all cleaned out. A vacuum could also work but sometimes will leave marks on the velour. You can see in the video I made, that sometimes even rubbing my finger on it made a mark. There are white areas on the picture to the right and they don't show up as much on the picture below.

I let the glue dry overnight and in a few areas, the Elmer's didn't stick as well and I think it was in the spots that had more of the sticky tape or glue residue on them. I then used a glue stick by scraping some of the glue stick onto a small toothpick and inserting it under the "hide" and then using the masking tape to keep it down until it dried and with the two methods, it worked great! 

There were dings and scratches on the wooden section so I took all the brown tone Sharpies and a black one and used my favorite scratch cover method I have used and shown on here so many times. Watch the video for more on that. Sharpie is the only permanent marker that this works with so don't try it with other markers or you will have lines on your wood. 

I finished fixing up the scratches on the outside of the box and show in the video how to do the same with missing spots of velour on the inside of the box. Find the nearest Sharpie color to the inside color and dot away the white spots. 

You can compare the during and after pictures because as usual, I didn't think to blog about this project until I was already halfway through the project. This seems to be most of my projects. 

Anyway. I finished the box and I think it looks fabulous and am excited to use it for the next game. I now just need to finish off all the other boxes I have purchased for it and get rid of the ones that aren't in good shape.

Have a Blessed and Treasure filled Day!