This Ol' Chicken came into the Wood

Hello everyone, nice to have you visiting here today.
Ok, so what is with this weird title? Well, I did not know what to call this post and just wanted to do something slightly different.
The whole inspiration for both this post and the project came from the current challenge theme over at Simon Says Stamp and Show which is "into the wood."

At first this theme had me totally stumped, but then I came upon this old wooden container and I decided to alter it. For once I remembered to take a "before" picture, - so this is how it started out:

Once upon a time it was a nice weathered wood plant container, but it had become quite grotty as you can see.

I started by sanding it down, then I gave it a coat of Gesso and when that was dry I coloured it with dark brown acrylic paint. When that had dried I added a thin layer of crackle glaze, let that dry to the touch and then put a final coat of straw coloured acrylic paint on top with cut and dry foam because I wanted the crackle to become quite random, and if you use a brush the crackles tends to follow the direction of the brush strokes. The inside was painted with a glaze of Titan Buff paint. Next I added the chickens and roosters, carefully torn from the top layer of a paper serviette. I glued them on with Modge Podge, added some background stamping and coloured the edges with  various brown inks.

Here you can see one of the sides. I also added some charcoal pencil around one side of the roosters and chickens, to bring them out a bit more and add some depth.
The front and back were further decorated with some fussy cut bits of Graphics 45 French Country papers.

Finally I rubbed some Treasure Gold around all of the edges and covered the whole thing inside and out with two coats of Modge Podge.

Well, I hope you think it's an improvement.

I am adding this to this week's SSSS challenge

Thank you for visiting, much appreciated!