I recall reading on the Hirst Arts forum that someone wanted to see an open treasure casket.
I'm afraid I don't recall who it was, or where the thread is.

Anyway, I decided that it must be farily easy to make one, based on the chest and coins, available on mold 282.
So, I had a crack.
First of all I took a treasure chest, and removed the lid, using a hobby knife.
I was unable to get the lid off without breaking it, but that didn't matter.
If I had been casting at the time, I would have done a partial cast of the treasure chest, in order to provide me with a lid.
As it happens, I wasn't, so I took a second chest, and carefully removed the lid.
Below, you can see before and after images of the chest and lid.

The next step was to modify some trasure so that it would fit into the treasure chest.
This was just a question of trimming off one of the coins casts, as seen below.

The final step was to clue the coins into the chest, and the lid ontop.

Note I decided to trim the back of the coins at an angle, so that the lid was also open at an angle.
The results are below. I'm happy with it. Next step is to paint it.

PAINT JOB.
Before I paint the chest, I want to play around with some colours.
I've taken four regular chests to test.
Chest 1 is a control chest. I've not primed it at all. It has had one coat of Snakebite Leather paint.
Chest 2 has not been primed. It has had a coat of Chestnut ink.
Chest 3 has been primed with white paint. It has had one coat of Snakebite Leather paint.
Chest 4 has been primed with black paint. It has had one coat of Snakebite Leather paint.


All the colour are a little lighter than here, and the contrast between chest 1 and chest 3 is much bigger, with chest 3 being the lightest in colour.
Chest 2 is a very deep red/brown colour, and chest 4 is a dark brown.
So which one is best?