Hey there scrappy friends! It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday! Yeah. Can't believe I just typed that! I digress. Anyway, I'm looking forward to some family time this weekend, but before that I've got one last project to share with you. This one is a bit more advanced, but still doable and would be a wonderful addition to your home's decor. My favorite part is that it includes photos of my sweet growing girl that I get to look at every time I'm in her bedroom. This would also make a great addition to a family room or den with family or heritage photos.
Project #4: Shadow Box
I picked this shadow box up at a Making Memories warehouse sale for dirt cheap, and it's been sitting on my craft room shelf for several months. Since I already have other projects to celebrate my baby's first year, I thought I would include her 2nd year photos on this one. I used the Baby Mine line from Fancy Pants Design, which included some fun specialty papers and embellishments.
Here's a basic run-down on creating a similar project:
- Wipe your shadow box with a damp cloth to remove dust. Your photos and products will adhere more securely that way. Measure and record the size of the openings.
- Gather, print, and crop your photos. I enlarged my focal photo to 5x7 inches so I could use it to create a scrapbook page in the large opening. I printed the smallest photos wallet size and cropped them to fit inside the small openings.
- Gather your supplies. I went with products from the same line to save me time and effort. You could also pick a theme or color scheme and “shop your stash” to create your own kit.
- Adhere your photos first. I used foam dots because my openings are so deep. I left some openings blank so I could fill them with paper, embellishments, and journaling.
- Fill in the rest of your shadow box openings with paper, embellishments, mementos, and whatever else you’d like. Remember to use a good strong adhesive (a glue gun is great for 3D embellishments), and think “outside the box”—your elements don’t have to stay inside the openings. They can be placed around the frame too.
Bonus Tutorial!
I thought I’d share how to make the layered flowers for this project using the filter paper embellishments from Fancy Pants. They come as flat circles, and because they’re made of thin pliable filter paper they’re super easy to scrunch, gather, stitch, staple, layer, mist, ink, or anything else you can come up with!
Just scrunch one of the filter papers toward its center and staple it. Scrunch a smaller one and staple it on top of the other. Punch out a small circle from a scrap of cardstock and cover it with glue dots. Adhere some ric rac, winding it around and layering it from the outside toward the inside of the circle. Add a stitched button to the center of the ric rac and adhere it over the layered filter papers.
Not only is this a great way to preserve memories and photos, but it’s also a great piece of DIY home décor that will add a wonderful touch to any room. Give it a try!
Thank you so much for joining me this week. I hope you've enjoyed these projects. If you've been inspired to create something for your home, be sure and post it in our Flickr gallery and/or post a link in the comments below. Have a great weekend!
