I’m excited to share this project with you today – we are officially halfway through 12 Days of Projects – it’s Day 6! There’s just something about shadow boxes that seem to tell more of a story than a regular picture. You can include a picture, of course, but you can also include other ephemera related to the theme or not. You can showcase a memorable vacation or event in your life or how about that thimble collection you’ve accumulated over the years. And using a shadow box as a vignette for a particular scene evokes childhood art or science projects for me. I saw a similar idea to this on the internet (here) and wanted to try it. So get out the glue (more on that later), some fun objects to tell your story, and let’s create our scene…

Materials:
Shadow box frame (this one is from Ikea)
Cardstock paper
Small bottle brush trees
Small car of choice (this one is 1:64 scale)
Twine
Glue (hot glue or E3000 or ??)
White paint pen

Instructions:
Step 1. First of all, I have terrible handwriting. Second of all, I work on the computer most days. So I didn’t think I could handwrite the phrase I wanted. I decided to create the framed portion of the picture on my computer, reversed white on black, printed on cardstock, and cut to fit the opening of the frame.

Step 2. Make sure the frame is clean and free of dust particles. Have fun experimenting with how you might arrange your vignette. We are keeping this very simple with trees and car.

Step 3. Heat up your hot glue gun and glue the pieces onto the inside of the frame. Now here’s what happened with the glue – the hot glue wasn’t always great, it worked for the car but not the trees. I finally used E3000 to glue the trees to the frame; hubby also suggested good ‘ol Super Glue. I do want to hang this on the wall, so I wanted the pieces to be permanent. If you want to switch them out, of course don’t glue the pieces down.

Step 4. Wait for the glue to dry and then attach the matte and frame backing to the frame. Make sure everything is good in your vignette and push down the backing clamps.
Step 5. Using a white paint pen, paint little snowflake shapes randomly on the front of your frame.

And there you have it – a super cute winter scene! The possibilities for shadow boxes like these are really endless – let your imagination go and have fun!