Shadowbox full of spring

As I write this spring has officially begun, and so I thought I would create for you a project that to me says a lot about this season – fresh, light, new life and beautiful flowers all tied up into a home décor piece.

I started by taking a shadow box and colouring it with shabby shutters distress ink. The decorative layer was embossed with two shades of embossing powders one a very pale pink and the other a green tone to add contrast to the box of the frame. In addition a swirly stamp design was added using the same distress inks as this gives a tone on tone affect.

The box was lined with the green brocade paper taken from scrapbook papers Smile of Spring. Additional detail was added to the background using stencil stencil 37 as this looks delicate floral sprays- I used a mix of green and brown distress oxides to differentiate between leaves/seeds and the stem of the plants.

The tree branch was created by fussy cutting the leaves from the Smile of Spring. The leaves were given additional dimension using ball tools before adhering with dimensional glue so that they held their shape. I added some colored snipart twigs for additional detail. A fussy cut bird and nest were then placed within the tree.

So that the tree looked as though it was busrting into Spring small foamiran flowers cut from white foamiran and the centres colored with a yellow alcohol ink pen were scattered amongst the leaves to give the affect of blossoms.

I added a chipboard fence coloured with distress oxide in a brown tone in the garden part of the diorama.

The garden at the base of the box was created by fussy cutting deer and a rabbit from the same paper set. These were shaped using the larger of the ball tools from the set of 4 modelling tools and added to the base using silicone glue. Strips of paper were cut to form grass and these added to the base.

Additional floral details were scatted amongst the grass. For these I layered 2small 5 petal flowers cut from foamiran  and then layered to give dimension before adding a single stamen. The bell flowers were created by using pale foamiran 5 petal flowers shaped by heating briefly on an iron and then gluing with their petals facing down wards – I found that nail glue worked the best for this as it sets so quickly. The leaves for these flowers were made by cutting thin strips of dark green foamiran  shaped by drawing along the edge of the hot iron. Additional details were added with some more chipboard “flowers”, green flower soft, spiky flowers and fussy cut butterflies from and elements sheet.

In my work I've used:

 

 

 

  

I hope that you feel that this project accomplishes my intentions – a project to celebrate spring and that you are inspired to try something similar using all of the amazing goodies available from 14 Craft Bar.

Gill