Broncos Shadowbox

So the story behind this shadowbox starts with a family friend who has season tickets to the Broncos games.  Well for the last two years now my dad and I have gone to at least one game with him.  It is so freaking awesome and fun!  I partially blame this family friend and his season tickets for my (new) obsession with football because there is nothing like going to a game at the stadium.  It is just mind-blowing, with all the people and the announcer and before the game they have parachuters that drop down from above the stadium and there's just nothing like it.  I plan on having season tickets myself one day!

Anyway, so last year we went to a game, we chose this game before the season started because we thought seeing the Broncos play against the 49ers would be fun.  Little did we know!  So, the whole thing as we got closer to this game was that Manning was about to break the NFL all-time record for Touchdown passes and the thought was that it would either be in this game or the next that he would break that record.  We got lucky and it was this game; a little way into the second quarter he did it, he threw his 509th TD pass!!  And we were there!  Oh yeah, and they won!

So, for Christmas I was at a loss for what to do for my dad until one night I was struck with inspiration: do something for him with the pictures from the game!!  And thus the shadowbox was born!

All the pictures I used are the ones I took at the game, the selfie is from our family friend (hello!) and I included the game ticket and the light rail ticket.  I'm really proud of this because I picked out the papers myself along with the pictures and essentially designed the layout myself (a first for me).  The paper and most of the embellishments are from Graphic 45's Good Ol' Sport collection.  The Broncos horse-head I actually cut out from the program we got at the game and used my mom's Xyron thing to make it into a sticker (how cool is that!).  The "I saw Peyton throw 509" little text box I found online and printed out.

He loved it and it hangs in his office now.  :)

I was lucky I got this picture; this is the setup right before Peyton threw 509.

And 509!  I don't think I've ever heard such an explosion of sound!  It was so cool!

P.S. Go Broncos!  :)

Christmas shadowbox

I made this this year for my sis-in-law's fam.  It was from a class that my mom and I took; she made hers into a Christmas present for her mom (my grandmother) and, after a while, I realized that I could make mine for my sis-in-law's fam with pics from my niece's first Christmas.  I had so much fun decorating it; there's a little bottle full of glitter and a cool ribbon that looks like real Christmas lights and it just came out so pretty!  And they really liked it, so yaa!!

Also it got me hooked on shadowboxes because it was so fun and turned out so cute!

2013 Christmas present for my mom

I'm really, really proud of this present so it gets a post all it's own.

This is an Iphone cross-stitched case!  Cool, right?

 The case is made from silicone and I ordered it online, it came with a couple little skeins of floss and some patterns (none of which I used).

I'm super-duper proud of this because I designed this pattern myself!!

The top part is Wonder Woman's crown and the bottom is the WW logo.

I spent hours upon hours looking at Lynda Carter in her Wonder Woman outfit as well as Wonder Woman comics to try and figure out the colors of her crown and the placement of the star and the size of the star and...everything!

(it doesn't get much better than Lynda Carter, man)

And then there was the logo...

  

Why?  Why are there so many different Wonder Woman logos?!?

I narrowed it down to a certain look that I thought I could translate into a pattern for the red silicone Iphone case (the yellow one with a black outline and red between the W's).

And there I was, with an idea of what I wanted to do and how I wanted it to look, now I had to actually make it.  So, I got some graph paper, used the patterns that came with the Iphone case as templates and on an hour-and-a-half flight to San Diego to spend Thanksgiving with my bro, sis-in-law and niece I worked on the pattern.  By the time I landed I had most of it figured out, the size and structure of the crown (sans the star) and the look of the WW and their placement in relation to each other and on the case.  But I couldn't figure out the freaking star.  Grr!!

So while I was in San Diego I worked on it; I looked up cross-stitch stars and various patterns that I thought I could adjust to my design and I got something that sort-of worked.  It would have looked awful and then my brother (God bless my brother!) took a look at it and took the graph paper from me and sketched a star to fit in with the crown but still look like a star.  It was beautiful!  And, within a few hours, I had stitched the Iphone case with Wonder Woman's crown and logo.

My mom loved it!  Of course, it did come with the entire Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series on DVD (she's a fan) so that may have had something to do with it, LOL!!  

She used the case until she got a new Iphone (different series) and the case no longer fit, so I know she loved it.  This picture was taken after she'd been using it for a couple months so it's got some wear and tear; the threads around the crown are a little squished and it's a little bit dirty, but it still looks really cool and it held up really well.

Miscellaneous cross stitch presents

These were Christmas and b-day presents from previous years for my dad, mom and bro.

This one does have my signature in the corner, I just added it after I had already framed it so it's not in the picture.

This was for my mom for her b-day.  The dark green of the grass is actually cotton perle thread, super duper cool looking, but a little hard to work with.  I like it because it adds a nice dimensional effect.

This was for my dad and it is a specially designed mug with the Aida cloth sitting between the two pieces of plastic that make up the mug.  It was a lot of fun to make, the design is my own design, influenced by a cross stitch I saw on Etsy and the TV show Firefly.

The two key chains were for my dad; the first one is supposed to be Broncos colors (Go Broncos! yaa?) and is from a kit I bought on Etsy and the second one is from a kit I bought on Ebay simply because it is called "wee hieland coo" and I couldn't resist!