Library Shadowbox (pt. 1)

I recently gave this beautiful creation to a good friend and I thought I'd post the process of putting it together!  I spent so much time putting those tiny books together, it was a little ridiculous but I loved every minute of it!

To make this little book, which I refer to as the tiny Shakespeare tome, I took a magazine and a very sharp box cutter and cut a square from the bottom left of the magazine.  I then took some old paper I had that looked vaguely like leather and glued it on so the magazine print was covered.  I took a gold Wink of Stella pen and painted the edges of the pages so it looked like the pages had been edged in gold.

To make these little books I cut a 12x12 piece of paper into strips and then folded them using accordion style.  I trimmed them as needed to make the books taller, shorter, fatter or thinner as needed.  I then took pieces of chipboard and taped them together with washi tape.  Then I glued those to the strips of folded paper and viola!  Tiny books!!

I bought the tiny lamp, bottles, tiny skull (which I fondly nicknamed Yorick because of the tiny Shakespeare tome) and cuckoo clock at a craft store.  The tiny map pictured below I wound up not using because it just didn't fit really well.

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!