However I saw all over the Internet different Shadow Boxes with lots of keepsake items in them and popped it on my list of things to do...... my very long list of things to do and try out! It was sometime in Early 2012 that a friend and fellow Scrapbooker invited me to join Pinterest...... oh a very dangerous move I know! And from there I found so many awesome things, I pinned ooldes and ooldes of things I liked, wanted to try and make etc. I wasted so many hours on there, which I dont know if it was a good thing or not, I was at the time suffering from Insomnia with Post Natal Depression (my daughter was sleeping through the night at this stage so night feeds werent keeping me awake at all).
Anyway it was in 2012 that I actually started to really push LadyBlackHeart Studio into being a business. I had gotten some Fabric and a Frame in attempts to start a Shadow Box for my baby shower but became stumped when I couldnt find any deep enough to fit my Baby Shower Favour in...! (A baby food jar). So I left it in the "to do" box. Time since then just kept escaping me (so fast that I still havent even put my daughter's birth announcement into the local New Paper.... and probably wont now!!!)
Fast Track to 2014 and I finally found a frame I liked that wasnt too expensive either to at least get started! And so here it is, this is a little tutorial on how you can make one similar. There are so many different frames out there; here in New Zealand I struggled to find a frame I liked, I didnt want to be restricted to the Scrapbooking 12x12 size frames, and I also wanted mine to be different to a friend's ones she did. I managed to source mine from Briscoes, if your in America for example there seems to be a lot of options at places like Hobby Lobby, Walmart, Michaels etc. Down here the ones I did find that I really like were very expensive or were really small! There are so many different ways to make these, its really up to you how you do it, you can theme it out to what ever your putting into the frame, match it in with your nursery - the possibilities are endless and your only really limited to your own imagination and creativity!
Materials Needed:
- Shadow Box Frame or Box Frame or something similar.
- Material or Scrapbooking Paper
- Baby Keepsake Items: Hospital Bands, Crib Card, Umbilical Cord Clamp, Hat, First Outfit, Booties, Photos, News Article Clippings, Birth Announcement etc...
- Embellishment (optional)
- Sewing Pins or Lilypins, Double Side Tape or Hot Glue
First you want to collect the things you want to put in your frame. I have all my items I have kept for special keep sakes (including my medication I was taking throughout my pregnancy) for my daughter in a box that my best friend gave to me with my Baby Shower Present in it for the past two years..!
You also want to pick out a frame and some fabric for the backing (you can also use Scrapbooking Paper or paint it depending what kind of frame you have). I just so happened to have a remnant I picked up which is the same Fabric my mum used to make teething pads for on the cot! My frame is a UR1 Botanical Photo Frame White 10x13 with 6x8 Opening from Briscoes that I got on special (everyone knows Briscoes ALWAYS has sales on!!!).
If your frame has a photo mat like mine does then you want to take this out, you can keep it in but it limited what you can display, an alternative is to rearrange it to be by the base board to have a photo there. Again personal choice on how you want to display things. This is how my frame comes apart so you can see the layers.
Next step, I used the piece of paper that came in with the details of the frame to lay my items out on to see how I wanted them laid out with the size of the frame I was using.
Once I was happy with my layout I took my base board and used it to measure the size fabric I wanted in my frame to cover the background, you can measure this out more specific but this was my quick way of doing it. You also dont have to use one single piece of fabric, layer them, use a small strip with a solid colour piece of paper, the choice really is yours. If your wanting to paint it, I would suggest adding in a piece of cardstock to paint, this way you dont have to fiddle around trying to make sure all the rivets etc on the back are covered up if your base board is set up like that.
I then use lilypins to pin my clothing items to the fabric in a few places, these pins are smaller than your standard sewing pins, but these will work too. Some people use hotglue to put all their items on but I didnt want to do that with my clothing or anything. You can also use acid free double sided tape too if you wish, however over time it it may break down or lose it adhesive and your items may move depending on the depth of your frame.
I also added a little bit of double sided tape to the corners and edges of my base board just to keep my fabric in place. :)
This is how my finished layout looked, all that is left to do it put the frame on and close it up!
My completed Frame hanging up in my daughter's bedroom. All up this took me less than an hour with a very active toddler running around to complete. I did make a little Photo Booth Style Strip of photos in Photoshop, I made the template up myself for this. And applied an action over the photos to make them black and white and toyed around with the settings a bit to get what I wanted from The CoffeeShop Blog.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!
This is sample Shadow Box Frame I did up temporary for my Sister in 2012 for her Guide Unit using a scrapbooking frame for Anzac. These are all memorabilia of my late Grandfather's from World War II in Egypt.
This video is a friend's with her version of Shadow Box Memory Keepsake Frames - check out some of her other work at Moving Moments Videography and on her Youtube.
No comments:
Post a Comment