Monday, April 18, 2016

Paper Flowers Shadow Box


I love old books and paper so I thought this project would be great to use up some books I've saved. Confession... I have a huge stack of books I've been saving for something like this and I'm sure I will never use all of my "craft paper" collection.

Yay! Raggedy books!
Supplies:

1 shadow box (I bought mine from Ikea)
1 piece of scrapbook paper
Old books
Hot glue gun
Brads - optional (I bought mine from Emerald Creek Craft Supplies)
Thin silver wire - optional (I found mine in a piece of ribbon in a draw of old wedding decorations and thought, "Perfect! This is just what it need!")



1. Cut out a piece of scrapbook paper to the size of the shadow box. This will be the background in the shadow box and what you attach your flowers to. I picked a bright blue(which isn't showing up well in this picture, but looks great in real life!)

2. To make the flowers, cut out a circle. Cut a spiral in the circle, ending in the middle. 

3. Take the outside end and roll till you make it to the inside. Add a dab of glue inside the bottom to secure it. Hot glue works best since it sets fast. For another video tutorial, click here.
Just 40 more to go!

I wanted to add a bit more to the box by making a couple of origami butterflies. I followed this tutorial here, but there are many more to choose from.

4. Arrange the flowers in the box and glue them down. I added some jeweled brads to the middle of some of the flowers(before gluing them down). You could add more or less flowers, depending on the look you want. I wanted to be able to see some of the background colour.

5. If you made a butterfly, you could also make some antennae for them. I took a piece of ribbon that had wire in it and cut the wire out. Then I curled it and glued to the butterfly. I also distressed my butterflies by rubbing the edges on some black and brown ink pads.



I'm entering my shadow box into these challanges: