Faith Shadow Box!

In April it was my parents anniversary and just like my husbands grandparents I decided to do a shadow box for my parents. As well my mom has been really wanting one of my shadow boxes ever since my first Love Never Fails Shadow Box so I decided to make them one. I initially wanted to do a Love Never Fails one for them as well but when I went looking at Dollar Tree I couldn’t find the Love Never Fails stickers so I decided to pick up one that says “Faith does not make things easy, it makes them possible” and initially at the time I picked up two intending to do the same phrase for my husbands grandparents but instead stenciled the words, “Home is where the herd is”  for them. So a few weeks later when I got to making my parents I ran by Dollar Tree and found the Love never fails sticker and bought it and sat down fully intending to do that one. 

So I took the three 8x10 frames and cleaned one of the glass panes and set it aside and then I decided to paint all the frames a yellow, kind of, but since I wanted to use my chalk paint and didn’t have a yellow and didn’t want to buy a large one only for that project as they didn’t have the small ones I wondered if I could mix regular acrylic paint with chalk paint. So I decided to put some ivory chalk paint in a pallet and then put in some yellow satin acrylic paint and I liked the color a little but decided to add a little orange hoping to make it darker and the color I eventually got wasn’t yellow but more of a light orange or even a peach and I really came to love it and decided to keep that color. So I painted the frames in this color and it was a bit of a pain because I had to remember just how much of the yellow and orange I added to the ivory to create this particular shade and I used the back of my hand as a paint swatch area lol. The coolest thing about this method is it still has the chalk paint texture and I’m sure would still be easily distressed.

So now I don’t have to have a particular chalk paint color I can just use white or ivory and use an acrylic paint mixed in to create a signature color, though if you do this the color won’t be very vibrant as the chalk paint will dull the color and create a light pastel kind of color but it’s still pretty cool and saves you money on paints, lol. Also around that time the Walmart I bought the 2 ounce bottles from clearance them all down and took them out so I bought like 8 small 2 ounce bottles and 2 or 3 of the bigger 8 ounce bottles while on clearance and now I have a wide variety of the chalk paint colors and can mix and match them with regular acrylic to create any color I want!

So after painting these I initially thought to do the white glue crackle method with a top layer of ivory chalk paint and I tried it in a small corner but decided I liked the original color better so I undid this by wiping off the glue and repainting that corner. Once all were dry the top and middle frames I removed the prongs from the back and then I used Aleene’s tacky glue and glued the middle and back frames together. I used wet Q-Tips to clean any excess glue that seeped out the edges of the frames. Once the frames were aligned as perfect as I could I set those aside to dry.

The first frame I took hot glue and put some in the corners and sides on the back and taking the clean glass pane I put it down and then to reinforce it as I would be using rocks later I put hot glue over the corners and sides atop the glass to keep it in place.

The fun but for me often stressful part came, putting the sticker on. The stickers I mostly use are from Dollar Tree and are removable which makes them much easier to use, for me anyway, but there is still a moment of nervousness as I apply them. I worry about air bubbles and if Ill be able to remove it cleanly if I have to fix it and if I remove it too many times will it loose its stickiness so anyway all these fears aside this is the moment you add the stickers. So I looked at Love Never Fails thinking I was going to use that one but something kept pulling me toward the Faith phrase one. So not telling my mom what I was making I asked about faith or love and she probably figured it out but I didn’t want to choose wrong but by time she got back with love I had already settled that faith was the sticker I was going to use lol and I’m glad I did. So carefully I applied the faith sticker to the glass on the front frame. At this point you can discard the other 2 panes of glass or keep them for other projects if you like. Now you use Aleene’s tacky glue and glue the already glued middle and back frame to the front frame.

So I have a book of different floral scrapbook papers and I chose about 3 or 4 I thought would match the frame colors and paired it up to the frame and sent them to my husband, my husbands grandma and my sister to get advice on which looked the best. They all came back with really liking the one I really liked too which is the one I used here with small orange flowers. So I put it up to the backing of the frame and traced it and cut it out and hot glued it to the backing of the frame, the section that has the stand for a table or hooks for the wall.

Since my mom liked the white rocks I used on my Love Never Fails shadow box I used some of them and added them inside, careful not to crack the glass and not so many it pressures the glass or won’t close right. You can always close it as I did and flip it over to check if you need more or less rocks. Once I had the level of rocks I wanted I used these two orange flowers I had left over from another project and decided to add them as a further 3D element as I had in my Love Never Fails shadow box when I used cherry blossom flowers. Now the placement threw some people off but it didn’t matter later. So at the end you attach the backing of the frame and voila you have this beautiful Faith Shadow Box!  

So later as I said the placement didn’t matter I put it in a box and my husband who is a better wrapper wrapped it for me carefully but upon taking it and opening it the rocks shifted and so did the flowers. So once my parents opened it I’m glad I was there to open it up and fix the flowers and I now like the placement of the flowers which are more realistic looking though I forgot to get pictures of it so the pictures you see here are before it was given. Either way looks good to me but I do like it better now after it shifted a bit. Of course you can leave flowers out all together if you like.

These types of shadow boxes have endless possibilities and are just such great fun to make and make amazing gifts and I just love them so much!

• 8x10 Frames- $1 each at Dollar Tree
• Faith Sticker- $1 at Dollar Tree
• White Rocks- $1 a pack at Dollar Tree
• Orange Flowers- $1 a bouquet at Dollar Tree
• Small Orange Flower Scrapbook Paper- $5 for the pack this one went in, which had so many different floral varieties but similar scrapbook paper can be picked up in single sheets at Michaels, Jo-Ann’s or any local scrapbooking stores you might have
• Ivory Chalk Paint- $1.68 for a 2 ounce bottle or $5.97 for 8 ounce bottle at Wal-Mart, I got 2 ounce bottles at first but since I use it quite a bit I’ve bought a larger 8 ounce bottle in Ivory color
• 2 Ounce Bottle Harvest Orange Acrylic Paint by Apple Barrel- $0.50 or $0.97 at Wal-Mart, I believe I used Harvest Orange but not 100% sure
• 2 Ounce Bottle Yellow Satin Acrylic Paint by Craft Smart- $1 at Michaels I believe and if not its not much more expensive