Hello and welcome to the American Crafts blog today! It’s Meghann Andrew, and I’m so excited to be here with you, sharing some crafty decor inspiration! With Thanksgiving behind us, I’m ready to “deck the halls” and get my house decorated for the holidays, but every year, I try to add something new and handmade to my Christmas decor—which involves a neutral color scheme of creams and whites with touches of gold and silver. Today, I’d love to share a holiday shadow box with you that I created using some versatile American Crafts products, which you can recreate in your own decor style and color scheme!
A standard white 8” x 8” shadow box, featuring a phrase from my favorite Christmas carol, was turned into my favorite piece of holiday decor in just a few minutes, with a few amazing American Crafts products! Let me show you how it came together:
First, gather your supplies. You will need a shadow box 12” x 12” or smaller, a piece of paper of any kind to create your background, glitter, glue, white vinyl and vinyl transfer tape, and a few tiny glass or plastic ornaments.
Begin by sprucing up your frame with the All the Good Things Collection CreativeFX Glaze. I used a dry brush technique using both the silver and gold glaze in a cross-hatch pattern on all sides of my frame. I could not believe what a transformation these amazing glazes made to my white frame! I then set that aside to dry while I worked on the frame interior.
I wanted a heavily textured background, so I chose a piece of the burlap specialty cardstock, cutting it down to 8” x 8” to fit inside my frame. You could certainly choose any patterned paper or plain, colored cardstock, too!
Next, I used the Moxy white and glitter glues to draw lines of alternating lengths from the top to about three-fourths of the way down my burlap paper. After drawing about 10 straight lines, I would sprinkle with Moxy extra fine champagne colored glitter, until I had lines running the width of my background. I set that aside and allowed it to dry so that I could work on the front of my frame.
My favorite carol, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” has a phrase in it, “tidings of comfort and joy,” which I love. I found a hand-drawn file featuring the words “comfort & joy” that I knew would be perfect on my frame. You could also use two different fonts from your own font collection, one a script and one a serif font to get the same effect. I sized the cut file on an 8” x 8” background in my die-cutting software to be sure that the size was perfect before cutting it out on American Crafts white adhesive vinyl. I cleaned my glass thoroughly, then I used the vinyl transfer tape to transfer the cut words to my glass.
After carefully putting the shadow box back together once my background was dry, and adding nine tiny glass ornaments in the bottom of the shadow box, I decided to embellish with three fabric flowers, which brought that burlap texture to the outside of the beautiful, metallic frame.
I hope I’ve inspired you to pick up these wonderful American Crafts products to create your favorite piece of holiday decor! Thanks so much for stopping by, and happy creating!
Supplies | Moxy Collection: White Glue (346713), Glitter Glue (346715), Extra Fine Champagne Glitter (346732), Cosmic Glimmer Set (346689); All the Good Things Collection: Creative FX Silver Glaze (343914), Creative FX Gold Glaze (343913); Vinyl Collection: White Adhesive Vinyl (347289), Vinyl Transfer Tape (379535); Other: Burlap Specialty Cardstock (341506), Fabric Flowers (346674)