The art of preserving memories

Preserving memories is important for most everyone, so that you can look back on them and remember important milestones in your own life, your children's lives or your family history. There are many ways to preserve those memories. You can create a scrapbook, digital photo album, a photo-book, a collage, a shadow box and much more.

I was married to a wonderful man just about a year ago. After our wedding we had a lot of things left over from decorations, extra invitations to pieces of lace from my dress that we don't really have any use for, except preserving the memories of that day. For about a year now those items, have just been sitting in my craft room collecting dust. I knew I wanted to do something with them, but it wasn't until I started this blog dedicated to “all things creative” that the idea of a shadowbox came to mind. I had never created a shadow-box before and decided it would be fun to give it a try.

The bonus of having a blog is that sharing my ideas with you, my readers is helping me to actually follow through on some of them, which is fun for me and helpful for you. In the following tutorial I will layout the steps I took to create my shadowbox in hopes that you can create one of your own by following along. I hope you enjoy the process of preserving your memories.

Supplies:

Step One: Purchase a shadow box. I found mine at Hobby Lobby, but any craft store will do. I also found some on Etsy that I really liked, but for the sake of time I did not go that route. The shadowbox I loved on Etsy is found here www.etsy.com/listing/252148720/stained-shadow-box-shadow-box-frame.

Step Two: Open your shadowbox, so that you have the back of it separated from the glass and frame. The back of a shadowbox may be foam and velvet, a hard wooden surface or a cork-board. Depending on what the back of your shadow box is made out of will determine how you affix your memorabilia.

Step Three: Start mocking up how you want your memorabilia arranged. Do not permanently attach anything until you are certain you have it arranged just how you want it. My shadowbox contains some patterned paper I liked, lace pieces from my dress, parts of our cake topper, an extra save-the-date and an extra invitation. I also purchased at Michaels the metal letters you see placed against the glass to form our initials. One way to add depth and interest to your shadow box is to put an item or two against the glass as seen in my photos.

Step Four: After you have decided how all the pieces will be placed, you can start attaching them to the back of your shadow box using pins or hot glue. (As you can see I changed the position and amount of items i was using as I started affixing them tomy shadow-box) After everything is attached assemble the shadow box and enjoy your work.

I hope you found this project fun and easy to accomplish! I certainly enjoyed making my shadow-box and now my husband and I can look back on some of our wedding memories and remember that wonderful day.

You can also use shadowboxes to capture the milestone memories of your child, like graduation, birthdays, awards won, trips taken and much more. Don't forget to visit www.bethannerickson.etsy.com to see what new printables we have on sale to use in your next craft project!

Coming next week: The art of mason jars and chalkboard paint

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