Asian Shadowbox

February is a month of fun holidays!  This week we have groundhog day (Wednesday), Chinese New Year (Thursday), Valentine’s Day (14th) and President’s Day (21st).

Our featured designer for February is Michele Aiello-Zendejas.  Michele was able to work three of those holidays into her elegantly created designs for the month. (Sorry no groundhog!)

Her first project is an “Asian Inspired Assemblage Shadow Box”.  Michele uses lots of great embellishments in her designs and will often create her own embellishments like some of the flowers and the fans shown.

After you get inspired here, be sure to collect your FREE Asian Female Image Download from our website.  This image is courtesy of Michele and her company, Swing Shift Designs.

Asian Inspired Assemblage Shadow Box

By Michele Aiello-Zendejas

Supplies:

•1 Shadow Box

•Clear Ultra Fine Micro Beads (Pennywise Arts)

•O’So Sticky Tape (Pennywise Arts)

•Free Asian Female Image Courtesy of Swing Shift Designs for Pennywise Arts

•Chinese newspaper or Chinese text

•2 Chinese Money Envelopes

•Coordinating solid color paper

•4 Corner Stickers

•4 Photo Corners

•Gold Cording

•6 Decorative Beads

•Flower Paper Punches and/or ready-made flowers

•Embroidery Floss and Seed Beads for flower stamens

•Leaf punch or ready-made leaves

•Thin wire

•3 Asian Coins

•Small foam balls (vase filler or beanbag/doll filler)

•Black or Brown Ink

•Adhesive (I used a glue gun & glue sticks)

•Double Sided Foam Tape

•Brayer

Directions:

Take apart the shadow box and begin covering the back with sheets of Chinese text and trim to fit.

After the back is completely covered with paper, distress the edges with an ink pad.

Layer and adhere the images with double-sided foam tape for dimension.

Use O’So Sticky Tape to attach a layer of Micro Beads to the focal image. Use a brayer to make sure that the micro beads are imbedded in the tape. Brayering the beads into the tape also give you a more defined image.

Next punch out several flowers.

Stack 5 of the flowers and set aside.  Loop about six strands of embroidery floss around your finger or the body of a large marking pen.   Tie off the bottom loops with thin wire, then twist the wire into a stem.  Cut the top thread loops and fluff (to make the yellow centers shown below).  Punch a small hole with a needle tool into each of the five flowers.  Then insert the stem through the stack of flowers.   For smaller flowers,  just thread a seed bead onto a wire, twist to secure the bead and then twist the  wire into a stem.  Punch a small hole in the center of each flower with a needle tool, then thread the wire through the flower.

 

 

Use glue to secure the flower to the stem or just roll the stem to secure.

Put the shadow box together and secure with glue. Begin layering your embellishments to your liking.

Here is a list of embellishments that I used:

•Accordion fold strips of gold paper to create fans.

•String six beads onto some cording and knot at the top.

•Small foam balls (Vase filler or doll/bean bag filling) colored with pink ink and a gold paint pen.

•Three plastic game pieces colored with a gold paint pen.

•4 gold photo corners adorn the focal image.

•4 gold decorative corner stickers adorn the corners of the shadow box.

•I used purchased small party favor type flowers as accents.