Beach Hut Box Frame

Hello,

I've something different to share today, something I've never tried making before! I've seen shadow boxes many times and usually thought "I must have a go at one of those". And moved on to someting else.

But a few weeks ago I saw that WRMK had added a Shadow Box Punch Board to their stable of other punch boards and I couldn't resist. I don't think it's particualry 'new' but I can be slow to the party (I'm not a great party-person to begin with).

For one reason or another it sat on the shelf for a few weeks after arriving but finally made it to the desk on Sunday - the instructions are good, but I don't find turquoise print on shiny white paper the easiest to read so I looked for a nice clear video and found this one by Linh Van HERE.  What I love abut Linh's videos is that you can really see what she is doing and her talk-throughs are always super-clear. So I had a practice with a plain square of paper, and like Linh in the video realised pretty fast that you don't need to be limited by the instructions on the board, you can make many sizes and they don't have to be square. 

It's the punch mechanisim that's the game-changer to making box frames.  I took pictures of how the card looks after scoring and punching.  You need to be careful to punch so you get this pattern, whatever size you choose to make.  Then just burnish the folds and fold them in - all the folds go the same way.

So practice done I was ready to go solo and make a rectangle instead of the squares on the instructions.  

Annoyingly, you have to use imperial measurements - its weird that while most of the world uses metric, the US manufacturers rarely consider creating metric versions for us!

Anyway, what you need to do is decide what size you want the inside area of your frame to be then add 4 inches to the top and bottom - this is because each edge takes 2 inches for the scoring that creates the box 'edges'

For mine I knew I was going to use digital paper inside and could sort measurements accordingly,  I didnt bother being precise, I just used a piece of  A4 card (short edge at the top) did the scoring at the top and sides then taking in how much I needed to allow for the scoring on the lower edge I lopped off a couple of inches off the bottom before adding the scoring. Iin this case the space I was left with was 8.5 x 11 cms (yes, I know I'm mixing my systems but it's mine and I can do it however I please).

I decided to make a beach scene and use some of my collection of suitable digital papers as well as bits of ephemera 

Using digital papers allows you to customise the sizes of the images you print and I started by choosing the background piece.  I made it just smaller than the area of plain card inside all the scoring and glued it down before folding up the frame. I also added a few dabs of glue to keep the frame nicely folded as it kind of opens itself on the corners if you don't..

 Having got this far on Sunday afternoon I picked it up again on Monday.

I resized and printed three copies of the beach hut picture, one to be the base and the rest to use for adding layers. I made the window with some scraps as there wasn't one on the digi.

I used tiny shells, beads, flowers and leaves etc to build up my picture,  There are also a few wax seal shapes and some glitter glue to fill in any gaps.  The little seahorse is a wooden shape inked and glittered. 

I also inked around the edges of the box frame as it looked a bit too pristine against the shabby-chic beach hut. 

 

 I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, though I've just realised that I intended to add a little boat on the sea so I may do that later!

 

I've collected the ephemera from all over the place over the last few years, but in case you're interested here's the details for the papers, which I bought from FantasyaDigitals via Etsy

:

Coastal Junk Journal Kit and Junk Journal Beach Kit

 

 I love these papers! They print really nicely - I just used some white textured Bazzill card to print on.

 

If you buy paper craft goodies, such as dies, stencils, stamps etc you may like toi use my Spellbinders link 

 

Just a Note

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  THIS is my Affiliate link to the Spellbinders store 

-  you can use it to access the store whenever you buy from Spellbinders

It doesn't cost you anything, but I may get a little reward for pointing you there.

There's a UK based shop now, so you can use the 'Visit Our UK Store' button at the top right of any page on the Spellbinders site  

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Thank you so much for coming by

 Happy Crafting, Take care of yourself, and please come back soon!

 

 Kathy xx