"You Are ..." Shadow Box

I started this shadow box a few months ago and kept stumbling on how to finish it off. I had the overall idea in my head, but I kept getting stuck. Here's a rundown on how I created this, using many different Dina Wakley's collections .

I started by cutting up strips of paper from Dina's Collage Collective (the original book) and I glued them onto a piece of cardstock the same size as the inside of the shadow box frame.

For those of you who know me, this was a bit tedious but I had some fun doing it and the small size (the finished frame is 8.75" square) made it come together pretty quickly. I glued these with gel medium.

I also cut out some circles from the Collective and I doodled in white gel pen and black Posca pen to highlight the edges and placed those on top of the paper strips in various places.

I stamped the "Scribbly Fashion Figure" (a fabulous Dina stamp set) image onto cardstock and then onto one paper for the top and another for the pants. I coloured in her hair with alcohol markers and then fussy-cut the whole image out. This is where the project sat for quite a long time. As I just couldn't figure out how to make the stamped image stand out on the busy background (which I loved and didn't want to abandon).

I tried to put fabric, and lace, and other fibres onto the background behind where I wanted the image to be, but they just didn't work for me. Then, I thought about adding some white gesso in a somewhat "messy" smudge approach to just the area where the figure would be. Aha! That worked nicely!

But, then it was too plain. So, I added some circles "stamped" with a cap from a storage cylinder, using Dina's Ocean and Blackberry acrylic paints. I then masked off the rest of the background so that just the area where I had applied the gesso was visible, and I sprayed Dina's Lime and Lemon glossy sprays.

I used two layers of foam squares on the back of the fashion figure and mounted that to the collaged background so the image stands up off the paper.

Right from my first thought of this project, I wanted to stamp the words from Dina's "Just What to Say" stamp set, directly onto the glass.

This took a bit of courage, because I wanted to use Staz-On ink, so it would be permanent and not smudge, but as the name implies, I was worried that if it messed up, it would be on for good.

I used my stamping platform with the glass from the shadow box placed where I would normally put my paper, and I did a few impressions of the stamps to make them crisp.

I wanted the words to stand out a bit more than they did, though, so I brushed on a small amount of Dina's acrylic paints onto the backside of the glass, behind each sentiment. I wanted the brushstrokes to show and to have it look somewhat rough, which is exactly how it came out! (Paint colours are Lime, Ocean and Lemon.)

So, it turns out that all that time of contemplating and waiting for the final inspiration to come together, was worth it! I am very happy with the final result.