Inside Shadow Box Card with Mermaid

What you don’t see in that little video is that I had to quickly pull the card apart because I had put the inside image in the wrong place so when you opened the card there was nothing to see! Imagine my face when I proudly opened the card and it was blank, I am still laughing, anyway I managed to salvage it sufficiently for some photos and this video, however, some of the photos that should accompany the step by step instructions have been deleted as they showed the wrong thing!! I am very pleased with the finished card, despite it being slightly damaged at the back.

Start with a sheet of white A4 card stock, trim off one end to make it 21 x 29cm, cut it in half to give you two pieces 21 x 14.5cm. Take one of the pieces, score and fold it at 10.5cm to make a blank card, trim 1.5cm off the back flap.

Take the second piece and score and fold it at 1.5cm, 10.5cm and 12cm, this will form the box.

For the front of the card, (the widest half of piece 1), using a stitched circle die, cut a frame from dark blue card and a circle from white card to fit inside it. Blend Cracked Pistachio and Broken China Distress Oxide inks to make the background for the circle. Stamp, colour and die cut 3 pieces of seaweed and a shell. Adhere these to the circle along with a Fish embellishment and some blue adhesive crystals. Adhere the circle and frame to the front of the card and stamp congratulations below it.

For the area that you see through the window (the back of the shadow box) you can either make this on a separate piece of card and adhere it to the card blank or create it directly onto the card blank. This is where I made my mistake, thinking that this would be on the second piece of card but it actually goes on the the first piece of card, inside on the shorter flap. At this point it helps to die cut the window from piece 2 so that you can position the embellishments more easily to make sure that they are visible. You can also stamp the second part of the greeting and adhere the mermaid beside the greeting partly over the window

Again blend the blue and green Distress Oxide inks to create the ocean background, stamp, colour and die cut two more pieces of seaweed and a mermaid. Create the scene that is shown through the window by adhering the seaweed, two more fish and a small strip of crystal clusters. If you made this on a separate piece of card, adhere it to the inside of the card blank.

Add a strip of strong double sided adhesive tape to the 1.5cm flap on piece 2.

Put piece 2 inside piece 1 right up to the fold, remove the red tape from the adhesive and close the card front down to adhere them together. (I should have realised at this point that my image was not showing through the window….but no!

Turn the whole thing over and put a couple of strips of double sided adhesive tape on the back panel of piece 2.

Now close the card and wrap the whole back panel including the scored strip across the back of the card and adhere. The card should be flat when closed, opening the card pulls the shadow box into shape. Sorry there is no photo of this last step as I was too busy trying to pull it apart again!!!

Thank you for reading, sorry about the lack of clear photos, I hope you like it and would love to hear your comments if you have time to scroll to the bottom and click where it says No Comments.

Debbie x

Supplies used: