Silhouette Challenge ~ 3D Shadow Box

A few months ago I saw a beautiful link that led me to the super talented Marji Roy at Ashbee Designs. I emailed her about the design she had created and cut with her Silhouette, to see if they were available for purchase. At that time, they were not, but not too long after, she started posting her designs for sale in the Silhouette store!

If you have not seen them yet, go take a look now! They are fabulous! I want to cut the birch files for my office, and will get there...but decided to start with a single shadow box to get the feel for the way they are put together. 

I cut the fern shadow box, and have it in my craft room right now...I love the way it looks! So sophisticated and understated at the same time! I decided to use three shades of tan that have greenish tones to them...and placed the colors the opposite of the way they are in the designer's example...I layered the colors from lightest to darkest.

Mrs. Roy has excellent instructions for her designs posted on her blog here, (oh, how I wish that more of Silhouette's designers did this!) but I learned a few things that I will apply the next time I put together one of the shadowboxes. As far as sizing goes...draw a separate box in a new color the size that you want the finished shadowbox to be...then pull the front layer until the scored fold lines match it, as long as the whole layer still fits on your cutting mat, you are good to go! 

When removing the design from your cutting mat...have a scraper handy and go slowly...you don't want to stress the connecting lines and have them tear on you. (Ahem...)

I also learned that you don't need as much room between the layers as you think you do...I ended up finagling the layers together because I left too much room between them...just follow the instructions, and put the layers just barely sized down from each other.  

One thing that I will likely do differently, the next one I make, will be to cut the design layer a second time, out of the same cardstock and adhere it behind the 'box' layer, to add some stability to the 'picture' layer...I find that the ferns are a bit floppy...this is of course because of the cardstock I chose to use...if you use a sturdier cardstock, there will be no need to do this.

All in all, I'm incredibly pleased with the design...and will happily admit to purchasing each of the shadowbox designs as soon as I saw them in the store! 

Supplies:

• cardstock: American Crafts 65#
• cut file: Marji Roy for Silhouette America

I'm linking this post up over at the weekly Silhouette challenge ~ 3-D projects.

Thanks for stopping by!

Meredith