Driving Home for Christmas Tutorial -Crafter's Companion US

Hello and welcome to this step by step guide on how I created this Christmassy 7” Shadow Box Card. Once you’ve mastered your first shadow box, you’ll then be able to modify your measurements to fit whatever sized square or rectangle that you want to work with. The steps to create these are fairly lengthy but don’t be put off as it’s super simple if you follow along step by step. Then, like learning to ride a bike, your next shadow boxes will get quicker and neater. I’m also going to show you how I took a stamped image and created its own full background so that you can really get the most out of your Spectrum Noir alcohol pens. You could substitute my background idea for any of your own.

You’ll need

Crafter’s Companion Supplies:

Crafter’s Companion Christmas A6 Rubber Stamp – Jingle All The Way
Spectrum Noir Alcohol Markers (varied colours, detailed combinations in tutorial)
Neenah Cardstock
Ultimate Pro (or scoreboard) and score tool
Collall Tacky Glue
Collall 3D Glue Gel
Luxury Card in Red (Glitter and Mirror)
Momento Ink in Tuxedo Black

Other Supplies:

Stickle Glitter Glue in Gold and Icicle
Posca White Pen
2B pencil
Plain White Card (for construction)
Scalpel and Metal Ruler
Gold Ribbon
Off cut of Matt Gold cardstock

First let’s create our image. Using Memento ink in Tuxedo Black, stamp the image of the car onto Neenah cardstock and trim down to 5” x 5”.

Using a soft pencil (I use 2B refills for my pencil), hand draw a very basic background to include hills, a road and roughly draw in a guide for your snow drifts.

Colour in using your Spectrum Noir alcohol pens. I’ve listed out my colour combinations for you below. I love that the license plate is blank so that we can add our own meaningful wording. I’ve written “HOME” on mine. After colouring I used my white posca pen to add a tiny bit of highlight to the golden ribbon, the berries, the tyres and to draw in the stars. I then added small bits of gold Stickles glitter to the star and icicle Stickles to the highlights of the snow.

Hills: DG4 + DG3 + DG2, YG3 + YG1 + LG2, CG4 + CG3 + LG1
Snows: BGR3 + BGR1 + IB1 + IB3 + Blender
Road: BG10 + BG7 + BG6 + BG4
Car: IG10 + IG8 + IG6 + IG4 + IG2 + DR5
Window: IB1 + IB3
Lights: CT4 + LY2
Cherries: DR7
Sky: BGR4 + BGR3 + BGR1 + IB1
Presents: IG8 + IG6 + IG4 + IG2 + GY3 / AG4 / CR4 / CT4 / CR10 / CG3 / TB5 / PP6

CRAFTY TIP: Create easy form and cast shadows by laying down a blend with your IG markers. Then go over the top with a single colour.

Now let’s start building our shadow card. Cut two pieces of plain old white card to 7” x 7” and 7” x 9”.

Using your scoreboard or Ultimate Pro, score your lines on the larger piece as follows (refer to the image for a diagram): on the long edge at 1”, 1 ½”, 8”, 8 ½”. Then to score the two nested squares in the middle use a ruler and a pencil to help you mark out a 1” frame all the way around. This will stop you over scoring your lines. On the long edge, the squares are scored at 2”, 2 ½”, 6 ½” and 7”. On the short edge, the squares are finished by scoring at 1” and 1 ½” from each edge. Finally, using a scalpel and a metal ruler cut a cross from corner to corner of the larger square.

Using the photo as a guide, fold and burnish the scored lines to create the 3-dimensional structure. You then glue the side edges that have been folder under to the edges of the 7” x 7” piece of card that we cut out earlier.

Glue your coloured image onto the triangular flaps of card to create your focal point and to complete the structure.

For the decorative border, we need to cut 4 strips of red glitter cardstock to 6 ¾” x ¾”. For a tidy finish, we need to mitre the corners by cutting triangles away from the corner of the outside edge to ¾” of the way down on the inside edge. Repeat this process for each corner.

Hurray, now you can decorate and embellish your final framed shadow box. I stuck a large metallic gold bow with Collall 3D glue. I also stamped out a sentiment and the single present from the stamp set. The sentiment was layered onto a piece of scrap matt gold card that I had lying about. I coloured the present with the following combinations:

Present: IG8 + IG6 + IG4 + IG2 + DR5
Ribbon: TN4 + OR3 + CT4 + LY2
Tag: TN4 + TN2
Greenery: DG4 + DG3 + DG2 + DG1

Happy crafting,

CCUK