The Beauty of Fall Colors

I think this new project has made it to my top five favorites of all time!  I grew up in New England where colorful fall foliage is a treat for the eyes this time of year. Combining those wonderful autumn colors with some copper foil and lights just makes me happy.  

This was a bit of a hybrid project as I used svg files from three different sources to create this lovely shadowbox:

1.  Large Square Shadowbox Frame from Bird's SVGs Picture Perfect Collection
2.  Falling Leaves Paper Sculpture from Dreaming Tree's Autumn Calling Bundle
3.  The Beauty of Fall Colors, a free download from Love SVG

I created the white shadowbox frame using the size it was designed to be - 11" square. I did not use the acetate on the front to close up the shadowbox, but you certainly could. I love being able to make my own shadowbox frame whenever I want. It's easy to customize and Bird designed it in a way that's very easy to put together.

I sized the Falling Leaves border to be 8.8" wide so it would fit inside of my frame. The leaves were all sized down at the same time.  Some of these leaves were cut from patterned paper, some were run through my Cuttlebug with an embossing folder and some were just inked using Tim Holtz Distress Inks.  I cut one extra layer of the border to use for lighting - I'll explain below.

The "Beauty" phrase was sized to 4.135" wide and cut from Cricut copper adhesive foil and transferred to the blue background layer. I also used a copper foil patterned cardstock for the front panel of the shadowbox frame, although it's hard to photograph the fantastic shine of it.  Here's a closeup where you can see it better:

Last but not least, I added a 5-foot long string of LED lights (I purchased these on Amazon) and sandwiched them between the layers of the leaf border. Because the lights are on a flexible wire strand, I bent them and taped them down near the tips of all of the leaves.  I added foam dots all over the top of that layer and added the finished leaf layer on top of it.  The sandwich from bottom to top goes like this:

1.  blue bottom layer
2.  double thick red border layer attached to blue layer with foam dots/tape for dimension
3.  light strand taped down to top of layer 2
4.  red border layer with decorative leaves attached over layer 2/lights using foam dots/tape

Prior to the layering, I decided where I wanted to mount the battery pack on the back of the frame and then punched a hole through the frame as well as layers 1 & 2 so I could thread my lights in though the back.  I wish I had taken a few pictures when working on it, but didn't think of it until after everything was already stuck down.  

If I've missed a step or you'd like a more detailed explanation, let me know and I'll try to help. It's really not hard, just a little time consuming. I think the end result is well worth it though!

Thanks for stopping by to check it out!  I'd love to hear what you think.