Seasons of Change

Good Day All!!!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend - I'm super excited that my brother came up yesterday and helped us get the girl's swing set put together and just in time for Spring break this next week.  Yay - thank you thank you thank you Dave - love you bro....

For today I want to share with you a project I did for my sister-in-law, I admit I was a little worried about this being her Christmas present but I think that they turned out really well and she totally loved them.

So cool!

Now it's no secret that I have been a really big fan of 7 Gypsies here for a really long time and last year they came out with these awesome 6 x 6 solo shadowboxes here so I picked up a couple of them not knowing exactly what I was going to do with them.  Well I thought of something a few days after I got them home and ran the idea by my mother-in-law, she in turn told my sister-in-law, and so Viola here you have the 

Seasons of Change.

I did the 4 seasons, each season in their own box and used the large opening for these seasonal pictures I found on-line here.  In fact the very first series you see on that site is the tree line and that is the one I used as the scene in each of my windows to give a real feeling of being in a home & looking out....

My favorite scene in that series is the old tractor, which is pretty much the last one on the page, but what a fantastic collection of photos.  I absolutely loved this photographers vision and thus the inspiration behind my boxes.

Now I will tell you that I was totally stressed out in the process of making these; something about the fact that they are for someone else - makes it all the more important to me that they are done right the first time and well being that this was the first time I've ever even attempted doing 'tray art' - you get the idea...stress....
So the way that I broke down this project is by: first getting an idea - preferably one that is doable, second finding pieces or pictures that help support the idea - okay, then putting it all together - trust me easier said then done. 

 I knew with the seasonal pictures tacked behind the faux windows that my main focus was taken care of almost, the next step was making it seem like you were looking outside from a living room window, so....what do people typically put underneath a window sill? potted plant, an ottoman, a low rise bookcase, some other off the wall art deco piece....?  I can't really say my window sills are only a foot from the base boards so nothing goes underneath mine, but in my girls bedroom's - they each have a small toy chest so I figure pretty much anything goes - then what do the walls look like? painted, wallpapered, some fancy painting technique thing....?  Another really good question - my walls are painted with a flat builder's grade paint still so I'm not sure - then if I use particular items that go along with each season would that complete the overall look of the room....?  Let us hope so.
Aside from the main focus, I also had 3 smaller boxes to fill in so I tried to come up with things that would happen during each of those particular seasons, so for example: in my Spring box (the top photo) I have a bird's nest in the top box, then golf stuff in the middle box, and then the bottom box has a wash tub full of Spring blooms; for inside the living room I put a potted plant along with a sun hat laid upon a wooden step stool.  I followed this same idea for the other 3 seasons as well and came up with 4 really cool seasonal 'art trays'.

Well there you have it, another one of my Christmas ideas that actually worked out...Yay!
Hope you all enjoyed checkin' it out, let me know what you think, I would love to hear your thoughts so leave me a comment.  Be sure to check back in a few days, I have another Christmas gift that I made to share with all of you, thanks again for peeking.
just B