2-Hour Shadowbox Project - Apple Crate

While cleaning out a cupboard, my mother found a collection of small apple and apple related items (you tend to receive such items when your last name is Applegate). She didn't know what to do with them, so I volunteered to make a shadowbox for her. Since I have been working hard on my studio renovation, I didn't want to spend too much time on it though, so I gave myself a 2 Hour limit on the project.

I had picked up this wooden shadow box a while ago at the dollar store. I wanted the final piece to resemble an old apple crate, so I didn't even bother looking for the wood stain in the garage. I watered down some brown acrylic paint and washed the entire piece. That took about 10 minutes, and I left it to dry for a day or two...out of distraction, rather than necessity. When I came back to the project, I sanded the edges to simulate wear. I also heavily sanded the imperfection on the back to make it look more distressed and vintage.

I did a quick Google Image search for apple related illustration, and saved them to my hard drive, I scaled them way down and the largest image used is the apple crate label on the back--I then printed these.

I found some scrapbooking paper that had old map images and other ephemera, I measured the interior cubbies and decopauged these squares into their space. I then decopauged the apple images along with other tiny scraps into individual cubbies.

Once those dried, I hot glued the wooden apples into place. I then decopauged dictionary scraps to the outside of the piece. I did this to tie the disparate elements together and to create dimension. I then decopauged the apple crate label to the back and hot glued the Scrabble tiles to the top along with the last tiny apple crate. I cut out the word Applegate from my business card and attached that to the bottom as a kind of signature.

I don't know if the entire project was exactly an hour, but I had time left over on whichever of the Thin Man movies I was watching to put away my craft supplies.

My mother was pleased with the result, and the apples got a new life in this small shadowbox.