For Keep's Sake

If you've ever encountered my work, you may know that recycling, reworking and reusing things is kinda my thing. Recently I took a gift given to a loved one and turned it into something else they'll hopefully continue to enjoy. 

The loved one was my mom, and the gift was a beautiful bouquet of white roses she received for her birthday. I arranged the flowers for her, nestled into a vase with their food, and they were beautiful for around two weeks. When they started to fade, I told her I would take them and preserve them for her somehow.

I set them aside to finish air drying while I worked on other things, and brainstormed what to make. I've dried flowers and pressed petals before, but I wanted to come up with something unique.

what should I make?

After deliberating over possibilities, I finally had a small stroke of inspiration. But it involved a shadowbox. Since I needed something on the smaller side, I opted to assemble one using a regular frame.

brainstorming with frames and trays

The frame was an unfinished wooden one (that I had on hand), but any type of smaller frame like the ones found in crafts stores or dollar stores could work. Speaking of dollar stores, that's where I found a small wooden box to attach to the back of my frame. 

And that was the idea. To find a small box which was just slightly larger than the opening in the frame. In this case, a mini tray fit the bill.

prepping the pieces

The glass in the frame needed help to stay in place, so I glued little pieces of scrap wood onto the sides of the tray to cover the holes and help keep the glass in place once the frame and box were connected. Then I sanded the unfinished surface of the frame to prep it for paint.

Next, I carefully arranged the delicate dried roses into the tray. I held onto as many loose petals as possible to fill in, as I knew the rose heads would likely shrink and shrivel even more as time went on.

stuffing it

So once I snipped all of the rose heads off their stems and arranged them into the tray, I kept going, stuffing as many loose petals in around the roses as possible to make it look very full. 

I sprayed the frame and back of the box with gold spray paint. Then I added hardware to the back and touches of gold ink to the edges of a few of the petals. 

gold ink accents and hardware

Finally, with hands still covered in gold

I like it!

paint (because I couldn't stand the suspense) I glued the pieces together using craft glue and hot glue. 

The dozen rose heads just magically fit perfectly inside my makeshift shadowbox. And here's the finished rose bouquet turned shadow keepsake:

fin.

To complete the piece, I added a little note to the back with the date and origin. She loved it!

Tell me! Would you try this or something similar? If you're interested in more creative tutorials and hacks, be sure to check out my YouTube channel. I share more of my specialty, paper mache techniques there, but I'm gradually working to introduce techniques in other media. See you next week with another installment here!