Altered Art: Dark Hedges Shadowbox

On a recent trip to Co. Antrim (Northern Ireland), I visited the Dark Hedges. Now made famous by ‘Game of Thrones’ using it as the King’s Road, Dark Hedges is an avenue of ancient beech trees. As a memento of the visit, I’ve created this layered shadowbox using a photo I took. The card is 300gsm to maintain the stiffness of each layer, particularly of the branches which are too slim for glue/foam pads.

Dark Hedges shadowbox

I cheated a little by duplicating a couple of the trees, tweaking their branches rather than creating five trees from scratch. I think with the intermingling of the branches, there is sufficient distraction for me to get away with it 🙂

I found it tricky to get the depth of field and wonder if the left-hand side needs a third tree. Overall, the 3D effect seems to be effective – which is just as well as it took ages to achieve! There are seven layers front to back, with the road slanted front to back to emphasise the depth of field.

Tim Holtz configurations shadowbox

Here’s this afternoon’s work – lining and taping a small Tim Holtz configurations shadowbox. I’m aiming for the box to be filled with ephemera evoking Victorian times with a steampunk feel to it. Quite pleased with it so far, but found the tissue tape to be less adherent than I would have liked. Three of the boxes are lined with paper of my own making – using various Tim Holtz stamps and distress inks: I inked the stamp with the same colour pad as I then used to swirl colour on with foam application tool. The tone-on-tone gives it a nice aged look.