Shadow Box # 11 ~ Inside and Outside Series ~ "The Heart Has Its Reasons"

This one is 8" X 8" X 2". I started with the painting in the background. It is a piece of a larger painting I did last year ~ burnt sienna ground with acrylic over it. The window was already there. I added gold trim to the cut edge.

I stained the frame with polyurethane mixed with burnt sienna acrylic and placed the gold foil on before it dried. After it dried I put on another coat of polyurethane.

The little basket...I've never woven a basket, so I was winging it here. This wooden bead, which I wanted on the shelf, insisted it did not want to be carved or distressed, it wanted a basket around it, so I obliged the best I could. I used some waxed linen I had that just happened to pick up the colors of the painting. Here's how I started it ~

I painted the top of the bead with some brown watercolor and sprayed the whole thing with poly. The piece of grape vine is painted black and glued into the hole in the center of the bead.

The heart in the window is made with Sculpey, the sculpting compound you can bake in your oven. I used a ceramic stamp I made to give it texture. I painted it with titanium white and then black/brown and wiped that off so that the texture would show, to "age" it. It is recessed in the window, glued to the back wall (or bottom of the box) with black Thai banana paper behind it. The painting surface is on foam core spacers so that it sits in front of the heart, but gives the basket room on the shelf.