Calico Autumn Shadows

Hello all!  It's been very quiet here in the last few days, and I've still only got a catch-up post for you today.  There are a few things going on behind the scenes, but I'm really only getting to craft for deadlines again at the moment.  In the meantime, here's a Calico creation from more than a year ago, but I wanted to re-share it before Autumn turns in to Winter.  (As always, don't feel you have to comment again.)

I'm glad you enjoyed the recent tower of Autumnal ATBs over at Calico Craft Parts.  This shadow box uses some more of those fabulous leafy shapes - I can't get enough of them!

As regulars know, I try to get all my work done for DT blogs "under one roof" here at Words and Pictures in the end, and since the demise of the old Calico Crafts blog this one hasn't actually been available anywhere until now.  Here's what I wrote back then...

I used several of the leaf designs and layered them in and on a shadow box frame to create a sense of dimension and depth.

I know none of them are leaves from a pear tree, but those golden pears were just crying out to be a part of the whole thing.

The box itself is an Artemio Square Wood Shadow Box Frame, 15 x 15cm and just under 4cm deep.  It has an acetate cover, which I ended up keeping in the box, because I wanted to use it to add another layer of dimension with the fence, but you could equally well leave the front open.

  

At first, I'd thought of leaving the leaves unaltered - they really are lovely even in their raw state, but as the background progressed I decided to take a leap and got out the paints.  













Here's the first sketch of the ideas starting to form...

I started with the  Mini Sugar Maple Leaves - being small, I thought they could be the furthest away, on the back wall of the box - and then the larger Sugar Maple Leaves would be in the foreground.

The background is formed of lots of torn book pages glued down.  Once the glue was dry, I started adding shading using various DecoArt paints - Burnt Sienna, Lamp Black, Raw Umber, Transparent Red Iron Oxide and Quinacridone Gold.

The colours built up to a nice depth, and it was then I realised the leaves needed a bit more oomph, so I applied those last two (you don't want me to type out those huge long names again, surely?!  T.R.I.O. and Q.G. - that'll do, won't it?) direct to the surface, and used a bit of Raw Umber for extra shading.

The T.R.I.O. and the Q.G. are both translucent, so you get a beautiful glow from them.  To enhance that even further, I decided to give the leaves a coat of DecoArt One Step Crackle.  The gorgeous crackle this creates never fails to delight me...

... and with some dark ink applied and wiped away, I get even more of a kick out of it.

For a finishing touch, I added just a hint of Florentine Gold Treasure Gold Gilt Wax around the edges - subtle, but great in the sunlight!

I'd had my eye on them on the Shiny Yellow Pears for a while, but stupidly hadn't read the measurements, so they were larger than I was expecting - beautiful, though, and perfect for this box.

And the little Golden Pear Liniment label is part of a line of Vintage Labels which has sadly ceased production.  It's mounted on a double layer of padded tape to create another level of dimension.

So the inside of the shadow box was looking pretty good to me by this point...

... with lots of dimension created by mounting the large leaves on some more of my cut-up foam packaging sponges.

I needed to start tackling the frame.  I started with a coat of the dark grey Relic Chalky Finish Paint by DecoArt, and then added a layer of the Americana Decor Crackle Medium (specially formulated to work with the chalk paints).

Once that was dry, I used Everlasting Chalky Finish Paint (the soft white) as my top coat and watched the magic happen.  I then started adding some shading, using the same collection of paints as on the interior of the box (yup, including T.R.I.O. and Q.G. of course!).

I added in some Spicy Mustard (another DecoArt Americana colour) too, to pick up the yellow of the pears.

And I used a lot more Raw Umber and Lamp Black in the corners where I planned to put the flourishes, so that they would stand out against the darker shadows.

I sealed it which also adds a bit of a sheen.  The final touch was to add some Florentine Gold to highlight some of that texture from all the paint layers, and echo the golden pears and leaves.

Speaking of the flourishes, I used two: the Medium Peacock Flourish in the top corner...

... and the Large Vine in the bottom corner.

I thought I'd cover them in book pages to echo the interior.  

I stuck them to the pages and then pressed down hard around the edges to start getting rid of the paper.  I used an emery board to sand away most of it, always sanding downwards so as not to risk the pages peeling upward.  

And in the really fiddly bits I occasionally employed my tiny scissors to get right into the corners.

Once they were ready, I applied some washes of paint to tone with the papers on the inside of the box.  

When I laid the flourishes in place, I realised it needed something else... so I grabbed some more leaves - this time the Maple Leaf and Twig (probably my favourite of them all).

I cut it so that I had two individual leaves, and then gave them the same treatment as the leaves on the inside.  So now there are three layers of depth to my leafy Pear-Maple orchard!

I realised that with the acetate in the frame, I had the opportunity to add yet another layer, and grabbed some of the Natural Wood Picket Fence I got ages ago. 

I painted it with Raw Umber, dry-brushed some Lamp Black over that, and finished by highlighting it with some more of the Florentine Gold - especially on the wires - to tie it in with the rest of the colour scheme.

The acetate makes it a bit difficult to capture the piece on film without strange shadows and reflections, but it's worth it I think to get that fence in place - and the naked eye can cope much better with the lighting problems.  I even quite like just the frame by itself, especially framing my beloved ivy!!

Thank you so much for your company through yet another mammoth post... I'm really going to try to practice economy in future.  I need to make simpler projects, I suppose.

Hope you enjoyed this autumnal catch-up.  I'm hoping to do some catching up myself around Craftyblogland in the next few days, and I'll be back on Monday with a double helping of new creations to share.  See you soon!

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.
Elizabeth Lawrence