Does your family collect little bits of nature during each of your vacations? If you’re anything like mine, we always seem to come home from our trips with more than just some sand between our toes. What do you do with your treasures when you get home? Most of the time, ours just get brought into the garage along with the sand shovels and buckets, then promptly forgotten.
Inspired by Hilton Head Island, SC
This year is different though! In this post, I’m going to show you how to make a nature shadowbox. This DIY project was inspired by one of our family vacations to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. If you’ve never been there, I highly recommend it at least once. What I love about visiting HHI is that it’s quite different from some of the other fast-paced, activity packed vacations my family has taken.
Most of our activities on HHI revolve around the natural elements and taking in the beautiful surroundings. Kayaking, speed boating, hikes, swimming, beach walks, bike rides, visiting museums, feeding the resort’s turtles, and looking for gators (from a very safe distance) in the area ponds!
Nighttime walks on the beach
My husband likes to take the kids out on nighttime beach walks. If I have the energy, sometimes I join them, but usually at the end of a busy vacation day, this mama’s ready for PJs and some down time. The kids usually come back with a funny story or two plus various pieces of debris, seashells, or driftwood.
This year, my husband found a piece of coral, which was a pretty unique find! All week, I carefully kept it safe on the dashboard of the car, so it would make it back to New Jersey in one piece. I worried it would be crushed by the kids getting into or out of the car, or be broken under a heavy piece of luggage. Some other things we found were a broken shell of a horseshoe crab, pieces of wood, sand dollars, and a starfish.
Story Time
While out kayaking with the family, our tour guide spotted an empty conch shell on one of the exposed oyster beds. He was able to avoid the razor sharp oysters to grab the cool looking shell with his paddle to show us. From that moment on, my oldest son was hell bent on finding one to bring home for himself.
After about an hour of scouring the beach, we finally discovered one! It took several minutes to pull it close enough to grab, but it was worth the struggle. I put it in the back of our minivan and didn’t think anything of it again.
Until, that is, a couple days later when I opened up the van to discover that our conch shell was crawling around. The shell was, in fact, OCCUPIED! This bugger must have been tucked up so deep inside the shell because I checked several times to make sure we weren’t removing a poor creature from its home.
Here’s our hermit crab friend, about to be returned to his habitat.
We were able to get him nice and hydrated and took him right back to the area where he came from. We were all sure to give him a good-bye kiss and thank him for teaching us a valuable lesson!
Thrift store score
Believe it or not, shortly after coming home from our trip, I scored two of these 9″X9″ shadow boxes at the thrift store. As soon as I saw them, I immediately knew how I was going to put them to use. The light gray frames and neutral fabric backing were just the finish to compliment the neutral tones of the natural elements we had collected.
Shadowbox Projects
The frames and natural treasures sat on my craft table for quite some time until one cold Winter Sunday, I decided I needed some craft therapy. In fact, when tidying up for Christmas company, I put the shadowbox items away somewhere for safe keeping. When I decided to begin this project, I couldn’t find them anywhere! Finally, I looked closer at the labels on my vintage tins that I use to store my craft supplies. “Shadowbox Projects”. Of course. Sometimes I’m too organized for my own good.
Lay out your items
The first thing you’ll want to do is gather your natural elements and lay them all out on a flat surface. You will be able to see everything all at once. Notice the colors, the textures, and even the sizes and shapes of your materials. This will be helpful when gauging how many pieces can fit into your shadowbox. Mine was only 9″ X 9″ so I needed to be selective.
Pick out your favorites
My collection consisted of shells, sand dollars, feathers, wood, a starfish, and coral. There were many differing textures, shapes, and sizes. You’ll want to vary the sizes that you put in your shadow box. Too many large bulky items or too many small tiny items won’t look as aesthetically interesting to the eye as having a variety.
Recruit some help
Right about this time, my youngest and most curious kids noticed what I was doing and asked if he could help. This kid loves the beach, so I was happy to have him help decide which pieces were our favorites. We ended up choosing a lot of favorites, so I promised that we’d make two shadowboxes. One would be for me, and one would be for his bedroom.
Play around with your arrangement
Here is where you get to experiment! Take the frame apart and lay the backing on your table. Then arrange your favorites onto the backing. Keep playing with the spacing, orientation, and arrangement. Be mindful of spreading the colors around so there aren’t too many dark items in one area.
Photograph your arrangement
TIP: Take some quick pictures of each arrangement in case you change something and you want to revert back to a previous version.
I knew that the coral would be the star of the show, so that was placed first. It took up a large portion of the available space, so I needed to be strategic about where and what I placed next. My second objective was to vary the colors as much as possible. That’s where the dark brown wood and orange-toned shell came in. The little sand dollar has a greenish gray tone, which added another subtle pop of color.
Keep playing until you’re happy with how it looks. Now would be a good time to snap a photo so you remember the placement. I had to remove all of the pieces and clean up the background a little bit before I moved onto the next step.
Time to commit
Once you’re finally satisfied with your arrangement, it’s time to heat up that hot glue gun! Even though my glue gun has a little kickstand, it constantly falls over. I’ve been using a little pink vintage planter with birds on it to hold my glue gun. As you can see, there are some chips on the poor birdie’s tails from getting knocked off my table, but it’s still cute and functional.
Easy does it, here. You don’t want globs of glue to show, so take note of where your element actually touches the backing board. Pick up one piece at a time and place a couple small drops of glue where your piece will make contact with the backing. Then, gently place your piece back down, doing your best to put it exactly where it was. Repeat the process until all your pieces are firmly in place!
TIP: Use some tape to remove any loose dust, sand, or other debris before you put the glass back on.
Reassemble and enjoy!
The last step is to reassemble the frame and display your newly created nature-inspired shadow box! Here’s my little helper holding up the one he designed. He was so excited and into this project. It’s now hanging on his bedroom wall Shadowboxes are a wonderful way to enjoy the memories over and over.
They also make terrific gifts for loved ones. Here’s some that I made using items from all three of my kids when they were born. I used their little newborn hats, hospital bracelets, and ultrasound pictures. Each is customized with their initial.
I hope you enjoyed learning how to preserve your vacation memories in a nature-inspired shadowbox. Comment down below and let me know what you think! Have you made a shadow box before? What types of precious memories did you capture?
