"I Heart Moscow" Shadow Box

ETA: My shadow box is being featured on the Scrap for Help blog for the month of March, 2012.  Thank you to all the lovely ladies who voted for me!

Wow, it's hard to believe that February is almost over!  This month has flown by quickly.  I got a heart-shaped box of chocolates for Valentine's Day, but the chocolates are already gone.  :)  I've been hanging on to the empty box, thinking that I could do something interesting with it...and I decided to use it for my latest project--a shadow box.

Supplies: box (Abdallah Candies), maps (Freytag & Berndt, Inc.), postmark patterned paper (Bo Bunny), "Moscow" word paper and Saint Basil's paper (October Afternoon), other travel-themed papers (Basic Grey), doily and butterfly stickers (Cosmo Cricket), circular frame stickers (Basic Grey), banner stickers and mini alphabet stickers (Lily Bee Design), paper flowers (Marianne Design), glitter (Stickles by Ranger), pen (Zig), black ink (Stewart Superior), purple and green inks (Color Box by Clearsnap), white thread (Singer), embroidery thread (DMC), adhesives (Scotch by 3M), computer font (Times New Roman Cyrillic), gauze bandage (Johnson & Johnson), souvenir doll handmade in Russia, hammer and nail (for hanging the shadow box on the wall).

I made this shadow box for two challenges, Once Upon a Sketch and Scrap for Help.  The challenge at Once Upon a Sketch this time around is to highlight a vacation memory.  The idea of vacations got me thinking about souvenirs, and I decided it would be fun to make a project incorporating memorabilia.  I have a lot of memorabilia from my two trips to Russia, so I decided to focus on Russia in my project.  I zeroed in specifically on Moscow, because it's the only place in Russia where I have truly vacationed.  I was an exchange student in Novosibirsk on my first trip and in Saint Petersburg on my second trip, and in both those cities I was more of a student than a tourist.  However, both of those visits to Russia also included a "spring break" week in Moscow.  It was in Moscow that I finally got a chance just to relax and be a tourist.  I visited parks, art museums, the Kremlin, Red Square...Red Square was my favorite, so I decided to use a photo from Red Square in my project.

For my photo, I chose a shot of Saint Basil's cathedral.  It's that special church on Red Square...you know, the one that newscasters  always stand in front of when they are reporting live from Russia.  Since Saint Basil's is so colorful and ornate, with lots of shiny metal on its domes, I decided that my project should also be colorful, ornate, and glittery.

My Stickles got a workout.  :)  I've been really into glitter lately.  Maybe it's a throwback to my younger days, when I loved glittery cosmetics and nail polish.  I think I'm too old for such cosmetics nowadays--they wouldn't really go with my grey-streaked hair, LOL--but hey, you're never too old to enjoy glittery scrapbooking products, right?  :)

I used three different maps in my project.  I backed the shadow box with a street map of central Moscow.

The circle in the upper right hand corner has a zoomed-out map of the Moscow region.

The circle on the left hand side has a map of the Moscow Metro (subway system).

Moscow was built in a series of concentric rings, and it is surrounded by a series of ring roads, so these maps of Moscow seemed like a good fit with Nadia's sketch, which features several circles.

Of course, I had to make the outside of the box look pretty, too.  I papered the outside rim of the box with an assortment of travel-themed papers from Basic Grey's oldy-but-goody travel-themed line, "Wander."  I love travel-themed scrapbooking supplies!

According to the rules of Once Upon a Sketch, off-the-page projects should include a quote.  I chose a quote (seen in the photo below) from the well-known song "Подмосковные вечера" ("Moscow Evenings").  The link I've supplied will take you to the song's Wikipedia page, where you can see an (unpoetic) English translation of the lyrics and hear a beautiful recording of the song, sung by the Red Army choir.   The lines of the song that I've used in my quote mean: "If only you knew how dear to me these Moscow evenings are!"

Of course, Scrap for Help had some requirements as well.  The use of gauze bandages was required.  Lots of the artists who participated in this challenge dyed strips of gauze and used them as swirly, ethereal page accents.  You should take a look at those--they're really cool!  I chose to go a different direction with my gauze bandages, though.  After I printed my quote and cut it into strips, I draped a piece of bandage over the strips and pressed down with purple and green ink pads.  In this way, I gave the paper the appearance of a texture similar to that of fabric (as you can see in the photo above).  I thought the color and texture coordinated well with the doll's dress.

Another requirement of the Scrap for Help challenge was to take inspiration from a sample project by Celine Navarro.  I loved her butterflies, so I made sure to include some happy little butterflies in my project, too.

And, as is always the case at Scrap for Help, the use of recycled items was required.  I've already mentioned that I reused real maps in my project.  I also used a souvenir doll from Russia (seen in the photo below).  Isn't she cute?  She's obviously handmade, and I just love her homespun look.  I got a bit whimsical and gave her a paper flower to hold.  :)

Well, now that I've told you all the details about my project, I hope you feel as though you've had a little taste of Moscow.  Thanks for coming to my blog and checking out my project.  Have a great day!