Baby Keepsake Shadow Box

My little man is 5 months on Sunday and now he's getting a little older he doesn't sleep quite as much, which means I don't get as much time to myself. He's not great at sleeping during the day - probably my fault, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it. He sleeps at night really well, so who's complaining! But right now he's sleeping, so while I eat some lunch I thought I'd write a new post.



Me and the hubby were visiting with his family recently and I noticed on his brothers wall 2 picture frames, each with a hat and tag in. Obviously belonging to their 2 cute little girls. So I took to the internet to find some ideas. They are called shadow boxes and you fill them with whatever you choose to; new baby items, wedding memories etc... Most of us keep memories, but they are usually stashed away in a box in the loft. My little boy has his own memories box already. But what's great about a shadow box is that these memories are on show for us all to see.

Here's some of the ideas I found:

See more on my Pinterest board - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/home_familylife/shadow-box/

Making my shadow box

Source a shadow box frame. I found mine at The Range and was under £5. 

If you can't find a shadow frame in the shops you could make one. Here's a couple of links where they show you how to make your own.

http://www.epbot.com/

http://mamababydiaper.blogspot.co.uk/

Decide what you're going to include. This is anything that reminds you of the event you're creating the shadow box for. Choose all the things you may like to include and arrange it on the frame to see what will fit in the space you have. You don't want to overcrowd the frame. What I included in mine: first baby grow worn, hat that matched the baby grow, socks worn often with outfits, ankle tag, blue card given to us at his birth, 12 week scan photo, our announcement card and a star that says "A new little star is born".

Putting the shadow box together. Unfortunately I don't have photos of the process. I wanted something to be able to pin the items to so I used some wadding and material I had over from a play mat I'd made. I used the slip of paper you get in picture frames to use as my backing for attaching the wadding and material to and glued it in place. I then arranged my items on the material. The baby grow was folded in half with the legs tucked up behind as it was too long for the frame I had.

Once everything was in place I used dress makers pins to hold it to the fabric. And a few items I used some tiny blue pegs to hold the item in place.

I then laid the frame over the front of the display as tipping that upside down would have meant everything moving. Once the items were held in place by the frame and glass I turned it over to put the back on. It wasn't easy to get the back on, but with a little patience I got there.

Once the back was on and I was happy with the finished result I used a hot glue gun to stick the star on the front.

The finished result