Altered Violin Shadow Boxes

 Ahhhh, I'm back!  Yes, I know I'm MIA again, but I have been crafting!  Today I have a special project to share with you.  My nieces were flying in from LA and both of them play the violin, so when I saw these from SaCrafter's Zibbet site, I couldn't resist. It was just too perfect a project to make for them.

When you get the kit, it comes with several layers of the outline of the violin and one of the backing.  I wasn't sure if I was going to make it a shaker box or not, so I glued most of the layers together and kept one separate just in case I wanted to put acetate in between.  I'm not a painter, so this is the junkest part for me.

After all the paint was dry, I was finally able to get to the fun part... decorating!  Here's what I came up with...

My two nieces regularly compete in violin competitions.  I've never seen one before, but my family sends me pictures.  This year, both girls won in their competitions!  Yay! I decided to use their pictures in the shadow box to personalize it for them.

 My younger niece is a very wise girl.  She is very self confident and very intuitive.  I love those qualities about her, so I chose to use a stamp I got from Michael's that says "Be Yourself, nobody does it better".  I think that really fits her personality!

As girls can get picky, I wasn't sure what color my niece preferred, so I decided to go with a pastel theme and just picked all different pastel Wild Orchid Crafts and Prima flowers for my project.  The background paper is from one of my Tilda paper stacks.  I had to trace the violin shape onto the paper to make sure it would fit inside.

On the side of the violin, I added some flowers and a little bird.  Love it!

This photo was actually from last year's competition. The photo they sent me from this year's didn't look right, so I decided to use last year's photo.

Here's a better look at that sentiment.

Oh.. and I made a heart using the heather flowers from WOC.  Love it!

And finally getting around to using some of my Prima charms.  Hard to let go of, but happy its going on a project that hopefully the girls will keep for years to come.

The second project to share was for my older niece.  I thought she still liked blue, but I guess I was wrong.  Found out she likes purple now.  I'm sure that will change in a few months.

For my older niece, she needs a little more encouragement than her sister, so I chose this sentiment from a Stampin Up set I purchased recently.. just for this stamp!  I love this sentiment!

And I used another charm on this one too.  Went with the bird one this time.

Here's a closer look at the flowers I used.  Again from WOC and Prima.

Added a blue bird to the flower cluster...

Hope you liked my projects!  I gave them their violins this past weekend and they seemed to really like it.  Will post another project soon. Hopefully I won't be MIA as much as I have been.