DIY Christmas Shadow Box Tutorial

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As we are all gearing towards creating, making, and designing our Christmas gifts; I thought why not create a tutorial on a DIY Christmas Shadow Box for the ones we love and also ourselves!

WE can fill our homes with handmade decorations we love and want to share with others.

Materials needed for this DIY Shadow Box

• Shadow Box
• Vinyl– holographic red, black, brown, white, green
• Cutting Machine and mat
• A place to create like Design Space
• fake snow- Dollar Store
• Transfer Tape
• Glitter cardstock-silver

Brand new to Cricut Design Space? Start with my Ultimate Beginners Guide to Cricut Design Space.

Creating the design-Cricut Design Space

To start we are going to open up Cricut Design Space and start a blank canvas. Let’s create our template for the shadow box first so we know the space we are working with.

I am working with a 9×9 shadow box, but I always measure the glass and back size to get exact measurements. I sized my square at 7.722 x 7.722 and that will be our template to work with.

Adding the Text for our DIY Christmas Shadow Box

Once our square is sized that will be our base to size everything to. Now lets go to the text icon (left side panel) and type out Walking in a text box. Then another text box for in a, and another text box for Winter, and another text box for Wonderland.

I always do different text boxes for words so I have more range with placement and how I want to lay it out. For the text, I used the Milkshake font. Once we have our words all written out we are going to shape them like a snowman, as best as we can.

Let us adjust the size to our liking and the only word I curved with the curve icon on the top panel is Wonderland, but feel free to play around with yours to see what you can come up with!

Once we are done with the text and got it how we wanted it, we are going to weld all the letters and phrases together!

Don’t forget to do this or your mat is going to look like a scrambled mess. If you aren’t sure about the spacing and letters yet Group them together until you are sure that is how you want your text to be!

Hat, Arms, Scarf, and Holly

Next let us go into images and I searched for the Hat, Arms, Scarf, and Holly. Below are the numbers if you want to use the exact images I did, but you can also search and see which images you like the best!

• Top Hat- #M44A6C
• Holly- #M44E5D
• 2nd hat (using the band)- #M36204
• Reindeer (scarf)- #M3E370
• Snowman monogram (arms)- #M8AE3AD7

The top hat comes in two layers so we are going to ungroup them and get rid of the green top layer. Now we are going to change the brown hat to black. I sized the hat to 2.168 (W) x 2.194 (H). I also tipped or rotated the hat a tad bit.

The holly comes in three layers so let’s ungroup them change the berries to red and then regroup them together. There is another layer but it is not showing. It is fine to leave there or you can delete it.

I sized the holly to 1.114 (W) x 0.913 (H). Then I moved it to where I wanted it on my hat like so.

Need more help with the tools in Design Space? Check out my articles below.

• Slice Tool In Cricut Design Space-All you need to know
• Attach, Group, and Weld in Cricut Design Space
• The Flatten Tool in Cricut Design Space
• The Contour Tool in Cricut Design Space

Making the band for the hat

The second hat we are going to ungroup because it comes with three layers. We only need the band here so let us get rid of the tan hat and the red strips. Now we are left with the blue band.

Since it’s not the fourth of July we are going to grab a square from the shapes icon and size it over the three stars like the image below.

Let’s select the square and the band and go down to the weld tool and weld it all together. We now have a solid band and are going to change that to white. Once that is done let’s go ahead and size it to the hat. My band size is 1.288 (W) x 0.559 (H).

The scarf

Now we have this adorable reindeer with a scarf on. We do not need the reindeer or a layered scarf so let us ungroup it and get rid of everything but the solid white scarf. Now go into the shapes icon and grab a square. We are going to put it over the white bundle like so.

Next, we are going to select both items, the square, and the scarf, and go down to the slice icon, and hit slice. The only thing we are keeping is the white scarf that we can see in the picture above. We are going to delete everything else, then change the white scarf to red. The scarf is 1.599 (W) x 1.463 (H)

Adding the Arms

The snowman monogram has five layers, but all we need is the arms so let us ungroup it and get rid of everything but the arms. We are then going to position them on each side of the letters like so. Both arms are the same size which is 1.595 (W) X 1.531 (H)

NOTE: I did leave room at the bottom because we are going to put fake snow inside the shadow box.

If you haven’t done so now is the time to weld your words and letters together if you didn’t do it earlier because we are ready to cut. So let’s go ahead and hit the make it button which will take us to our cutting mats.

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Cutting the design

We are now viewing the six mats that we have. Everything is in order and looks the way we want it to we are then ready to go onto the next screen which will ask us about the material. We are using vinyl to attach to the front of our shadow box.

Let’s cut the white band first because that is how Cricut laid the mats out. Once your band (white) is done cutting, remove the vinyl from the mat and load the second color which is black. While that is cutting let us weed the white vinyl.

NOTE: If you used a whole 12×12 piece of vinyl, just cut the scarf out and save all the extra. Then we would just take the outside away which leaves us with just our scarf.

Do the same thing for each and every mat until it’s all weeded and ready to go:)

Applying our Vinyl to the shadow box with Transfer Tape

Alright, so we are ready to apply our vinyl to our shadow box. I always make sure everything is going to fit before I start applying the vinyl. Once we are ready and know everything is sized right let’s start with the words first, but make sure you leave room for the hat on top.

Next, we are going to do the hat, then the scarf, and the placement of the arms. The positioning is up to you so decide how you want it, then apply the transfer tape over the images and apply to the shadow box.

Once everything is on the shadow box, we are going to open up the back and place our Glitter Cardstock inside and open up our fake snow and dump some in there. 🥳🥳🥳

There we have it, my friend! We just made an awesome DIY Christmas shadow box for ourselves or as a gift for someone we love! WOOHOOO!

Now let me see your beautiful creation!!! Drop me a comment or picture, once that is done head on over to Amandas Craft Corner on Facebook and post it there!

Please share the love so others can also make this awesome shadow box and help support my work so I can continue to share these amazing projects with you!

More project Ideas

How to make DIY Glitter ornaments

Cute DIY Holiday Paint Brushes

DIY Wooden (indoor/outdoor) Snowman & Snowwoman

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