How-To: Make a Travel Love Shrine

Craft & Design Paper Crafts

Crafty Chica Challeng: Love Shrine
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CRAFT is celebrating love, glitter, and craftiness with the Crafty Chica Love Shrine Challenge. Preserve your memories and tell your love story by building a shrine that creatively reflects your personality and expresses your hopes and dreams.
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I’ve been going crazy making these shrines! They are such great ways for me to use my ephemera and this project in particular includes some great memories. I heart NY, and my Travel Love Shrine is a like a three dimensional scrapbook of my time in the city.
How-To: Make a Love Shrine
How-To: Make a Wedding Love Shrine
How-To: Make a Woodland Love Shrine
For even more inspiration, check out the amazing entries in the Crafty Chica Challenge flickr pool. Once you make your own, please add it in, with a short description of your process. There are some great prizes, but if you make a shrine, you’ve automatically got the best prize there is!

Materials

Boxes
Paper ephemera
including magazines, photographs, cards
Ribbons
Embellishments
including figurines, tiles, beads, flowers, glitter
Scissors
Glue stick
Hot glue gun

Directions

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Step 1: Gather your materials and choose a box that will accommodate them. Find a container that is sturdy, and that has a bit of depth to it. I used a sweet Onitsuka Tiger shoe box that I’ve been saving for something special.
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Step 2: Add collage elements to the box. I started with a shiny plastic mailer that reminds me of a chain link fence and a disco ball at the same time. I covered the lid of the box with a subway map. Then I added a postcard of the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge image became the centerpiece of my shrine. But instead of gluing it in right away, I decided to incorporate it in step 3.
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Step 3: Create dimension with embellishments. I wanted to replicate the suspension aspect of the bridge with some picture hanging wire. I punched a hole in the postcard, and threaded wire through the top. Then I wrapped the end around two large bolts from my junk drawer. It was at this point that I glued the postcard in, and set the bolts in the front of the box. I love this effect.
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Step 4: Make your paper elements pop. I love the way the words New York look in this postcard, and wanted them to literally jump out. I cut two pieces of sturdy but lightweight cardstock. To use them for dimension, I folded the edges, glued the words to one end, and then used the other to attach them to the box.
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Step 5: The words New York were not the only interesting part of the postcard. So I added the bridge to the corner of the box, then created my own skyscape with a cut out Empire State Building, a light bulb, and a film canister.
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Step 6:To complete the piece, I found a chain and hung my metro card and a hotel key that accidentally ended up in my pocket. They dangle from a hole that was already punched in the box. I filled in the blanks of my box with personal notes from my trip, and a ticket from my trip to the New Mueseum. Adding photos to the blank spots in the background is usually something I do first, but this time I was working backward, I guess. I then attached more chain and colorful beads to the lid for a final touch.

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