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Gary's Shadow Box


When our company's general counsel announced he was retiring, I knew I wanted to make something special to mark the occasion. After all, he had spent the past 20 plus years leading not only our company, but specifically our department... helping us to make well informed decisions that kept us compliant with state and federal laws, but also treated our customers with compassion and integrity.

Before coming to our company, he had served in the Navy as a JAG officer. And also served many years in the Air Force Reserve. Having come from a military family and met RJ when he was still in the Army National Guard, I had a great respect for Gary's military service and the affect it had on his personality and work. We nick-named him "The General", even though he was technically "only" a Colonel.

I knew, like the previous project I had done when he made that promotion to colonel, that I wanted to do something that called back to his military background, so I immediately thought of some kind of shadow box with a old-style sailing ship as the focal point. I already had an adult coloring book of historic sailing ships and found a vessel that was the ancestor of the U.S. Coast Guard. Rather than coloring in the ship, I left it black and white and wanted the color to be in the background, to make the ship stand out more. I didn't want to have to cut around all the lines of the ship's sails and rigging, so I colored and cut some clouds around it. I also cut around some of the waves crashing against the boat's bow.

Since I wanted various parts of the scene to be layered and multi-dimensional, I used scrapbook paper with stars for the top half of the very back of the box, and paper to depict the ocean beneath the boat for the bottom half. The sky is where I mounted the facts about the ship and a dedication "plaque" for Gary. I used self-sticking dots to lift the ship away from the background of the sky. And I added a sea gull in front of the ship for another layer.

For the bottom half of the box, I glued down various seaweed and fishes for the background of the ocean, a "well wishes" plaque, and for the raised layers, a larger die cut of a fish and a turtle, and some foam for the waves.


When the box was finished, I had our entire department sign the glass before it was given to Gary.


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