Shadowbox Nursery Art: Lucy in the Sky

To honor the arrival of a friend's new baby girl, Lucy, I created this piece.  After briefly considering the following bits I knew exactly what I wanted to create: 1) Lucy's nursery is decorated in a woodland theme, 2) Lucy's mom, Erica, is a MAJOR Beatles fan, 3) Erica was one of my college roommates and fellow art student, so I know her pretty darn well.  It took me all of 3.5 seconds to come up with the concept but way too long to create it.  It got to Erica's house on Monday, Lucy was born on Wednesday.  Phwew!  Yet another close call by Sarah.

So, here's the original illustration.  I drew the linework in pencil, scanned it and painted it in Photoshop.  

And this here is the final shadowbox illustration.  It is created in four layers, each one printed on heavy stock and supported in hidden areas with bits foam core.  Oh wait, I mean suspended by magic!

I've created several other shadowbox pieces: Audrey's Shadowbox Name Art, a Valentine's Day Gift, and turned this Donut illustration into a shadowbox by floating each donut above the background YUMs.  I don't have a final picture of this one, but trust me, it came out super cute.  I even disassembled my silk wedding bouquet and arranged it into an open shadowbox.

I'm working on learning to photograph the shadowboxes.  It would have been better to photograph it before the final instal with the glass.  Do you have any suggestions for photographing items behind glass?

I spent a good hour of this project developing a new pencil brush.  I swear I've got like fifteen of them on my brush palette, each one a little better than the last.  Do you ever do that?  Get swept up in a tiny detail and before you know it you've lost a chunk of time that may have otherwise been productive?  Seriously, who's going to tell that this new brush looks a tiny bit more realistic than the last?  Me.  That's about it.  But it's ok, this detail makes me smile, even if it's only noticeable at 200% zoom.