I'm starting to create displays for this year's Summer Reading Program. Our theme is "Every Hero Has a Story". This theme had me really thinking about just what exactly I think a hero is. My first thought took me back to my childhood and watching the astronauts land on the moon. There is a wonderful book, "Team Moon - How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon" by Catherine Thimmesh that I used as my inspiration for this shadow box.
I also thought about the bravery of Harriet Tubman, who risked her life and freedom to conduct slaves through the underground railroad. I was inspired by Kadir Nelson's beautiful illustrations in the book "Moses - When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom" by Carole Boston Weatherford. My Harriet was done in collage and the background figures were watercolor illustrations. Inspirational quotes from Harriet Tubman were featured on the back of the shadow box.
Most traditional fairy tale heroes are men, a fact I never considered before. I made another shadow box for Sleeping Beauty, featuring the moment Prince Phillip is fighting the Dragon, and I made a large beanstalk, (from packing paper wrapped with floral wire) for Jack to climb to the giant's castle. I will be creating a castle to hang high up in the ceiling, with a cloud underneath (probably made from quilt batting) when it gets closer to summer. The beanstalk leaves will need to be attached to the stalk as well.
I started some super hero display pieces too. The first was just a mobile to hang up, it can be adapted to any super hero logo. It features the Captain America logo on top, with a picture of Captain America on the lower half that includes all his pertinent statistics. I have a lot of places to hang mobiles, so I can do quite a few of them. the other superhero I finished was an over-sized Jumping Jack of Superman. I reinforced all of the punched holes as kids can be kind of rough pulling on things. Last of all, I made a couple bulletin boards, the Bat Signal cityscape one being inspired by Pinterest posts, and the Spiderman one with a web cut from brown craft paper.
So that's it for now. I will publish more photos as I finish more projects.
