French Country Portal

Hello everyone!  I have a new project to share - I call it the French Country Portal.  "French Country" comes from the paper collection I used to create the project - Graphic 45 French Country and the "Portal" is because I think the scene on the top creates a doorway or window into a country scene.

I love the rich colors of this paper collection and it had a great variety of both patterns and elements for fussy cutting

The project is based on the concept of nesting boxes or nesting dolls.  The portal is actually four individual boxes with openings on their bottom sides so they can slip inside each other.  The scene is created by having a window inside the front of each box.  When the portal is in the stacked position, you only see the background of box 4 - all the other box backgrounds are hidden.

And that's what makes this project a little special - each of the four boxes can actually stand on its own - they each have a unique background and some boxes have elements that you can see only when they are viewed separately.

The largest box (Box 1 with the Blue frame) is 8"x 8" x 3".  The other boxes get progressively smaller by 1/2"inch in height, width and depth, the smallest one (Box 4 with the yellow frame) is 6-1/2" x 6-1/2" x 1-1/2".

The portal sits on a base that is several inches tall and 5" wide.

The base has a drawer that runs the length of the project that could hold a mini-album or whatever bits and bobs one might desire.

The drawer is held closed by friction and a small magnet, and has a Graphic 45 Antique Door Pull for a handle.

Let's take a closeup look at the portal and then we'll look at each part of the scene and the boxes in closer detail.

The idea for the scene came from the main graphic sheet from the paper collection.  The elements in the paper already had a sense of depth so it was easy to visualize the basic components of the scene and they naturally fell into four layers which was what I had envisioned for the project.

Each box has a different color frame - blue, red, green, yellow so you can see the layers in this photo.



Now let's look at the individual frames and scenes,

Box 1

Box 1 is the largest at 8" x 8" x 3".

The background is the scene from the 8x8 paper pad that I was talking about previously.

I didn't add any additional elements to the background of this box because the paper already had a lot going on.

Frame for Box 1

The scene for box 1 is lots of sunflowers.

I fussy cut them from the 8x8 main graphic paper as well as another 8x8 sheet that was only sunflowers.

Box 2

Box 2 steps down in size to 7 1/2" x 7 1/2" x 2 1/2"

I love all the rich colors of the rooster and hope he doesn't get lost in the background paper I chose - I wanted something that picked up on those rich colors.

I added a couple of little tags from the Pocket pack that accompanies the Graphic 45 paper collection.  I backed them with a little black cardstock so they wouldn't get lost on the background.

Frame for Box 2

The scene for box 1 is the rooster from the main graphic paper, supplemented with a sunflower to give stability around his feet.

There are also some additional sunflowers on the right from the 8x8 cut-apart sheet.

I also added the black sign behind the rooster's head to give it some support

Box 3

Stepping down another 1/2" in all directions we get box 3 which is 7" x 7" x 2",

The background actually comes from the 12x12 sunflower paper.  I thought the large scale sunflowers provided a better contrast than using the 8x8 sheet.

There's also another additional element on the background that again comes from the Pocket Pack.

Frame for Box 3

The postcards and notepapers in the scene comes from several sheets of the 8x8 paper.

Only the tops of a few of them are visible when the portal is all together.

Box 4

The last and smallest box, Box 4 is only 6 1/2" x 6 1/2"x 1 1/2".

When the portal is together, Box 4's background is what you see.

Very little of the rest of the scene is visible in the portal configuration - the house and chickens are hidden behind larger elements on the outside boxes.

Frame for Box 4

The large and small stamps come from the main graphic page.

The house comes from one of the 8x8 cut-aparts and the chickens were a border print on yet another paper from the collection.

I thought I would include a photo of the base without the portal so you could see the staggered platforms that accommodate the different sized boxes.  This is how the scene stays centered in the portal.




I also made a video tour of the completed project so you could experience how all the pieces and parts come together and can be taken apart.

I hope you have enjoyed this project.  In a few days I will be done editing the construction videos and guide and will post them should you want to see how the project was constructed step-by-step or even make one of your own.

Completed Project Video Tour