When I visited Mexico, I saw a lot of really cool nichos in the shops there. I think they are amazing. I like their bright colors and that they are little miniature scenes. I really like how the collections of them look on the wall, and I wanted to make a bunch inspired by movies to hang on my wall. We made some of these at my daughter’s birthday party which I had in an earlier post, but here is the final collection of all of the ones I made.

Aladdin

Aladdin was my favorite movie when I was a kid. I loved how it looked and I liked how Jasmine saw through the character in disguise and was involved in fighting the villain in the end. I really liked her character in the live action as well. I made the palace out of paper. I tried to make the outside of the box a stylized version of her hair. The little Jasmine in this box and the Aladdin below are toys from Kinder eggs. They are meant to fit together and dance, but I wanted to make each of them their own box.

Aladdin in inside the Cave of Wonders. I used small coins from Fire Mountain Gems and tiny plastic jewels for the loot in the cave. The red gem is the forbidden treasure that Abu grabs which causes them to be stuck in the cave. The carpet is also made of paper and the tassels are embroidery floss.

UP

I recreated the mural of their house at the top of Angel Falls that Ellie painted for her and Carl’s living room in this shadow box. I have never found any tiny toys for this movie, so I couldn’t put any in here. I tried to make the outside of this box interesting to make up for it. The outside is their colorful house and some of the balloons are floating up the sides ready to fly the house to South America…it’s like America, but south!

Inside Out

I was going for the look of headquarters with this shadow box. These little foam guys were in a Kinder egg type chocolate, and I think they are so cute! At one time little miniatures made by TOMY were sold that would work well in this type of shadow box. The plastic tops are from Kinder eggs and they represent the gears that move the memory balls around in Riley’s head. Joy was on a bit of a different scale than Anger and Disgust so I put her on the outside. Unfortunately I didn’t have an extra little Sadness to put out there. The Fear toy was only his face so that wouldn’t have really worked for this so I only have 3 emotions in here.

WALL-E

I have a tiny WALL-E from the little packs of miniatures that you can get at Disney parks. I was really happy to get a WALL-E because that is another Pixar movie without a lot of merchandise. I made the little hibernating EVE from foam on the top. The paper in the background represents the piles of trash that covered over Earth at the beginning of the movie. Hopefully we don’t ever let things get that bad on Earth in the future! The leaves around the outside represent the plants that EVE is looking for on Earth.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

I got lucky and got this Jack Skellington in one of the Disney parks miniature packs as well. The pumpkin is a little bead from Fire Mountain Gems. I just made the little ghost dog Zero out of foam. This is another movie that didn’t have much merchandise when it first came out, so toys are hard to find. This movie seems to have gotten a lot more popular as time as gone on and now you can find a lot of clothes that fit the theme, but there still aren’t a lot of toys. Jack is standing in front of the graveyard with the large iconic moon in back.

Coco

This one is the most traditional of all my shadow boxes because it has a Mexican culture theme. I couldn’t find a lot of Coco toys in the store so I just made a sugar skull and added some gems and decorations that are similar to nichos I saw online.

Hanazuki

I made a Hanazuki shadow box as an example for my daughter’s birthday party. The treasure tree is made from felt and the background is mostly paper. I had to add a lot of glue to the tree for the little jewels and googly eyes to stick to it. Basically, I had to completely saturate it in glue and press the little add-ons in. You can still see the texture of the felt and I like how it looks to mix the two materials. Shows like Hanazuki are easy to translate into this type of craft because they are made up of mostly simple shapes in the background. It’s a little easier than translating movies like trolls into this type of shape. Although for that movie they did it for you! You can see the difference between the computer animation and the “scrap booked” story sequences which really are made of felt and paper and filmed in stop motion style.

These are the Beauty and the Beast and Ariel shadow boxes I made previously mostly with FIMO clay.

Which one is your favorite?