Rope Wrapped Shadowbox DIY for Little Cowboys

Rope Wrapped Shadowbox DIY for little cowboys. Display scrapbook pages or art in your child’s room, with the option of easily switching the art out for the seasons. To celebrate Life’s Biggest Small Moments.

When it’s Spring on the Farm

Where my little cowboys live it’s baby animal time.

Baby lambs and calves.

And their daddy made a little pen for two lambs and another one for two tiny calves.

Just behind their sandbox, where Mama can see them from the window over the kitchen sink.

Four teeny-tiny baby animals that need to be bottle-fed.

I can’t picture anything sweeter than two boys, ages 4 and 6,

wearing homemade chaps and rubber “cowboy” boots,

and baseball caps because they don’t have cowboy hats,

concentrating hard, hanging onto large plastic bottles of lamb formula,

and a tiny lamb sucking enthusiastically on the large nipple.

So what can a grandma do?

Make a scrapbook page to commemorate this occasion of owning their very first baby animals.

And a lariat rope frame so they can hang it on their wall for awhile.

Until a boy, age 6, has his first day of first grade, when it can be changed out for the scrapbook page commemorating that.

Creating for and with g’littles is the best fun a grandma can have. Such as these Sock Snowmen, this Fairy Jar Lamp, or Macrame Wall Hanging. We like to have Sleepover Saturdays and have crafting marathons. We make things for their rooms or for gifts for their parents.

Lariat Rope-Wrapped Shadowbox Frame DIY

Supplies:

1. 2 to 3 yards of 3/4″ lariat rope. Call me clueless, but my rope may or may not be lariat rope. It’s fat and stiff, not very throw-able. But it works for this project.
2. 1/4″ twine.
3. A 12″ shadow-box frame, in a rustic or natural wood color finish. Up-cycle an old frame if possible.
   OR:
4. Do what we did and make a frame with leftover pieces of chipboard. You can’t get cheaper than that!
5. Some type of accent for the front, such as an old silver belt buckle, metal star, etc. It could also just be a knotted loop of rope.
6. Hot glue. Tacky glue. Scissors. Ephemera. We used 2 copper rings. But maybe I’ll come up with something better yet. This doesn’t look very lariat-ish!

Directions to make the Rope-Wrapped Frame

1. We cut strips of chipboard, some 1″ wide and some 1.25″ wide.
2. We glued three layers of 1″ chipboard together, making 2 strips 12″ long, and 2 strips 12.25″ long. Then we glued these into a square, wrapping the corners with 1″ x 4″ thin card folded in half, both on the inside and around the outside of the corners.
3. Then we glued 1.25″ wide strips of chipboard around the square. The extra 1/4″ of height will create a ledge for the scrapbook page to rest on when the frame is finished. Wrap and glue until you have 3 layers all around. Don’t do what we did: end up with a crooked frame because we forgot to measure and square everything as we went along. Yes, I had to cut one corner and re-size it, then re-glue it! Silly, preventable mistake. So NOTE: measure your square as you go.
4. Flip the frame over and keep the frame squared by gluing a 3″ x 5″ angled piece of chipboard to each bottom corner. This creates a space to slip the scrapbook page between these control pieces and the 1″ ledge. Flip the frame over.
5. Using hot glue, we sealed the 3/4″ rope end so it won’t fray. We covered the very top of the frame, beginning 2/3 of the way up the left side. When we got back to where we began gluing, we cut the rope 3″ longer than just meeting. After the glue dried, we frayed the rope end out.
6. Now with the 1/4″ twine we wrapped and glued until both sides of the frame were covered.
7. We added the decoration.
8. Flip the frame to the back, and glue twine up the sides, to about 3″ from the top. Leave a loop for hanging. The side benefit of this rope: it holds the scrapbook page in the frame when it’s hung on the wall.

Changeable Art Frame for Little Cowboys

Now the frame is ready for the “art.”

We added a scrapbook page we made for the boys with all the things they love right now.

By removing the back of the frame, the art is easily changed.

For new scrapbook pages for the seasons, or displaying precious mementos.

Little cowboys have any number of precious items they like to save.

Always enjoy making!