Review: Summer Nights Shadow Box
This year, our art kit reviews feature painting. First up, the Summer Nights Shadow Box kit. (I’ll have two other painting kit reviews coming soon.)
Disclosure: I received a complimentary kit for review from Timberdoodle. All views expressed are my own. Rebecca is the resident artist featured in this review.
Summer Nights
We were naturally drawn to this kit’s theme because of our interest in camping. I love the colors and texture of the design, and knew it would make a lovely display piece once it was completed.
Timberdoodle includes the Summer Nights kit in the 7th-grade curriculum kit as an art project. It is recommended for ages 12 and up, though I think an artistically inclined younger student would not have any problems with it.
Shadow Box
Interestingly, it’s not actually what I think of as a shadow box, though it does have a three-dimensional design. Rather, it’s a set of stacking pieces, each painted separately. Theoretically, you could paint each piece at different times, but you’ll likely want to do more than one at a time once you get started. The nice thing is you can move on to the next piece while you’re waiting for one to dry.
What’s Included
The kit comes with 10 precision-cut wooden pieces, including:
- background layer
- sky with cutouts representing the northern lights and stars
- mountains
- forest
- interior of tent
- exterior of tent
- grass and bushes
- campfire
- trees in the foreground
- one more empty layer for depth
The kit also includes a 2-piece display easel, 18 paint colors, glue, a cosmetic sponge brush, a paintbrush, and both printed and video instructions.
The Process
Rebecca enjoyed painting and assembling this kit. The instructions are straightforward and easy to follow.
The process does make you second-guess yourself as you’re working on individual layers, but in the end, it all comes together very nicely.
My Thoughts
As an art project, this was a lot of fun. I like that it includes everything you need to complete the project, and that it was relatively quick and easy. It could easily be completed in one sitting if you like. Rebecca said she would gladly do other similar projects in the future.
As expected, the completed project is display-worthy. The forest tones with the pop of red fit nicely with my summer season decor. It’s a small piece, only about 5 inches across, so it’s lovely as a decorative accent. We are very happy with it.
