Hello Everyone ! I am new to this board, and am needing creative ideas.
I am making a shadow Box. The box itself it square. And I bought a ships wheel to be placed inside of the box. My question is this. This is going to be a birthday gift to someone, and I wanted to give inspirational sayings inside of each section of the wheel . I want to do this the neatest way I can. I could not think of any other way, but to buy some little wedding bags (that guests put favors in) type up the inspirational quote on vellum, and place the saying inside the bag, which would lie flat inside the wheel. Sorry if I am not conveying my ideas clearly. Any advice would be appreciated. I think there are only like 6 sections inside of the ships wheel.

Does using a ship's wheel have any significance to the person to whom you want to give this box?

I'm assuming here that the wheel will be mounted so it doesn't turn. Why not write the sayings on the spokes of the wheel and use the areas where you were going to put the wedding bags to place objects that have some sort of symbolism or significance to the recipient of the gift? Make a list of things (jokes between you, favorite movie, occupation, hobby, memories, etc.) that remind you of this person, no matter how simple... just as long as they'll "get" it... and then think of smallish objects that would symbolize each of those things. Once you've done that, the trick is to actually find those things. Try party stores for cake-toppers, junk shops, Ebay, toy stores, yard sales, etc.. If time is a problem, find images and let them take the place of the objects. Get the images from magazines or Google images. Maybe you can mount the images on a piece of wood or styrofoam... something that will make them look like they're floating and not just sitting flat.
For the lettering of the sayings, you can use acrylic paint and a small brush and try to write or print consistently. Write each one out first on a piece of paper with an outline of each spoke so you'll be sure it'll fit. Then hold the paper next to the spoke while your doing the final version and space the letters in a similar way.
Do some research online of an artist named Joseph Cornell, who made the most amazingly beautiful sculptures (sort of shadow-boxes) out of images and found objects. That should inspire you.

Hopefully, humming1 will return to this post.