Easter celebration boxes...

Alpha Stamps has a new monthly kit out today and I helped design it :) Since Easter is on April 1st (April Fools Day, lol) this year, March's kit is Easter themed. Some of the things in the kit are gorgeous papers from Bo Bunny, an adorable Happy Easter collage sheet from Catnip Designs (me), and a sweet shadowbox with an egg shaped cover. Here's a photo of the box I made using the kit along with some other goodies...

Isn't it sweet? There are three other shadowboxes and lids available, in the Easter theme, that get progressively larger in size. I, of course, had to make one of each...

I used paper from the new Jubilee 6x6 pad for this cute bunny box. In the box is a nest I built with eggs from the kit nestled inside it.

This adorable chick box has a vintage bunny girl ornament holding a fuzzy yellow chick and Easter basket inside.

*Note: It's a good idea to reinforce that little piece of die-cut chipboard between the chicks legs. I just glued a small piece of toothpick to the back of mine.

 This chocolate bunny box is my favorite! I made an Easter tree decorated with vintage colored eggs, a vintage basket and vintage look bunnies that are available at Alpha Stamps :)

Look how cute that bunny is...

And, yes, I did add Easter grass and colored eggs to that tiny basket!

Here's a photo of the whole group...

I bet you're wondering what that thing in the middle is, am I right?

Here's a closer look...

I love the the shutters we recently got in from Prima so I had to incorporate them into my Easter group. Amazingly, the rabbit cover from the Easter Covers for Mini Shadowboxes set fits inside the shutters perfectly. How cool is that :)
Now, I wanna share a little tutorial with you on making your shadowboxes deeper than they actually are. Although the depths range from 7/8" to around 1 1/2" and may be just fine to accommodate a paper collage or thinner multi-media vignette, I chose to use fatter items to create my vignettes. This made me scramble to create more space! Here's how I did it...

 Build your shadowbox and ink or paint any areas that may peek through the paper you cover the box with.

 Cover your box with paper inside and out.

 Paint your box cover on both sides as well as the edges. Notice I removed the tabs used to make this a removable cover.

 Paper your cover and cut out the egg shaped window with a craft knife. Then carefully fold the edges of the cover around the shadowbox to ensure a proper fit.

 Cut up a small cork, dowel or piece of balsa wool into four equally sized pieces. Mine are 1/4".

 Create a cute vignette inside the shadowbox. Hot glue the four pieces of cork/wood to the corners of the shadowbox so they don't stick out beyond the outer edges.

Lay the cover over the cork/wood pieces and fold the edges down into place.

Holding the cover in place, as shown above, lift up one flap and run a strip of hot glue along the shadowbox edge. Press the flap down until the glue cools. Repeat until all four sides are permanently glued down. That's all there is to it.
So who's ready to start making some cute Easter boxes?? Come on! You know you want to!
You can find my complete supply list at this link. 

collecting and diplaying one inch scale miniatures...

I've been collecting miniatures since I was a child. Way back then the miniatures were all different scales and mostly cheap things bought at the local five and dime store. I still have a bunch of those old miniatures in my collection and now they are considered kitschy vintage, lol. About ten years ago I started going to miniature shows (such as the Good Sam Showcase of Miniatures) and my collecting turned to artist made miniatures and higher end commercially made miniatures.

Miniatures are perfect for collecting because they don't take up much space to keep and display... until your collection out grows your space and you can't display everything. This is a huge problem because I want to see and enjoy my collection daily, not just store them in a box. So in my search for a better way to use my allotted display space I came upon a labor intensive, hand crafted, four room display box attached to a turn table (lazy Susan). I thought the idea was brilliant and rushed off to beg Leslie to have a kit made to sell through Alpha Stamps. And that is how the 4 Season Spinner was born. Of course my name was vetoed in favor of calling it the Rotating 4 Scene Room Box but no biggie, as I still got to make the first one for myself.

 Isn't it fabulous!? Four whole rooms to decorate!

 I decided to do the four seasons as a theme for this first one. (Yes, I will be making more because it is super easy to construct and I was able to display sooooo much stuff!) The first two rooms I decorated are Spring and Summer. It took so long to do the decorating on these rooms that you will not get to see Fall and Winter until next month when I finish them. Anyway, here's Spring in all her Easter bunny glory...

 I love the Easter Bunny wall paper, so Springy! I must admit most of the smaller stuff in this room is from my collection and is either vintage, handmade, artist made or no longer made. But there is a supply list of the available items, here. Remember, decorating a room like this gives you an excuse to start collecting or to start displaying your collection.

Let's take a look at beautiful, dreamy Summer...

 I decided to do a Victorian style boudoir to represent Summer because I had tons of stuff to use. You may remember the dresser from a previous post. I love the way the dresser turned out so decided to keep it. I did use a bunch of stuff in this room that is actually available, YAY!. Here's the supply list. (Also, the shoes are made by Sylvia Roundtree, (The Doll's Cobbler) and are amazing. But the chair is vintage and was snatched up by me on eBay.)

 By the way, I didn't use permanent glue to attach my stuff to the room this time since I was keeping this for myself and I may want to change things up at some point in the future. I used Bluestik Reusable Adhesive Putty instead of glue. It's cheap and works amazingly well.

Wow! Thanks for staying to the end :) I hope you are inspired to make your own 4 Season Spinner or maybe it will be four of your favorite time periods (18th Century would be fab!) or four rooms inspired by your children or pets, or four fairy tale inspired rooms. The sky's the limit!

the forgotten garden...

For the last three months I have been working on a miniature garden scene. It started out as a simple garden shed, an idea triggered by the arrival of the Wooden Market Stall Kit, but it soon grew to included two Cottage Bases, an arbor, a platform base, stairs, the skeleton of the gardener, a huge wisteria vine, shutters, window boxes, and lots of garden accouterments...

As I was photographing the garden for this blog post I decided I really need to add one more Cottage Base in between the two existing bases so I can add a water feature... Yes, I may have become a bit dotty from inhaling too many glue fumes...

Let me show you some of the things I like best about my overgrown garden...

 The back of the shed has lots of "ivy" growing up it. I cut apart a plastic vine I got at a craft store to make the ivy...

 Inside the shed is a wonderful potting table stocked full of garden supplies. I used "soil" made for miniature railroad enthusiasts to fill my potting soil bag and make a dirt pile on the potting table. I find lots of useful stuff in the miniature railroad department of the craft store!

 I made this heather plant out of Flower Soft, Lycopodium, and floral wire.

 The wisteria vine was made from a plastic flower bush (from a craft store) I cut apart and combined with lots of Fern Garland to make it look overgrown.

 If you look closely you can see a cat peeking through the arbor at that nest tucked into the wisteria...

 A drippy faucet is easy to achieve with a bit of Making Waves Resin Water...

 Take a peek through the window and you will see a little rat watching the cat napping...

You can find my supply list here for all of the great products from Alpha Stamps. Speaking of great products... let me show you how easy it is to put together that potting table...

 I paint my pieces before I glue them together.

 All you need is a bit of white glue.

 Before I glued my table top on I decided to change the color...

 When the glue on my potting table was dry I touched up any spots I missed while painting...

 After the glue dried on the table top I gave the whole table a good sanding to make it appear used...

 

Then I applied a bit of darker brown paint here and there to age it even more...

Such a fun and easy little table to make! It could be used in a garage or workshop too :)

I hope I haven't put you to sleep with this loooong post! Thanks for stopping by and have a great and artful day!