The blues Cupboard

There is a saying ' never get ahead of yourself' ! well I did ! I decided to make a small Swedish country cupboard and thought it would take say a day at most, stretching it! Wrong!

It begun as usual with the scale drawing and the choice of Venetien blind wood which from now on I shall call poplar wood. I knew I wanted it to be lined in wallpaper and chose a blue theme.

 Here I assembled the door with fine obeche in the center and poplar for everything else. You can see that I cut the front trim twice, too long first time. In miniatures each millimetre counts. I taped it to the drawing as it was glued.

 Here the base is balsa surrounded by poplar. The top you can see on the left is fine obeche but it seemed to thin so I chose some birch ply instead to give it a chunkier feel.

 The base close up, balsa is sometimes useful.

 I fitted hinges which was a nightmare and if ever a piece almost went out the window several times this was it ! Luckilly it was raining and besides I didn't want to be defeated by such a tiny thing. You can see if you look carefully that the door clasp is split to I made it again using three layers of 350 gram kraft card, drilling the hole before trimming it down . 

 The Inside before fitting some heavy kraft card to 'clean up' the interior as you can see below.

 The lining paper being fitted and sanded to age it and make it less 'white' and shiny. I painted it all with F&B New White as a base. It was easier to do all this before fitting the back panel.

 Fitting the shelf ready for the backing.

 A few pictures missing but I felt like I had been working on this for years by this time. Slight exageration ! Here I photographed it against the lining of a beautiful early 19 th box found in our local Junk shop for a few euros on saturday. I made up a mix of Indigo and Burnt Umber for the body and left the top mainly wood stained. I then re stained the whole thing over the paint with Walnut stain and it aged is quite well. I did this after much sanding. A tip here NEVER use indigo paint ! In textiles it is already a pain but as paint it's terrible. Next cupboard will be RED !

 The back, quite plain, just stained, sanded and waxed.

 It's fun when you can begin to play with scenes and the lining of this box gave me ideas. The chair is shop bought but much much sanding and trimming then painted Ochre over off white then sanded and aged then waxed. The profile on the cupboard is a 19 th century ' lava cameo' found on etsy and placed on a stand. The vases are the same as another post, found amongst a 'lot' of small items on eBay. They are two of my favorite pieces and a good 'standard' to compare other things to when collecting. 

 I decided that my 'house' although not yet build belongs to a woman who travels the world, bringing home things from many countries and who is not too fussy about things being neat and tidy. 

 I think that it is important when making a house to have a back story, it helps create and define.

A quick addition here. At one time I began making miniature cases of birds eggs and shells and even stuffed fish but that is the subject of another post !