A Long Term Project – A Cabinet Of Curiosities -

As I love a bargain, I was so excited to find the wooden Advent houses  in The Works had been reduced from £15 to £4, especially when one (I bought two) just cost me 25p, as I already had £3.75 on my loyalty card, but when I got home I knew I had to do something with one of them, at least, pretty quickly to justify the splurge and the space they were taking up. A crafty bargain is only a bargain if you use or do something with it!

However, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go down the Christmas route with either of them, so my initial thought was to try to put a Cabinet of Curiosities together with each door opening on to a scene or random, but interesting collection of little tranklements that I always seem to pick up in various Charity Shops, but often get lost on my normal shelves.

Soooooooooo I did some mooching on Pinterest, saved a few ideas …….. and a nugget of a long term project was born. 

I wanted the outside to look a bit sort of antiquey, worn and old fashioned, so the first job was mix a concoction of tea and coffee and a bit of paint to use to stain the wood. I’m not sure how long it is going to take to darken in multiple layers to my taste, but I’m sure I’ll get there by next week!  I also decided to wash over the back of the doors and the insides of each compartment while I decided how I might line them, but that stage might be a while off yet.

  

I removed all the knobs, no mean feat, with some of the surface wood splitting, but as the doors will be covered anyway with various papers it didn’t really matter.  Said knobs were then soaked in the tea/coffee/paint concoction to age them too. This also helped to soften and remove the glue that had originally been used to fix them.

I’m planning on using some of the papers above to cover the sides of the cabinet, doors and possibly to line some of the compartments.  I might also try to age them with the tea/coffee mix, before using a quick drying satin varnish to help seal everything, but again this might be a little way along the track.

I’m excited! My other mission now is to find all the curiosities to go inside, which is going to take time. I have a few bits already, but no charity 10p box etc. is going to go unscoured for tiny treasure, as I allow my usual obsession for getting things in proportion to fly out of the window, for once, scale just doesn’t matter.  I can see it all in my minds eye, but it’s hard to explain.

When finished I hope the cabinet will be a bit of an heirloom piece for Iris and Bertie, with each door opening to reveal a magical display which will be filed with awe and wonder……..  well, that’s the plan anyway!