Thirty Minute Minis

Today I am sidetracking. I went to K Mart this morning. I was walking through housewares when this lantern practically jumped into my cart! Then I heard this little voice. It said "Buy me!" I looked at the tag and it said 5.00. It was once 9.99. Half price. My kind of sale.


The glass part is only 6" high and 4" wide. It looked so lonely sitting there on the shelf all by itself. I thought it would be much happier if I brought it home and turned it into a display case.


There was a candle ring in the bottom of the lantern. It was glued in with some kind of metal glue. I pulled it out with a pair of pliers and brute strength. Well maybe not brute strength. OK. I admit it. It wasn't glued in all that good. My favorite needle nose pliers got it out in a matter of seconds.


I whipped out some scraps. There was mat board. A piece 4" by 6" would do for the back wall. There was foam core. A piece 4" by 4" made the floor.


Then I went through and found a piece of wallpaper just big enough to cover the mat board and wrap around to the back by at least 1/2" all around.

I also found a scrap of carpeting(upholstery material) to match that was about 6" square. I needed 1" to wrap around the edges of the foam core and glue to the bottom. One 4" scrap of baseboard completed the materials.

The only other supplies I needed were spray glue for the wallpaper and white glue for the rug.

I set to work wrapping the wallpaper around the mat board and the fabric around the foam core pretty much like you would wrap a package. I did miter the corners.

The whole operation took about a half hour. That included talking to my daughter on the phone and not really working while talking.



Here's the finished product. It's just big enough to display a chair and a couple of cats.


The chair is one of the "Take a Seat" resin chairs. You will recognize the cats from an earlier entry. They were my mom's day present from my daughter.


The whole point of this exercise is that you don't have to have whole days to finish a mini project. You can do this kind of project in any lantern, birdcage or terrarium. I have even seen people do something similar in glass jars. Anything that you can see through and that you can put a floor and a back wall in will do.


I am off of my soapbox now and back to work.

See you tomorrow.