A Little Bit of ME.

Remember the little shelf unit that I got a couple of days ago at the rummage sale? I couldn't stand it anymore. I stripped it's paper yesterday. I found that the person that made it didn't glue in the drawer front as I had assumed. They just never bothered to put a knob on the front. Thank you, whomever you are. (Is it whomever or whoever? I never can remember the rule on that one.) I pulled the drawer out and proceeded to take the wallpaper off. Thank you again who/ whomever. The wallpaper was glued in with a little white glue here and there and it was really easy to strip. I sanded it because it was gloss white paint. It would not have held onto another coat without the sanding.

I had no plans for what to do next, but it looked to me like something to hang in a kitchen. My real kitchen is mostly black and white, so it got a coat of black Ceramcoat. That alone made a world of difference. This is how it looked with only one coat.

Instead of watching paint drying, I cut out templates for wallpaper. I used illustration board(like mat board only cheaper at Michael's) for the back wall. I am not sure why the makers of this kit opted to make the back part of the wall inset. Maybe they thought that people would only put paper on that one. I like it with three so I traced two side pieces on poster board. I kept dry fitting them and trimming until they were just a bit smaller than the outer walls. I needed to allow for the thickness of the wallpaper wrapping around to the back of the pieces.

I sprayed the pieces of board with Elmer's spray glue and put them face down on the paper. A side note here. If you have something like this paper with noticeable stripes that you want to get straight, hold it up to a window or put it on a light box and position the board on it. I used the family room window. I tried really hard to ignore all of the dirt. Repeat after me. "Miniature making is much more important than washing windows. They just get dirty again the day after you do it."

Anyway, I then trimmed the edges about 1/4 to 1/2" all around. When you want to cover a curved piece like this with either paper or fabric, you have to clip the edges. Always remember to cut Vs in the outside curves and just slits in the inside curves. And don't forget to cut a 45° angle on all of the outer corners.

By that time, the second coat of paint was dry. I glued the edges on all three pieces around to the back. I used Aileen's fast grab for this. It does just that. Grabs fast! Then I used the same to glue the pieces in place in the vignette. I put the side pieces in first and then the back.

I cut a piece of illustration board to fit the floor and covered it with a scrap of old black and gold wallpaper that I had stashed.

The last thing I did was find some buttons in grandma's button box and stack them from large to small and glue them together. These are the drawer pull. I don't imagine that I will be using the drawer much, so they will work just fine.

Now about that ME in the title of the entry. In case you haven't already figured it out. It's because of the wallpaper. It is a Mary Englebreit design. Now all I have to do is go look for something ME style to put in the scene.

I am going to go digging through my stuff and see if I can find something suitable. Hopefully I won't have to make anything. Maybe I will get the workroom a little straighter while I am hunting(and hippos fly). OK. I'm fibbing. I will probably totally ignore the surroundings while I search.

See you tomorrow.