Cabinet of curiosities

I like crafting and I do several crafts. I crochet, I scrapbook, I do cross stitch and other embroidery, and occasionally I make quilts or sew other things. I’ve also dabbled in rock painting and various other crafts, plus I read. I read a lot.

You’d think I’d have enough to keep me out of mischief, wouldn’t you? Especially considering how many WIPs I have and how many planned projects. Well, apparently not, as I seem to have acquired a new hobby.

It started last year when we went to the craft show at the NEC. ( Ah, remember the days when you could go to shows and exhibitions? Sigh.)

I had a wish list for the show. Mostly stamps & dies plus a few storage items. We got there early, I got most of the stuff on my list and had pretty much had enough by the time it got really busy. As we were heading out, I spotted a stall with wooden stuff on it. I glanced and walked past but then glanced again and saw a cat. This got my attention so I looked a bit closer, had a chat with the nice lady on the stall and bought the cat, which I assembled and decorated, as seen here.

I really enjoyed doing the cat so went online to buy one of the gorgeous curio cabinets that I’d also seen on that stand. The made up examples were lovely and they have a blog with loads of instructions and ideas.

I actually ended up buying three cabinets, some packs of teeny baskets and some of their buttons. I couldn’t decide which style of cabinet I wanted to create so thought I’d do a few.

I’ve only just started playing with them, as I made myself finish the Baltic scrapping first, otherwise it’d never have got done. I’ve just finished assembling and painting up the first cabinet and it was great fun.

This is what it looks like when you get it. This is a cabinet and a pack of three baskets. There are really good, detailed instructions for assembling the cabinets so it didn’t take long to make these up and this is what they looked like then. Next came the really fun part – painting.

First I used a stencil and some texture paste on the front, to give a bit of interest and then did two coats of acrylic paint in Plum suede. It still looked a bit flat so I very lightly went over the edges and the top of the stencilling with some Inka gold in Rose quartz. I’m really chuffed with how it turned out. A close up to see the Inka gold a bit better. I was aiming for a slightly distressed look, which I think I achieved.

I also backed the shelves with some patterned paper from one of my pads from The Works.

Next I’m going to decorate the baskets and plan what to put in them and then start making lots of items to fill those shelves. I’m going with a theme of ‘things that I like’ for this one, so there’ll be books, cats and Disney for starters. This is so much fun!

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Something a little bit different.

I had a smashing time at the NEC craft show a few weeks ago. We didn’t stay long as I was struggling a bit with the crowds but as we’d got there early, I managed to get pretty much all the stuff on my wish list, and a few things that weren’t.

One of the stands was selling wooden kits. I only glanced at it as we went past, until I saw this. Anything cat-themed is worth a second look so I stopped to see what it was. I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it so asked the lady running the stall and she showed me one that she’d finished and gave me loads of tips on what to do plus pointed me to their blog.

While I was buying it, I spotted some mini cabinets that were made up and filled with teeny items. I was tempted but thought it best to make the cat ornament before buying anything else. These are the cabinets on their website. Just look at the examples! I really want to try that.

The cat is finished, and I really enjoyed doing the painting, inking and assembling. He’s hanging in my craft room now and I’m chuffed to bits with him. I’ve bought a cabinet to do next but am going to use it as incentive to finish scrapbooking the Baltic cruise. I must stop putting that off in favour of shiny new crafts.