The Making of a Room Box - Part One by Jessica

For the next couple of weeks, I'm going to show you guys how I go about building diorama's or room boxes (if you prefer).

Over a late night conversation with my husband, we came upon the idea for this room box - surrounded with crime. I'm not going to give you all of the details just yet, though, so you'll have to be patient.

Building a room box is quite an undertaking - I always like to surround my pieces with a general theme - the more I know about who would live in the place I'm creating, the better it turns out in the end.

This box is created using the Open Front box, available from Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts. I really like this box because it's truly a blank slate for you to work with. You can alter it more freely should you decide to add windows or a door to your box. It's a thick chipboard and quite sturdy.

To begin, I assembled the box and stared at it for several weeks (before the conversation with my husband - haha). You can omit this step if you've already got a plan.

Once I had the idea, I used PVA glue to assemble the box, minus the frontispiece. I leave this off to make it easier to add floors and walls to the piece - it will be added as one of the last steps.

I painted the floor in burnt umber, because you never know how wood floors will turn out and it's nice to have an even colour below everything.

I printed out a brick pattern from my computer and glued it to the walls. This will not show quite so much in the finished product, so you'll notice some staining in the bottom corners from when I stained the wooden floors.

This is by far the best wooden (miniature) floor I've ever laid. Using a bag of wooden stir sticks (you can get a bag of 150 for 1.25 at the dollar store). As you might notice, the floor is laid in a 2/3/2/3 form. One layer has 2 planks, the next 3, back to 2, 3, and so on.

Despite it's small scale, this floor took me two full days to lay - measuring and sanding each piece made the end result something I'm truly proud of. In the past, I always used white PVA glue to glue the sticks down - the trouble with this is that the glue can warp the sticks, as well as if they are already warped, they will not lay flat as the glue simply doesn't have the power to grab them. I've since learned that hot glue is the way to go. A very thin bit of glue on each plank, and then held down and into place until the glue cools gives the best effect. 

I then took a paintbrush and brushed on layer upon layer of Minwax Oak wood stain. It brings such a lovely colour to the wood that painting just can't do.

Here's a sneak peak of one of the miniatures I've designed to go inside this room box - a filing cabinet full of many files and papers. Built from odd bits of wood and then stained.

Check back in next Friday for Part the Second of the Making of a Room Box.
If you want to see more sneaky pictures of things I`m making to go inside, check out The Crafty Goblin on Facebook.

Materials
Open Front Roombox

Brick paper (printed)
Paint, burnt umber
Wooden stir sticks
Minwax Oak Wood Stain