Easter Basket Assembly In Miniature

I love the idea of this GSL Hidden Drawer Book Box because it looks like an ordinary book from the outside but has a secret on the inside. I used it to make an Easter themed book with a hidden miniature egg dyeing scene on the inside.

The first thing I do when I start a project is lay out all of the pieces to see how they all fit together. The outside consists of these 6 pieces. The large rectangle on the right is the book's spine.

 

The inside hidden room has just these four pieces.

 

I used tacky glue to adhere the chipboard cutouts together. Once I have the pieces secured, I run a cotton swab around the seams to remove the excess glue.

Once the glue was dry, I chose the papers I wanted to use. I chose two pretty blue sheets from Graphic 45's Botanical Tea collection for the room's wallpaper. The 'chair rail' is made from a coffee stir stick that I painted off-white. This covers up the seam where the two different papers meet. The ceiling and floor papers were from my ever-growing collection of scraps.

The papers I chose for the outside of the book were a lovely blue check from Graphic 45's Mother Goose collection and an interesting off white handwriting paper from My Mind's Eye Stella and Rose collection. All of the paper edges were inked with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

Since the hidden room is only 1.75 inches deep, I needed to construct my own tiny table for the inside. I used a cutter and sanding block to cut a tongue depressor to the width I wanted for the table's top.

The legs were made from miniature wood finials and bingo numbers, which I painted with white and turquoise acrylic paint before assembling the table. It was finished with a bit of blue and white baker's string around the table's edge.

The little basket was an experiment! I started by wrapping Saran Wrap around a knob I had lying around (because I couldn't find a big marble). I cut a 2 foot length of jute twine and applied a generous amount of tacky glue to the bottom of the knob. I started by coiling the twine around and around the knob, adding glue as the diameter of my basket increased until all the twine was used up. I set it aside for about 30 minutes then slid the Saran Wrap off of the knob and peeled the wrap from the basket. I let it set overnight and am pretty happy how it turned out.

I lined the basket with a bit of florist's moss and set about making treats out of polymer clay. Tiny eggs made from pastel clay, a larger chocolate egg made from brown clay and adorned with a few nail art poly clay flower slices. The peeps were just hand molded then dotted with acrylic paint eyes after baking. While I was making tiny eggs, I also made some white ones and glued those into miniature wood bowls that I had painted white. I mixed a bit of Ranger Distress Stains in pink, orange and purple into a bit of Glossy Accents then poured those over the bowls of eggs.

 

The last thing I added was a fuzzy blue chenille chick. Once everything was securely glued into place, the only thing left to do was to adhere the finished room to the book's spine with E6000.

Here's a close-up of the little work table.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Gypsy Soul Laser Items Used

Hidden Drawer Book Box

Other Items Used

Acrylic paint

Tacky glue

E6000 glue

Ranger Distress Ink – Vintage Photo

Tongue depressor & stir stick

Miniature finial and wooden bowls

Bingo numbers

Baker's twine

Saran Wrap

Jute twine

Polymer clay

Nail art flower slices

Chenille chick