Julia's Kitchen

I have always hugely admired Julia Child for so many reasons.  She was such an accomplished woman who is known and loved worldwide. She earned 3 Emmys, 4 James Beard Awards, a Peabody, a National Book award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She donated her Cambridge, MA kitchen to the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian in 2001. It's where her TV show was frequently filmed.  The kitchen was her favorite room.  She described it as “the beating heart and social center of her household”.

I wanted to make a miniature version which was a big challenge as it's quite well known.  That meant I was going to have to hand build the cabinetry, but I didn't have to build the structure as it lives inside a GSL Deep Open Front Room Box which is available over at Alpha Stamps.

The room box is 10 inches wide by 10 inches tall by 5.5 inches deep which is a lot of space to work with.  The interior walls were painted with acrylic paint.  The floor is a sheet of DCWV Photoreal linen paper that reminded me of 1950s linoleum.  It took me a while to decide if I wanted the front facade and ceiling of the room box included.  I eventually decided to leave them off to allow natural light inside the room to show off all the tiny treasures. 

The kitchen window has blinds that I made by cutting a section of a manila folder the same width of a GSL 4 Panel Window then scoring it into pleats. You can't really see the sunny blue sky outside with the blinds on top but that's OK... I know it's always sunny outside Julia's kitchen window. 

Leaving off the ceiling and front facade left me with some tabs that needed to be covered. My solution was to paper the exterior all the way to the top of the tabs then glue 0.2 inch square bamboo craft sticks to the top of the tabs. Below those I glued lengths of 3/8 inch width x 0.078 inch craft sticks.

The finished effect looks like crown molding at the top of the room.

 The cat and artichoke artwork she displayed on her cabinets were reproduced and set into two of the GSL Connie's Mini Frames.

Here are some close ups showing the details and all the tiny kitchen ware, which were sourced both from my stash and Alpha Stamps.

This project was great fun and required me to plan ahead and learn a lot of new skills.  It will remind me of her every time I walk by it.  Thanks for stopping by!

GSL Products Used

Deep Open Front Room Box

Windows 4 Panel

Connie's Mini Frames