A couple of printable freebies for you

I have been organizing my miniature files this week, and I found a couple of things that I used to sell in my shop, which I was asked several times if I could make accesible as download for a printable.  Since the shop is no more, here is a gift for you all.  The Apothecary boxes printable and the Apothecary labels collection printable:

Both the boxes and the labels were made using real, unmodified vintage pharmacy and apothecary labels.  Some of them have been restored a bit, but that is all.  No letters were changed and nothing extra was added.  They are all authentic as they are (were).

I hope you guys have fun playing with them.  I just love making dozens of tiny bottles and filling them up!  As always, feel free to share and pass them around (links are welcome too).  Just do not sell the files or any creations you make with them. 

New Apothecary cabinet

Already up for sale, a new Apothecary cabinet for your miniature setting.
As usual, it includes everything you see in the pic, including a metal microscope and a hand sculpted mortar and pestle imitating granite.
It is available in my shop.

Mini bottles and apothecary cabinet

The bottles arrived today; 60 tiny glass bottles to fill up and label! Who can resist that? I had to sit down and finish the first apothecary cabinet. I am so happy how well it turned out! It will be up for sale in my shop tomorrow.

Three different kind of jars, and all of them feature reproductions of real vintage unmodified apothecary labels. And of course, a brass scale and a glass stirrer or pipette.

I made a couple of them for my own cabinet, but I have not taken a pic yet; too little changes to show it. I will wait for it to be complete before showing it again.

I am waiting for more packages with more glass goodies inside...

Update on the Apothecary cabinets

The first round of bottles for the apothecary cabinets arrived yesterday!

They are a cute set of mini bottles in the characteristic caramel color of antique jars, and I was happy to see that the labels fitted perfectly. In fact, I was so happy with the result that I decided to make some for myself. Here is a first pic of them in my dollhouse shop:

After I began to craft the first cabinet that was going to be sold in my shop, it was painfully obvious to me that I was not going to be able to part with it, unless I had my own cabinet. So I took my food cabinet, emptied it, and began to think about the new apothecary design. Here is a sneak peak of what I have accomplished today:

The first shelf has the bottles that I normally use for potion jars; the second shelf has the new caramel bottles. All of them have a reproduction of a real vintage apothecary label. The third shelf has a candy jar that my mother sent me; I removed the lid, took out the candy canes and filled it up with tiny polymer clay Aspirin pills. The fourth shelf has a mixing bowl and a glass stirrer; I may end up painting lines on it to make it look like a pipette. Take a closer look:

There are 80 pills inside the jar... and you can see that it appears almost empty. I guess I need to make two times that to fill it up almost completely. Oh goodness!

Still waiting on two more packages with mini bottles to arrive...

Sources of inspiration

Sometimes the Muse can strike from the most strange places...

It had been some time since I wanted to try and make a pharmacy/apothecary/laboratory supplies cabinet.

My husband is a scientist, and I can tell you, a messy table/bench is the last thing you need if you want your work to be successful; dirt can spoil many hours of work if you are dealing with cells, and a glass left in the wrong place can finish in the floor with all your precious DNA inside. So I am not very fond of cluttered furniture, not even when it is in miniature. That's why all my cabinets are so tidy - blame it on the hours that we had to spend in the lab when experiments don't come out OK. I figure that if tidiness is necessary in real scale, more so in the cabinet of a skilled witch or wizard. Think about the protocols that are described in magic books and that you have to follow to the last detail... Anyway, the idea of the mad scientist or Victorian chemist have been going around my head, but I was not sure about how to bring them to reality.

Yesterday I put on a CD that I had not listened to in a long time. It's from Attrition, and it's called "All mine enemys whispers". It is inspired by the story of Mary Ann Cotton, who was sentenced to death in 1873 for killing children with arsenic. Attrition's Martin Bowes is a descendant of the arresting officer, Police Sergeant Tom McCutcheon.

And then the vision stroke me! I saw a dark chemist in London, where this woman went to buy the poison; the unsuspected pharmacist who sold it to her; the neatness of the filled jars in the shelves...

Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary, Alexandria

Right now I am on the hunt for different kinds of glass jars to fill the cabinets, and I am already working on the labels, which will be, of course, reproduction of real vintage pharmacy labels.

I hope to have a new line of apothecary cabinets, parallel to the magic cabinets. Science is as much part of my world as it is fantasy. How contradictory the human race can be... Will you come with me on my journey?