Finishing up some details

As we were saying yesterday, here is the update on the door inserts:

Before:

After:

The fabulous window panel comes from the shop of Suzy. She has several models for you to choose from, along with lamps and printable furniture.

Also, I finished up the cellar.  Many thanks to my coworker Carlos for cutting up some wood pieces for me!

For starters, the ceiling.  I just used some craft sticks cut to measure, painted and glued to the ceiling paper.  I wanted to imitate visible beams, which I think is now trendy in decoration.  It just seem the natural thing to do on a cellar:

And it was super easy to affix it to the ceiling:

I love the look!

I showed the pic to Carlos, and he said that is precisely how his cellar is!  

Then, the fun part: walling up Mr. Fortunato!  Carlos help with that too by cutting to measure some wood for the fake walls:

All I had to do was sand them a bit so they would fit perfectly, and cover them up with the same red brick wallpapers as the rest of the walls:

Front

Back

 

Now for the fun part: setting up the stage for Mr. Fortunato!

Looks awesome!

This is what it would look like if you open the cellar door.  If you recognize the painting, you are extra awesome ♥  I love hidden references!

 And finally!  Setting up the residents: Mr. Fortunato and his friend the rattie! My very special homage to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado":

Soooo fun! Even more so with Halloween coming up!!

 I absolutely love how the cellar has turned out!  In case you don't know, the painting in front of the door is The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies by Van Klomp - this painting is featured in the British series Allo' Allo', and it makes for quite some adventures.  At some point, they hide it in a cellar ;)

The cellar is all done

 Yesterday Kassandra and I spent all day setting up the cellar.  We started by putting the floor, a gorgeous piece from Ana Circea:

Then we started with the walls.  Kassandra wanted to have bricks, because she says they help to keep the wines and the spirits in good condition.  The wallpaper is the lovely design of Veronique, from Pixel Market.  Our first wall was the one with the window.  We joined a couple of sheets together, and then made a template for the window:

Then we cut the the wallpaper to measure and glue it to the wall.  We even got the door off the house to work better

The we added the bamboo blind.  Kassandra was very happy with it!

And then we attached the door to its place again

The bamboo blind is the lovely work of Amanda from Mini Maison Miniatures.  After that, we started with the walls.  We had to attach several pieces together, because it was a long wall:

One down, two to go!

The back wall:

And the left wall.  The door gave us a bit of trouble, but everything got sorted out:

It looks great!

We put all the furniture in place, and Kassandra can start decorating:

What's an skeleton doing there??!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The story with the skeleton is the following:  I always said that if I had a cellar, I wanted to have a walled up skeleton, as the one that appears in the story "The cask of Amontillado", by Edgar Allan Poe.  So, now that I have a cellar, here we have Mr. Fortunato after the encounter with his destiny.  He is waiting for me to buy some wood to make a false wall to bury him.  For the moment, he is chained up, sitting besides the famous cask of amontillado and accompanied by a rat.  Hopefully I can take care of him soon...

A new piece for the museum is finished!

Some days are just days of accomplishments.

This morning I decided it was time to finally do a much postponed project: the Feejee mermaid case.  I bought a couple of mermaid skeleton charms (just in case one of them got ruined), and asked dear husband to please paint one with his acrylic paints, like he does with his Warhammer skeletons.  "How do you want me to paint it? With shadows, or...?", he asked.  "Paint it however you think it will look best", I said.  And he did, and the results were fantastic!

So, my job was about to start.  Initially, I thought of making the case to showcase the mermaid skeleton with scrapbooking cardboard.  But it looked kind of bland to me, so I decided to use wood instead.  I purchased popsickle sticks, and cut 4 of them to measure to make the body of the case:

2 parts for the bottom, 1 part for each side

And two small pieces to complete the case

All glued up!

After that, it was time to stain and paint.  I wanted the inside to look old, and the outside to give some contrast.  So I stained the inside with Inktense Chestnut ink, and painted the outside with black paint:

Then, I cut a piece of tan velvet paper to cover the bottom of the inside, where the skeleton would lay, as to mimic the look of sand in a beach:

Then I glued the piece of paper and the skeleton, and vòila!

I even added a couple of pamphlets from Victorian exhibitions related to the Feejee mermaid, and a picture of a gentleman posing with one of the multiples Feejee mermaids that were so popular back in the day.

I absolutely love the final look!  It already has a place of honor in Kassandra's museum:

Is it hoax? Is it true? Who knows!

The musuem is coming along very nicely, but still a lot of work to be done!