A long time postponed project: The Phantom of the Opera shrine

It has been literally years since I have been planning to do this.  But for some reason or other, it was something that always got pushed to the back burner.  These days of quarantine were the push I needed to finally do it.

The Phantom of the Opera shrine:

The truth is, the glass domes I had bought were not big enough to accomodate this display, so I finally caved in and bought this kit from Art of Mini, as well as a set of Venetian Masks.  I substitued the enclosed papers with some sheet music, printed at home, from Vectoria Designs.  In one of them you can see the title "Don Juan Triumphant" - the opera score Erik was composing.  Then I included the Phantom's mask and a a red rose.

It was super simple and easy to make, and I am very happy how it has turned out.  Now, I face a problem: it does't fit the place where I wanted to showcase it.  Either I have to find somewhere else to put it, or it will have to go to the new house (in time).

Crafting journals

Long time no writing!

My absence is only due to a lot of crafting.  As many of you know, I am a follower of Vectoria Designs, and of course I have been doing many of the tutorials Tinne posts on YouTube.  The last one is one I am particularly proud of.

I have zero knowledge of scrapbooking, and most of the time I reproduce what Tinne does as faithfully as possible.  Not only to learn, but to see if my imaginations sparks a bit and I can create some pretty designs of my own.

The last tutorial she made was something that I just HAD to do.  Here is the video:

Since the student year has finished, I wanted to make this planner for my husband for next year.  It is something so simple and nice looking!  So, I took the freebie, printed about 27 sheets of paper (double sided) so it would last a whole year, and started crafting, following the instructions closely.  I so enjoyed it!  And here is the final result:

Front

Back

Weekly planner

My husband loved it!  And then I wanted to make one for myself.

Since I do not have a need for a planner, I decided to make a blank journal.  I chose a marine theme, with some of Tinne's gorgeous nautical papers, and this is what I finally made:

Front

I was bold enough to add liner pages in this one :)

Back

The little inside pocket holds a mermaid tag, that I will use as bookmark, when needed. 

I will probably make more of these as Christmas presents.  They are addictive, and there so many themes one can choose!

So, stop reading this and go make one for yourself! 

Christmas letters are starting to pile up

Kassandra invited me over today for tea, and she showed me some of the letters that the children had written to Santa.

Letters have been made with templates from Vectoria Designs

"I can see the mailbox is getting full", I said.  "Are they being extra nice now that Santa is coming?"

"They are making an extra effort, but they are good kids all year round.  We hardly ever get fights or arguments.  I am starting to get the packages ready".

"I cannot wait to see them!"

Having fun with Vectoria Designs projects

I have already mentioned Vectoria Designs sometime.  I have used several of their designs to make pretty boxes and other stuff for Kassandra's house.  What I did not know is that it could be so much fun working with paper.

I have become a susbscriber of Tinne's channel in YouTube, and we are updated frequently with new ideas, tutorials, sneak peaks and even freebies!  What's better than that?

I have been busy lately putting in practice some of the ideas she offers for projects.  They are very easy to do, and so rewarding!  Best of all, some of them are even good as little gifts for friends and family.

Here are some of the things that I made:

From this tutorial

From this tutorial

Halloween treats: milk box, Tic Tac box, pockets, and assortment of bags

Alice in Wonderland Tea Box

This is a project I thought of myself: the Chopin Liszt Shopping List (!):

As you can see, I even added a magnet to hang it on the fridge door

And this is what I am working on right now; a lovely industrial style box:

From this tutorial

 And after decorating it:

I still have a lot of work to do on this one; I have to make the metal corners, but give me time... 

I am sure you will find something on Tinne's channel that you may enjoy doing.  Go and have a look at her shop too!

Little gifts for my belly dancing mates

As I mentioned that I am relocating soon, I wanted to give farewell gifts to my troupe friends.  This is how they ended up being:

Everything you see in the pics are printables from Vectoria Designs' shop.  The burlap bags come from a dollar tree store.

I used the mermaid tags because we played mermaids in our Summer performance last year. Along with all the wonderful printies come a pair of earrings from Alarde, a bag of Moroccan tea and the hand-made Egyptian magnets that I mentioned some days ago.

I hope everyone likes everything...

Micro mini dollhouse for my mother

My mom has an ordinary cabinet that she used to showcase jewelry in our of her scenes.  The scene, a fancy ladies shop, has changed recently with new furniture and decorations, and she did not like the cabinet there anymore.  Since the cabinet has a couple of glass doors, she had the idea of transforming it into a 1/144 scale dollhouse.

She wanted to buy the furniture and start decorating right away, but I told her maybe it would be nice to put some wallpapers and some walls on it, and I offered to do it for her, as she has zero hability for this kind of thing.  She happily accepted.

It did not take me long to design some pretty wallpapers with the help of Vectoria Designs papers.  I submitted everything for approval, and today I finally put it together:

Upstairs there will be a bedroom and a sitting room - kind of like a suit, that is why there is no extra wall added there.  Downstairs a kitchen and a living room.  I made the extra wall with balsa wood, whose edge I painted with a red marker to imitate the mahogany of the cabinet.

I am very happy how it turned out.  I know she will have fun adding furniture!

Tarot reading in Kassandra's shop

Today I found Kassandra very busy.  She was beautifying one of the corners in her shop.  She has a small sitting place behind a screen to do readings for her customers; mainly tea leaves, tarot cards and palm readings.  She said she had not changed the decorations for very long, and it was time to try something new.

Before:

And after:

She explained that her friend Ana had provided her with the supplies, and the change looks really good.  The tiny pictures on the wall, the big placemat on which the new deck of cards rests and the advertising sign on the screen.  There is also a small picture on the table of a lovely lady.  Kassandra said that she was an old friend that taught her some clairvoyance secrets.  

She also has new merchandise in her shop: tiny tarot decks in their boxes.  She hopes that her customers will like them.

The Tarot cards are the ones I used to sell in my shop

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Fantasy apart, the tiny tarot boxes I made myself with the help of an awesome template, creation of Craig P. Forbes.  You can custom made any box for any set of cards of any size that you may have.  However, I had to tweak my way around them, because the design works well for real life card size, but the 1:12 scale proved to be very tiny for the program and some flaps were omitted.  But I had loads of fun adjusting and mounting the boxes.  I even made a real life box for a deck of Steampunk cards that I bought from Vectoria Designs.  They fit perfectly!

New paper design at my shop

It's been quite some time now that I want to craft realistic looking papers for dollhouse settings.  I think there isn't just enough of them - specially if you are like me, and don't have an ordinary looking house that can get by with things such as romantic letters or cute notepads.  I bought a set of printable parchment witchy papers from Vectoria Designs for my own dollhouse, and they are just so irresistible that I wanted to share what I created with them.

I made a couple of box holders for my dollhouse' shop to showcase them to customers:

But then, I thought most people would not care for that, so I turned them into pretty pagan stationery:

If your house has a witch or wizard, they would probably welcome them!  You can find them in my shop.