Its the time of year for coughs and colds, or maybe I watched too much Harry Potter over Christmas, anyway I developed a strange desire to make an Apothecary Shoppe (complete with felted Apothecary) for Nieva to visit. Apothecary is an archaic term for a pharmacist, or herbalist, who makes and dispenses pills and potions. To begin the shop I ordered some lovely glass jars of various miniature sizes online and began filling them. It was enormous fun searching the house for miniature “herb - like” substances to put in the jars. Genuine herbs work pretty well, as do tea leaves. The many tiny seeds and flowers I harvested from my garden the other year came in handy too. Thinking in miniature has changed my view of the world - everything runs through the lens of “what can I make this into?"
All manner of Apothecary goodies in jars, and I have lots of ideas for other mysterious items to include in the shoppe.
These are some of my favorites. The jars on the left are filled with olive oil and Sage seeds, Rose petals, and a Sculpey clay snake. (Had forgotten that Sculpey is hard after it is baked so I was lucky that it just fitted through the neck of the jar!) There is also some real snakeskin gathered eons ago from a stone wall, and some random bones I found in the woods, also eons ago (don’t ask why I kept those awful things all these years!)
These tiny screw top jars were a great Dollar Tree find and I just hid the metal with some fabric and string. It was fun to make the little labels on my jars and inscribe them in a language known only to my apothecary! ;)
Now, with a large collection of goodies for sale I need to make Ye actual Shoppe. It is virtually impossible to find 1/6th scale (barbie size) dollhouse stuff that is not ultra modern, (and I couldn’t afford it anyway.) So, I went in search of something from which to make ye olde shelves/cupboards. On a wonderful shopping expedition I discovered a Dollar Tree store and a Hobby Lobby next door to one another (died and gone to heaven. Lol!)
My stash from Dollar tree was epic - a whole bunch of faux wood flooring, potential shelving and cupboards, mini plant pots, cork sheets, and all manner of useful and fancy stuff.
Hobby Lobby is a good deal more expensive but has some marvelous things, like these wonderful tiny metal drawer handles, that I haven’t seen elsewhere.
Eager to get going, I began constructing my cupboards, creating two little drawers to go into each one. The wood is simple basswood - so easy to cut with a craft knife and glue together.
Now I added those nice little drawer handles. For the top drawer I divided it into three and used brass colored paper fasteners. With the drawers finished and working I then painted them with burnt umber acrylic.
I painted a coat of satin varnish over the acrylic, then glued the two sets of drawers together and fancied them up with a bit of gold paint and a cork surface on the top. I’m not a great carpenter - yet - but I was fairly pleased with how this turned out.
Next stop - creating some shelving for all those jars, oh, and of course an apothecary to make the potions and pills!