The story inside the book, final chapter

 Today we are going to make some more items to stock up the shop with.


Have you ever notice how much erasers look like soap ?? Check the pictures below to find out how easy it is to make erasor soaps.

Adding a nice label and wrapping them in a piece of tissue paper or ribbon adds a really nice touch,

You can cut any shape you like from  your erasors

On the shelves there are several different kinds of erasor soaps. They are also perfect to use when you want to make mini soap chains. They are bascially soap on a rope with some embellishments added. A lot of fun to make both in full scale and in miniature.

Beads of course make perfect bottles in all shapes size and colors. I love adding tiny stick on rhine stones for bottle caps.

But do not despair if you do not have any beads around. Just get out the erasors and your knife again and you will find that you can make very lovely and easy bottles with those as well .

Here you go pretty bottles and soaps , all made ouf of erasors.

It is lovely to create  a set of toilettries in matching colors. This lavender set was made out of erasors and different kinds of beads.

Showing them on the shelves . The green set was made from a kit sold by www.minikitz.com the others are all my erasors and bead creations.

Hope this will inspire you.

The story inside the book, part 3

 Today we are  making something that can be sold in  " au bonheur des dames " Bath salts used to be a much appreciated gift in my family so I wanted to try and make some of those.  I had some pretty big bottles and I felt they were just right for storing bath salts that would be sold in smaller containers later.

Bath salt is very easy to make in miniature . It all starts with some sea salt or rock salt.  Just a little makes a whole lot of bath salt. It will be a good idea not to use the bigger pieces for they will look very  big in 12 th scale .

Then ofcourse you want your salt to have a pretty color.   For me this very easy method works very well .

Put the salt in a small container and grate a little bit of chalk or oil pastel over the salt.  I just used my exacto knife to do this.

Just give them whole thing a real  good stir  using a dry brush till your salt is  a nice color. You can add more color if you want to by adding some more chalk or pastel .

Here are some of the bath salts I made. They look pretty in glass bottles . Using one colour is nice but layering different colours looks smashing too. Add a nice label if you like and you are done.

The story inside the book , part 2

After a bit of hard thinking I decided the book would hold a little shop that would sell , perfums, soaps and other beauty products. Even though the shop is decorated in 1900 's style it is  to  be a shop that you could find these days and it sells oldfashioned as well as more modern products.

The first thing I tried was finding a client for the shop.............that was a big problem for with a doll inside there would be no room left for the items I wanted to sell.

To solve the problem I added a lady to the decoupaged wall. She is part of the decor but she also adds just a little bit of life to the shop.

I found her on the internet  and I printed her 2 times so I could use foam tape between the two layers and give her a little bit of dimension.

I could not resist adding a few things with a Parisian theme so it would be very clear where the shop was .

Then I built a whole lot of shelves into the book so I would gave enough room for all the  perfumes and stuff  I wanted to sell.

Here is a picture of what the fully stocked shop will look like.

Tomorrow  I am going to show you how to make some of the items in the shop.

 Perhaps it would be a good idea to start looking for your beadbox and some erasors.

The story inside this book

I found this wooden book box at the dollar store. It already had the fabric on it and the printed roses. I immediately knew what the story insde this book was going to be about.

Let me tell you a bit more about out it . The title of the book is Au Bonheur des Dames. Which roughly translates into "  where ladies get happy" . From the pictures you can probably tell that we are talking about Paris. I added the plaque and because I am a terrible painter I made the lettering using miniature alphabet pasta. Does not it look good ?  The labels I found on the internet and I felt they were perfect for the book. The ladies picture was stuck behind a plastic door stopper and then framed inside an old ring.

Then I went on to decorate the inide of the book. I felt the old catalogue  pages from the  19th century were just pefect for my book. I scanned them from a book that I own and then printed them on the computer. I aged them by dragging a used tea bag over them.   I cut the paqges into pieces and decoupaged them inside the book using Mod Podge. For now we are leaving the book to dry and I will tell you more about it a bit later.