Building the cellar

This magnificent shelf comes directly from one of Eva Malmsten's books. It is a lamp shade, and I found it in a thrift shop very soon after I had started making the house. I would have never thought of it as useful. Talk dollhouse eyeglasses! This is the cellar of the house, and of course in the cellar there must be sacks with flour and potatos (which I made from a kitchen towel, filled with beads), and beer barrels. The smaller barrel is a corkscrew, and I added a tap made from a drinking straw and a bead. I made the two black barrels in my pottery class. The shelf must be filled with preserves:

I made most of the jars from pieces of disposable champagne flutes left after a party. I glued each tiny tube to a piece of transparent plastic food container, and I cut lids from medicine cards. The preserves are seeds and dried plants from my garden. Eventually, I filled the whole shelf.

 

This ancient photo frame lay upside down at a flea market, and I saw immediately that it was a cellar door.

The final touch was this wine rack, made from a plastic vegetable container. The bottles are eyedrop dispensers, painted green. The labels are cut from real wine labels - there is usually a tiny image on the back. The corks are match heads.