On a sidetrack: natural history museum roombox - part 2

I left you guessing about the themes of the three remaining galleries in my miniature museum in a tea box. Five of them came to mind quite quickly, but I have to admit that I really had to rack my brains to come up with the theme for the sixth room.

Gallery 4 – Insects and reptiles

I’m not a fan of insects. Even less so of reptiles. (That’s putting it mildly.) Of course, there are exceptions. Butterflies are gorgeous, for one. And turtles and chameleons definitely have their charms. So they were given a gallery of their own. And okay, there’s a crocodile too—only because it’s such a miniature one.

I imagined a cabinet filled with drawers containing pinned butterflies. Yes, the original idea was actually to cut out dozens of little butterflies, fold them slightly in the middle, and then glue them on to create a 3D effect. However, I quickly realized that this would take far too much time. So instead, images of butterflies were placed inside the drawers. In the central section of the cabinet, I added extra educational charts.

Room 5 – The underwater world

I love the sea. It gives me a sense of space and tranquility. Yet beneath the surface, it is teeming with life.

I started by making a jellyfish. (Another creature I don't like to encounter in real life, but one I love admiring in aquariums. The beautiful colours and the graceful way it drifts through the water are simply mesmerizing.) I removed the plastic backing from a googly eye, leaving the transparent plastic dome as the jellyfish's body. I decorated the inside with acrylic markers and glass pens, preserving some of its transparency. I made the tentacles from coloured wire and embroidery floss, which I frayed slightly, and attached everything together with a pink bead.

A small piece of decorative moss became "coral"—an idea I can't take credit for, as I saw it in an article in Dollshouse Nederland. Coincidentally, I had received an amaryllis from my parents-in-law in January, and it had been wrapped in exactly this kind of moss.

In April, we went on holiday to the island of Sal in Cape Verde. On the beach, I found some beautiful seashells whose shape immediately reminded me of a turtle's shell. One of them already had a tiny hole, allowing me to insert a pin.

For the remaining sea creatures, I used polymer clay. As a child, I often crafted with it, but the last time I had worked with clay was twenty years ago. (I had no idea whether I could still do it!) I sculpted a starfish, a seahorse, and a pufferfish, and coloured the clay using a combination of wet and dry pastel chalk—a technique I had never used as a child, so it really felt like taking a leap into the unknown. Fortunately, it worked out well, although all three turned out rather large, especially the seahorse.

Room 6 – Mammals

The deadline for giving the gift was approaching, and I still had an entire room left to complete. So I only assembled the display cabinet itself and filled it with plastic savanna animals that occur in South Africa. My friend's family has enjoyed two wonderful holidays there, so it seemed like a nice personal reference.

And with that, I present the fully completed miniature museum.