November | 2020 | Missing Willow Farm

Farmer’s Market Honey Display

Brian and I have kept bees off and on over the years and I spent many seasons at our local farmer’s market selling our honey (and lamb, eggs, produce, beeswax candles, soap & pottery). The GSL Mini House Room Box 4 Cubbies gave me the idea to make a miniature farm stand display that would make a beekeeper proud. Let me take you through how it came together.

Here are the chipboard pieces laid out. The interior of the house has interlocking pieces that make up the cubby sections.

After assembling the interior, side walls and bottom of the piece using tacky glue, I painted the cubby walls and front edges with off white acrylic paint. I also painted the interior surface of the roof pieces the same color.

The attic section of the house was papered in Graphic 45’s Olde Curiosity Shop Parlor Wall, which has a lovely bee pattern. The cubby walls were papered in one of Authentique’s Latest and Greatest papers. The floors got a woodgrain paper from Honey Bee Stamps Home Essentials.

The roof got a shingles paper also from the Home Essentials collection. I used a black and gray check paper from Kaisercraft’s Looking Glass Collection for the house’s exterior walls.

I made some fun things to go inside the display, starting with miniature candles made by dipping white florist wire in melted beeswax from our hives. Once cooled, they went on a small brass hook. I added a few descriptive signs.

I got some UV resin supplies for my birthday and these little yellow bears were my first resin project. I turned them into honey bears by adding lids made from small beads and painted toothpicks.

We never had an observation hive to take to the farmer’s market but a lot of honey vendors do. I started with a printed image and cut craft sticks to size. They were glued together and painted brown.

For a hive cover I glued on a small piece of transparency on top.

Once the glue was dried I simply cut away the excess.

Finishing touches include a spray of embellishment flowers in the attic space, along with a bee I made from pom poms and transparency wings.

The honey bears look so cute together! Any self respecting honey vendor has entered a jar or two in the county fair and come home with a ribbon or two (we have!). I felt this display deserved a few ribbons made from brads and blue (or course) ribbon. When I was making the dipped candles I poured the leftover melted wax in a rosebud mold and added a piece of florist wire for a candle wick. The honeycomb candles are made with small strips of hive foundation wax sheets wrapped around florist wire.

These floral candles on the left are simply molded polymer clay fitted with a florist wick. The observation hive cubby also contains resin honey jars.

I wish we had a real life size one of these! Thanks for stopping by!

GSL Product Used

GSL Mini House Room Box 4 Cubbies

Curiosity Cabinet

Today I am sharing a miniature display of curiosities I made from a GSL 6 x 6 Shadowbox. I’ve always been fascinated by curiosity cabinets and was inspired to fashion something in miniature that’s a nod to them.

Here’s the box laid out. It has a large area on top and three smaller cubbies below. I assembled it using a bit of tacky glue.

Once the glue dried, I painted the front edges of the box and the walls of the small cubbies with brown acrylic paint. The paper I chose for the background is 7 Gypsies Sirene paper.

The little egg collection is made from scraps of polymer clay. They are displayed in a GSL Mini Cigar Box which is available over at Alpha Stamps.

I painted it off white and glued the baked poly clay eggs in place. On the left side is something I’ve wanted to use in a project for a long time. My husband and I have kept bees on and off over the years. When you buy a package of bees it comes with a queen trapped inside a queen cage that is sealed with a sugar plug. Her worker bee attendants will eat through the sugar to release her into the hive. I removed the screen from the queen cage to use it as a mineral display case.

The outside of the cage was pretty rough so I covered the top and sides with a wood grained scrapbook paper. I chose a few polished minerals to tuck inside. Also included in the top section are some printed images of curiosity collections, resin animal skull flatback cameos, small seashells and tiny treasures. The butterfly specimens are mounted on a craft wood frame. A guinea hen feather is tucked into a shark vertebrae I picked up on our travels.