Halloween Apothecary - Part Two

If you haven't read it already, you can find Part One of my Halloween Apothecary project in this post.

Today I'll go into more depth of how I made a few special features and accessories.

I didn't want every section to be all shelves; so in the center unit, I inserted four matchbook boxes to create a set of drawers. I had to pad the sides with a bit of foam core board to make it a snug fit.

I painted each drawer black, glued them together and lined them with Halloween patterned paper. I used Tim Holtz' ring fasteners to serve as handles.

Each drawer is filled with spare potion labels... and if you look closely (click to biggify), something is crawling it's way out of the bottom one.

After viewing many Harry Potter reference photos, I wanted to add leaded glass somewhere to my project. Hogwart's is full of the diamond-patterned windows so I decided to create a door for one section decorated in that style. I tried many different methods; chipboard frames, plastic slide cases, I searched through my Cricut patterns.... nothing seemed to work well. Then I decided to just try a transparency sheet. I drew the pattern, re-sized, printed and cut it to cover a single square opening. After reinforcing the edges with black painted chipboard on the back, I added a gem brad for a door handle and two small hinges and attached the other side of the hinges to the wood frame.

Inside this section (and one other section in the middle unit) I have quite a few "test tube" style bottles that were on sale in the jewelery section at Michaels. All I did was remove the wire hook on the tops; they already were filled with glitter and sported those neat labels.

Every well-appointed apothecary requires some reference material. So, on the upper right one cubby one will find three aged scrolls and a quill pen in an inkwell. The quill is a real feather; the scrolls were made with plain paper stamped, inked and rolled with dyed string.

Then I made a book all Potter fans will recognize; this teenie "Advanced Potion Making" textbook was created using pages and book cover images I found on the net, shrinking them down dramatically to fit on the shelf.

 

After colouring with blue Copics, I wrapped the cover image around some thin cardboard (actually an old toothpaste box with the layer of graphics torn off!).

I inked and sanded the edges and bent the corners to portray the appropriate amount of wear (Ron and Harry fought over who WOULDN'T be stuck with this old book, it was so worn out).

I then glued the each of the uniquely-printed pages together and made sure that last page had "This book is the property of the Half Blood Prince" just like the movie prop (albeit in a much smaller scale!).

I also made a bookmark with Halloween paper, chipboard and string tassel. At about 2 inches tall, this is by far the smallest text I've ever made!

Well, I guess that is enough for today. I'll continue more about the project in Part Three.