Challenge 9 - Make a Mini Museum

Hello, welcome to Ram at Home's challenge number nine. This week we're going to be making a cabinet of curiosities or a mini museum which if you've had a go at some of the previous challenges you could have a go at popping your creations into it to make your own little mini museum or if you haven't had a go at the challenges and would still like to have a go at this you can do and you could just go and find things that you like in your garden or if you go on any walks and collect things, little memories or little tokens of things that you have collected you can pop into your little cabinet of curiosities and have your own little memory box museum. So what you're going to need is a box and I'm starting with quite a good size box, this is a crate here, a mini crate, probably have bananas or something like that in at some point, it came from the supermarket and I've also been collecting up lots of different shaped boxes, here we are, with the idea that I can make sections in my museum if I want to. But to begin with I'm just going to have a think about what I'm going to put in the museum. So these are the challenges that I had a go at, I made Geraldine so at some point she's going to need to go in. Blue Morpher, so I'm going to find somewhere to put my Blue Morpher. My Centurion, he's got to go in somewhere and also my Indigo Peacock, Origami Indigo Peacock. So there are four things that I'm going to put in the box but I'm also probably going to collect other things to pop around them. Now I think they would look a bit boring just like this so I'm going to show you ways to make it look more like an exhibit or a museum with ideas of which will help give you ideas of how to make your own as well. So let's get making. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to try and cut a plinth for my Centurion for him to stand in. So I'm going to actually cut a little hole in here so that I can fit the paintbrush through there. So I've cut the hole for my Centurion and then I'm Now you can see it's a bit squashy so I'm going to have to cut some of my plinth down. And there we have it, the Centurion with the cut down plinth box and he'll be in the museum like that. I've got another one of these boxes so I think what I'm going to do for my giraffe is I'm going to stick that there so it comes out so we've got more of a 3D effect. So I've got another box which I want to use. It's got these flaps on it so I'm just going to cut them off. And there we've got a little exhibition space there. Maybe I'll stick that on top here. And as you can see I'm building up like a little jigsaw almost of things for the exhibition. Another one in here. Something could go in there. So as you can see I've added some boxes into my crate box. A little cabinet of curiosities. Nothing's stuck down now so what I'm going to do is remember where I've designed everything to be. I'm going to take everything out and then I'm going to start collaging the back of the main box. I've got a range of collage papers including a newspaper so you can use whatever you want for the back and the sides of your space. So I'm going to start sticking and gluing these in. I'm going to cut into here just to take these side bits out so we can see what we're doing. And then I'm going to put some black. I've just got some black card so I'm going to stick that on the floor. So as you can see I have now collaged the inside of my box with lots of different colours and newspaper, bits of mirror, black card, flowery papers, all sorts of things that I've collected and found around the house. So the next thing I'm going to try and do is pop the boxes in but of course I want to decorate them first of all. So as you can see I am painting one of my prints in gold paint but you could also collage them, paint them, whatever you would like. If you paint them as you can see I'm beginning to paint it but I'm probably going to need to let it dry and then do a second coat. So I've painted most of them black around the edges except for my gold pimp and I just used an acrylic paint. So the next thing to do is to stick them down into place with a glue gun or I'm going to use double sided tape. So I'm going to stick these down now. So hopefully you can see I have now stuck all the boxes in, hopefully near enough where they were before and I'm actually going to start just popping things in to see how they look. That one fits in well and what I'm going to do now is start putting my exhibits into each of the little boxes. So there's my peacock going in. For the Geraldine the giraffe I'm just going to stick you back a little bit of a body and then stick that to the pimp. So hopefully you've just seen I got a little bit of cardboard, painted it and then I just folded one side down, stuck some sticky tape on to make a place for my butterfly. Now I've still got some spaces around here so I think I might go and have a look for some things to pop in it and the other thing I'm going to do is find some chalk so I can write the name of my museum here. So I've written my name, it's going to be the Cabinet of Curiosities and here it is. I found some other bits around the house to pop in it, my shell, my painted pine cone and a sculpture I gave to DeWince although the arms fell off so I like an old Roman statue. There's a bear, love that. Anyway so here it is, here's the little Cabinet of Curiosities and I can't wait to see what it is. As usual for each week we would absolutely love to see the creations you've come up with so if you manage to make a Cabinet of Curiosities or have happened to go at one of the other challenges we would absolutely love to see them and please send photos of them to the email address which is on this page or they can either be hashtagged to RamAtHome and this particular challenge goes out as a dedication to Carousel and all their work with Devon Young Carers so we're thinking about you all and sending lots of love and wishing everyone a very good week. Thanks for watching and hopefully see you again next week. Bye!