FO: Doll storage

I love throwing things away. 

Okay, that's not accurate. I love finding things in my house that are not useful to me, but can be given away, sold, or donated to charity. I'm not what you'd call a minimalist (what knitter is, really?), but open, clean spaces are so much easier to maintain when there's less clutter in my house. Imagine my excitement when, one day, Andrew pulled out a dusty looking vodka gift set from the top of a cabinet. It looked like this:

(c) Foodswami

We're not big drinkers, but the case reminded me of a trunk I had for my American Girl dolls:

Apparently, storage has been a big theme for me this week.

The trunk above was used to store tons of things, including a doll. Andrew's liquor case, at 14" was not tall enough to hold an American Girl doll (18"), so I figured it would at least be a decent closet/ storage container for her accessories. We took stock of our current situation:

Straps and shelves would work well for various little items, but drawers would be better. And there was the problem of the front... It had the Grey Goose logo embossed in the leather. We drew up some plans and got to work. While Andrew worked on the drawers, I came up with a solution for the front:

The logo is a sticker from the American Girl Scrapbooking area at our local Michael's Crafts store. I mounted it to a piece of brown mat board, and glued it to the logo.

Then, we worked on the inside. Andrew built some drawers out of poplar craft wood, and I tried to figure out a way to make the open space on the left work. My mom had suggested some kind of hooks for the larger hats my niece has. I didn't want to guess size and placement for hooks, so I came up with a modular solution: A corkboard! I cut out some cork squares, layered them to get the right thickness, and glued them to the inside face of the case. Andrew lined the drawers with felt, and I ran a white ribbon along the bottom (to help them slide easier), and at midnight last night, we were finished:

We printed out little pictures of the doll and our family members to pin up on the board (and added a cool sticker we found in the scrapbook aisle, too. I loved stickers as a kid! This Yorkie sticker wasn't like anything I'd ever seen before, though-- it's like 5 or 6 layers of felt. So cute!

I hope my niece likes the case!
- YX

PS: Did you know that you can click on my photos to get enlarged versions? When I post photos of patterns, those photos are linked to the purchase location or Rav pattern page.