Craft Naturalist's Box of Wonders

A few weeks ago Jenni discovered that our local Spec's (a chain wine/liquor store) sold empty cigar boxes for $1-2 apiece. Intrigued by the designs and the high quality of some of these wooden boxes, she began scooping them up for yet-undetermined craft projects.

Yesterday Z and I were playing an odd game involving me playing her electronic keyboard as a musical accompaniment for a narrative drama she improvised and enacted with various stuffed animals. Things got very dangerous very quickly and many lower and black keys were played. One of the suspenseful story's many climaxes involved a thin strip of felt Z found on the floor and declared a "biting string" that then bit her and her friends. The Biting String became a "dead snake" after the story was over, and Z produced what she declared a snakeskin, which was actually a bit of fabric left over from another project we'll blog about soon. These crafty improvised artifacts gave me the idea of creating a naturalist's display box filled with mock plant and animal remains, and our first cigar-box craft project was born.

All of the items in this box are of Z's design and description. I assisted with composition, handled the pins, and made the labels with our family's Dymo Letra Tag labeler, which usually has much more important things to do.

Craft foam provides a backing that gives us some padding for the pushpins (the wood is fairly thin) and a nice contrast, as well as serving as a raw material for some of Z's creations.

By the time I was making labels, the dead snake had become "snake blood."

Those strange sequin clusters have lived many lives. Originally produced for a handmade clothing from a past generation, their most recent gig was as patches used to cover up a pen mark on some of Z's favorite pants, since outgrown. You'll see those pants in a craft post soon, as Jenni and Z made them into something else, too.

The "giraffe bone" (sometimes described as a "giraffe heart") is a vintage button from the sewing basket of Jenni's late grandmother.

I'd like to make one of these with real items we've found in nature soon - we'll have to get more of those colorful pins. We've been pretty crafty lately, so expect more craft posts, interspersed with reviews of the kids' and parents' products we're loving, in the weeks to come.