Well, as it turns out, I may not be all that good at working with fiddly things after all.

I mentioned a while back that I was going to try to make my own stack of luggage to use as a bedside table in the main bedroom of my dollhouse.  I found an excellent tutorial video by Julie Warren on YouTube, and she makes it look so easy!

Her bases and lids ‘fit perfectly together’ (her words) … LOL.  Mine?  Not so much.

Wow!  Those are even a bit more embarrassing in a close up photo than I thought they were in real life.

I’m not going to try and recreate a miniature suitcase tutorial for you here since Julie has done such a great job in her video (and mine look kinda terrible so far).  If you want to try and make your own suitcases, please go check that out.

I gathered up my supplies and started cutting my pieces of Basswood based on the measurements in Julie’s video.  That’s when I ran into my first problem.  Measuring precisely to 14.5 mm is pretty tricky when you have the eyesight of a 61 year old.

So my cut pieces were a bit wonky, which means my bases and lids did not ‘fit perfectly together’.  But I used a little bit of Dixie Belle Mud in white to smooth out those flaws a bit.

And I kept going.  I next gave my pieces a coat of Dixie Belle’s Sawmill Gravy, then I measured a wide stripe down the middle and painted that in Dried Sage.

Once dry I sanded them lightly and then glued the leather strapping in place on either side of the Dried Sage and along the edges.  I think the leather strapping that I used was too thick.  I ordered it from Amazon and you just never know how something you order online is going to look in real life.

As it turned out, the strapping did hide a lot of the imperfections in my boxes though.  Especially where the sides met up with the top and bottom (or in my case, didn’t quite always meet up).

Next I pulled out the Tim Holtz pack of Curator Snippets.

These little bits and pieces are perfect for working with miniatures!  I picked out a few that I thought would look good on my suitcases, but before gluing them in place I ‘stained’ the edges of the paper with some of the Tim Holtz Distress ink in a color called Old Paper.

That just helped give them a bit more age.

Once they were in place, I simply used my finger to apply some clear wax to the painted areas of the suitcases followed by using a small brush to add some of the Dixie Belle Earth pigment along the leather strapping for even more dimension.

In her video, Julie makes handles for her suitcases using the leather strapping.  I tried that on the larger case, but didn’t really love the results.  Then I remembered that my dad had left a bunch of extra window handles in his toolkit.  So I pulled one of those out to see if it would work as a suitcase handle.

I like that a bit better so I think I’ll pull the leather handle off the first one and replace it as well.

Lastly, I lined the larger suitcase with some of the Tim Holtz Worn Wallpaper Scraps.

I’ll be honest, I found that process a little bit putzy so I only did the larger of the two suitcases.  Since I was planning to use these as bedside ‘tables’ it didn’t seem worth the effort to also do the smaller one since they would remain closed.

However, once I put the suitcases in place beside the bed I realized that they were just a bit on the small side for my purpose.  So I’m now thinking they are simply going to end up in the attic.

That’s a sneak peek at that space.  I’ll be sharing it soon, so stay tuned for that.

Even though my suitcases didn’t turn out perfectly, it was fun to try a new skill.  Perhaps I’ll give it another go to see if I can perfect my technique a bit more.

In the meantime, what do you think?  Have you created any miniatures from scratch?  If you have any tips be sure to share them in the comments.