THE PANTRY
The food storage area in the Mouse House was a priority from the beginning of this project. I knew I wanted to highlight miniature fruits and vegetables and make “canned” and boxed items to showcase on shelves.

I built a simple shelving unit and made bottles of food using beads, pieces of dried clay, and various spices. I constructed boxes and cans from cardboard and covered them with packaging labels printed from the internet.

The wooden vegetable storage unit was built with basswood and then filled with many of the fruits and vegetables I sculpted out of polymer clay while in California.

I placed the shelves in the back of the pantry, the vegetable bins under the window and a sideboard on the interior wall. The final piece of the pantry is the basket on a pulley system that can be raised through the pantry ceiling/kitchen floor so food can be brought directly to the cooking area.

THE KITCHEN
I worked the longest on the kitchen as I started designing and planning the layout from the very beginning of the seven year process. Details such as the tiled wall behind the stove (made with scrapbook paper covered in gloss), the kitchen sink set-up and the refrigerator I refurbished were made a long time ago.

There are many components to this room, including: the loft storage, the pulley system, the shelves with the spice rack I made from beads and the dishes sculpted with clay; the food, such as the spaghetti in the strainer in the sink, the onion on the cutting board, the goods in the refrigerator and the cookies on the table; the hand towels and sink skirting; the wine rack and wine bottles (made with pipettes, paint and printed labels); the pictures on the wall and fridge; the cleaning supplies under the sink, etc.

Since I built everything over a long time period I don’t have many individual pictures of the construction processes so I’ll just have to remember via the photos!

Below is a picture of the two rooms together. The photo shows the pulley and the reel I made from a sewing bobbin.