Flashback: Mother's Little Helper Tin

The world (especially now) can be a crazy place. Here's a little tin I made a few years back, to hold "Mother's Little Helpers". Can't everyone use one of these? Perfect for mints, or whatever your "little helper" happens to be.

Flashback: Fairy Tale Tin

Since Photobucket is now charging for what used to be their free photo hosting, many of my old photos posted here and to Craftster.org are now not showing up. I have been going through my Photobucket account and downloading as many photos as possible to restore the photos to both sites. Meanwhile, I've found lots of work that was done before I started this blog in 2011, so I thought I'd post some of those things here.

This one is an Altoids tin with a fairytale theme. I'll sprinkle more oldies but goodies in as I find them.

Lucky Stars

Did you ever wish upon a star, or thank your lucky stars? Well, then you're going to want to meet this little pixie, who sits up near the moon and collects those stars, making them available to those of us who need them. I made this tiny shadowbox using a Matchbox Cabinet from Alpha Stamps. Here's the little pixie, perched on a shelf, removing stars from the sky. He'll fill that bottle and store it below with previously harvested stars.

In the photo below, you can see that the frame and the moon cutout in the top half of the shadowbox are raised to give the sky dimension. The bottom frame is flush to the back to provide more room for the tiny cigar box and jars of stars. The half circle on top of the shadowbox is an old wooden wheel from a set of block, cut in half.

That's a big jar for a pixie to fill! Luckily, there are plenty of stars in the sky.

Here are a few details. There's already one star in the jar, and our little friend is getting ready to add another.

And here's his collection: some wishing stars, one very special lucky star, and a bottle of dreams with a star stopper. There's also a box of large stars for those who need them most.

The jars and box are very tiny!

A few notes on construction: here's the tiny box before assembly. I found it easiest to cover the pieces with paper before gluing them together. It might be easier yet to assemble and then paint. Using a lightweight paper really helps, because those pieces are really, really small, and folding a heavy paper over the edges would be difficult.

Here you see the box with only one side and the bottom attached. The upper frame is elevated from the back of the box using two adhesive foam squares to raise the frame. The moon was attached with one foam square.

A hanger for the back, and a photo of how the top star is adhered. Because that star is actually a bead, there's a hole through the middle. I adhered a long head pin to the back of the wooden piece, and bent it up and over. I dropped the star down onto the pin, and put a little dab of glue on the two points of the star that sit on the block. Now it's nice and secure.

Keep reaching for the stars. For a complete list of supplies, click here!