Katie Z. Paperworks: Safari Trunk Boutique Diorama

Besides being a coffee freak, I'm equally a freak in imagining doing certain things in unusual places such as shopping for my favourite trunk in a Safari park. Presenting here my ideal Safari Trunk Boutique diorama which is on this week's Alpha Stamps newsletter project highlight using this month kit.

Used a bazillion of Alpha Stamps' supplies plus those greens and other supplies I've been keeping for God knows what the hell I'm hoarding for, I transformed a small wooden box into a wooden chest using Tim Holtz wood grain stencil and painted it over with various shades of brown. Added a layer of bushes and dumped some branches and fern garlands at the top. To finish off, I added on claw feet and lion head door knocker. Oooo how cool is that!!! I love these new Graphic 45 staples!!! They simply match this theme so well. Don't you feel Safa-rish-ing?

There's 2 level in this boutique, level 1 is for men; all sort of explorer stuffs while level 2 is for women!! Fashion parade in front of the mirror and have a comfortable rest on a nice chair, ladies are only interested for bags isn't it? What's more to this diorama is I can hold it with one hand. Feels like I'm owning this whole Safari Trunk Boutique all by myself. Added a 3D giraffe nibbling the leaves off the branches, as well as some little pocket watch charm, binoculars and ornate key on the other end of the branch. This just spice up the entire Safari scene. I have a step-by-step tutorial in how to make this 3D giraffe from the collage sheet at the bottom of this entry. A full list of supplies follows by.

Happy trunk shopping. And I hope you have a wonderful day ahead.

The entire view of Safari Trunk Boutique. This diorama is available HERE.

The tree branches and greens at the top.

The main entrance of the Safari Trunk Boutique.

A closer look at the fallen charms.

A shawl, folding newspapers and a passport of a lady traveller.

Explorer stuffs all men will love...

Tutorial in making 3D giraffe from Out of Africa collage sheet

Step 1: Create a mirror image of the giraffe. You can reverse the image within Adobe Acrobat by following the instructions HERE if you've the software... Otherwise you can reverse the image using Microsoft Word by taking a snapshot of the giraffe on Adobe Reader, paste the image onto a word document, copy and make another copy and flip the image horizontally (under Picture Tool > Rotate).

Step 2: Print and fussy cut the giraffes out. In order to "strengthen" the giraffes, backed the print outs by gluing them over a piece of cardstock before fussy cutting. This can be omitted if you had printed them on a heavy weigh paper. Distress the edges if preferred.

Step 3: Paint or distress the backing cardstock with black paint or black soot distress ink. You will only need to do this if you are using a light colour cardstock as backing or you've printed on a heavy weight paper. Otherwise, backing with a black cardstock will conveniently save this step.

Step 4: Build a 1/4" block by stacking a few medium weigh chipboards. I often keep scraps of my chipboards so that I can use them for functions as such.