I bit off more than I could chew with my second book nook idea. Looking back I should have known it was a half-baked scheme.
Did you guys really think I wouldn't make genre-themed book nooks? I'm a librarian. Of course I would. And here's the first one I tried: Cozy Mysteries.
Cozy Mysteries is actually a subgenre of - you guessed it - the Mystery genre. Cozy Mysteries are considered "clean" and, well...cozy. To be a Cozy Mystery a book has to have:
1. No graphic violence or gore. Pretty much the only way you know a crime has been committed is because someone says, "Hey! This guy has been murdered!" No descriptions of how it went down, no gruesome details.
2. The setting is usually a small town, and the MC (that's Main Character) owns a "cozy" business. Like a bakery, quilting/knitting shop, book store, etc.
3. The MC is called on to be an amateur sleuth. They don't have much (if any) previous experience solving murders/mysteries.
4. The MC usually has a sidekick helping them, like a pet or love interest (but nothing sexual happens! We are keeping it clean here, people!).
5. The MC is the only person who can solve the murder, usually following a trail of clues to the answer.
6. If it is one with a bakery, at least one recipe is included.
So, with this in mind, I thought it would be easiest to do a bakery book nook. It was fun, there were lots of bakery themed miniature items at my local craft store, and it seemed like a pretty straight forward theme. Easy peasy lemon squeasy, right?
What I Did Wrong
I went to the trusty Pinterest and got some inspiration, mainly this one:
Source: https://pin.it/sRKd72J
The main thing I did wrong is I was so excited I jumped into it without really thinking about dimensions and spacing. I used the dimensions for the outer box from my first book nook, and then used 1:12 scale dollhouse furniture for the inside. Instead of making it look like you were peaking into a realistic bakery, it ended up feeling like you were looking into a long and crowded hallway full of pastries.
But I digress, and I learned an important lesson about scaling. I did try to make things very detailed and accurate. For example, I knew you'd be looking from the "window" to the outside of a street, so I had to find a picture where the writing on the window was backwards:
The walls and floor of the book nook before gluing it together
It was also my first time using dollhouse wallpaper, so I had to figure out what kind of glue would make it adhere best to the hardboard. I like to use Grandma Stover's Glue for right now. I was very focused on the details for this one and making sure the bakery looked like a cozy one an amateur sleuth would run (with her love interest, of course, because a pet hanging out in a bakery sounds like a major Health Code violation).
I even managed to take a miniature cookbook and glue a book cover to it, titled "Caught Bread Handed." Seemed like something she would read while doing her morning taste test, don't you think?
Close up of the "Caught Bread Handed" book
In The End, I Hated to Love It
Overall, I am happy with it. Not as in love with it as I am with my first one, but it still makes me proud that I made it. I learned a lot from this build, which is one of the main points of all this, and am excited to try better on my next "indoor" book nook. Next time I'll be less focused on making it "book nook" sized, and more on making sure my scaling is better and it looks "bigger on the inside."
One last thing! I hope in the future I'll be able to break up individual book nooks into multiple posts as I'm working on them. Probably focusing on the different techniques I am trying out. But I've got to catch up with myself, first, and this is nook two of four that I've already made. On to the next one!
My final "Cozy Mystery" Book Nook
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