Steampunk Watchmakers Greenhouse

Inspired by visits to Kew Gardens and the film ‘Hugo’ Jenny settled on turning the new ‘Greenhouse’ Book Nook Intrigue® into a steampunk style watchmaker’s greenhouse.

Inside the racking holds drawers full of watch parts and lots of hot house plants. There is even a wood burner to keep the watchmaker warm!

Here Jenny explains how it came together;

Kay and Maggie include full instructions with every MDF kit and suggest building the main structure around the base. I taped the sides onto the base to hold them in place while the glue was drying but chose to keep the base separate at this stage so it could be decorated more easily.

I also used some of the spare pieces of MDF from the windows to board up one of the window panels as shown above. It gave me a place to add the wall clock and burner in the finished greenhouse.

To give the outside of the greenhouse frame extra dimension I added pieces of mountboard.

It also helped to cover the outside of the blocked-up window.

I love to use the ‘waste’ MDF to add extra decoration to the base structure. The leftovers from the staging reminded me of cogs and gears and I decided to add a strip of it along the roof.

Once the main roof structure had been glued together, I sanded along the top edge to level it off, ready for the staging strip to be glued on top. Lay your sandpaper on a flat, level surface and rub the top of the roof across it to remove the excess MDF more easily and evenly.

Colour was added by painting the main greenhouse frame and roof with black gesso before applying rose gold wax as a highlight. I also glued on bronze filigree metal pieces as shown below.

Before adding the windows I drew a grid pattern on them with a black paint pen; tracing over a piece of squared paper makes this easier.

Going back to the floor I cut strips of black and white card with the largest of the CoolKatzCutz Precision Strips, chopping them into squares with a pair of scissors. Starting from the middle of the floor I added these ‘tiles’ with glue, avoiding the edges where the main frame sits.

To give the tiles a realistic look try using a gloss finish glaze over them and when dry brush on a tiny amount of highly dilute brown paint; this makes the tiles look a little dirty from those muddy shoes.

Once the staging was put in place I constructed sets of drawers with scraps of mount board and filled them with watch parts. The burner was also made from mount board with the fire painted behind a die cut grid front.

Here are some final pictures showing more of the finished greenhouse.

A bronze chain hangs from the roof inside the greenhouse holding cogs and clock hands within easy reach of the watchmaker. The plants have all been created using the new Leaf dies and Miniature pots. These really bring the greenhouse to life.

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