Room Box Design

First off, I have to credit Jatman of JatmanStories, and Mr. BTEG, for some of the ideas that I used to make my room box with swap-able windows/floors. Jatman offers a tutorial about how she makes her roomboxes here.

It all started because I found moving boxes at Lowe's home improvement store, that are made of thicker cardboard than the standard moving boxes. I figured that would be especially ideal for making doll living spaces, so I bought one and brought it home, to do an initial try.

At first, I was thinking about just placing wall and flooring papers in the box permanently. It was Mr. BTEG who suggested the idea of being able to switch floors in and out. How to do it securely, was my question. At first, I thought of using pins, or small bulldog clips. However, Mr. BTEG came up with what I think is a far better solution: Velcro.

So here is the box, with sticky-back Velcro on the cardboard walls. The floor is a piece of foam core with scrapbook paper taped on it with double-sided tape. I felt this was the best way to secure the paper, as glues do not work very well on foam core. This floor admittedly is very patchy. I should have had four pieces of paper for this to work the best, but I only bought three. When I went back to Michael's, they were either out, or they don't carry this paper anymore.

The foam core piece for the floor is cut so it fits exactly into the box. The wall pieces will then stand directly on top of the floor piece.

So on the walls of the permanent cardboard box structure are pieces of sticky-back Velcro loops. On the papered walls of foam core, that I can swap in and out, there are corresponding pieces of sticky-back Velcro hooks. I got the idea from Jatman of using white Contact Paper to cover the raw edges of the foam core.

One wall is stuck to the cardboard box, flush against both the floor and the side of the cardboard box. Then, the other wall is set in, pushed tightly against the other wall, so there is not very much of a visible seam.

The green rug is a sheet of scrapbook paper that has a nice paisley design and also the illusion of texture, which gives it the appearance of a rug. There was a sale on scrapbook paper when I bought this at Michael's, so I bought the same design in at least two other colors. The rug is especially useful here to help hide the patchiness of this floor.

And that's my roombox! It's very simple, but I think the effect it produces is nice. I can cover all three side of the cardboard box with scrapbook paper covered walls, or use the same idea with a larger box, or have a larger box with maybe only two sides for different lighting and photography options. The nice thing about the cardboard box "foundation" is that it is relatively sturdy. I will also be creating walls with cut-out windows, and putting some kind of paper behind the right side of the foam core wall, to create an "outdoor" view.

I hope all of you who celebrated Easter yesterday had a very nice one. Life has been a little chaotic here at Casa BTEG, so I wasn't able to get an Easter photoshoot together. Hopefully, everything that's been making life crazy here will be resolved very soon!