Wand display

I decided I needed a display piece to showcase the wands I am selling... in keeping with the "woodland forest theme" I'm doing, I thought I'd build another tree stump. 

My first thought was to just have huge openings to hold the wands on each tier of the tree stump... but upon testing it out, the wands just fell over whenever you removed a bunch of them.

To stop that from happening I decided to create little holes cut in each tier of the stump to hold the wands. It really isn't going to hold a lot of wands, but it sure is going to look cute :-)

As with the other tree stump I created, I made this one out of cardboard. Like most things I make, I never have a true plan, I just tend to wing it as I go.

 

I added foam core for added strength to each tiered section of the stump, the cardboard just wasn't cutting it. I also had to add cardboard sleeves to each cut out hole so the wands wouldn't go "cock-eyed" and would stand upright at all times. Here is the stump in its rough stage.....

I added a layer of paper mache to help strengthen what I just had created. It looked a little to straight, so I added more to the root area and then thought of adding a fairy house.. or two.

I hot glued heavy duty foil and foam core bits to build out the area where I was creating the fairy house.

Next, I covered that area with tape to help secure it all in place.

Once the tape was on, a quick layer of paper mache on top to lock everything in place.

The next stage is semi labor intensive... gluing on paper towels to create the look of bark. Yep, it is just as exciting as that sounds....

The two fairy houses look the same, but one is actually a tad bit bigger than the other one.

Here is the stump almost ready to be painted. I actually added a layer of tissue paper over the inside of the stump to create a smoother surface. At this point I realized that this big huge stump needed to be more than just a display piece to sell wands. I tend to sell out of the wands I make pretty fast... so....

I created removable shelves. Each shelf has round cylinders on the underside that helps each shelf  lock into place. Now it is multi functional!

Here is a picture of the smaller fairy house...

Here is a larger view of the side of the stump... 

And the larger fairy house...

And a larger view of this side of the stump...

I love how it turned out! Next on my list of things I'm wanting to create is tree stump bowls that can be stacked one inside the other for easy storage. I'm going to create them with the intention of using them as bowls and pedestals!