Apothecary Dome Creation and First Lovely Beasts Giveaway!

Welcome new and existing readers of Lovely Beasts! I hope you all will enter my first ever giveaway today because if you don't, I'll think you don't like me or my stuff :).

I've been buzzing inside for the last few days out of excitement about putting this together! I wanted to have a giveaway the minute I started the Lovely Beasts blog, but told myself I had to reach the goal of 100 followers first. So I'm realllly close (only 3 away) but I've made an executive decision to host the giveaway anyway! It's not really cheating when you're being generous right?!

I'll talk more about making my tiny little apothecary dome, but first a wonderful picture of what you will win if you enter the Lovely Beasts Giveaway! And by the way, this has been my favorite photo shoot/staging yet. Hope you like the pictures because they were so much fun to take!

If you enter you will win my little apothecary dome, 3 beautiful vintage hardware knobs, and 10 pages from a Comparative Anatomy lab manual from the 60's (including 2 pages with animal anatomy drawings).

Wouldn't it be great to win all of this stuff?! Decorate your little refurbished table with the glass dome, update your vintage drawers with the knobs, or mod podge your ornaments or glass with the lab worksheets! Yes! It would be! I know it and you know it. So please enter! The rules are at the bottom of this post.

Before you see more pictures, I'll show you how I created the apothecary dome. Some of you may remember that I bought an antique New Zealand newspaper from 1895. Well it was falling apart and in pieces, so I used one of the portions that fell away for the bottom of the dome. It's an amazing advertisement for Crawford's Pills (I believe to help stomach pain). I mod podged it to the bottom of the dome putting the glue on both the glass and the newspaper. Here's what it looked like before the glue dried.

Once the glue dried, I "shaved" off the excess paper around the edges of the glass with an emery board. Thanks to Gloria from Potentially Beautiful for that life-saving tip! It worked much better than the exacto knife  and reduced the possibility of stabbing or cutting myself. Here's the bottom "unshaven."

Even the bottom of the dome is beautiful to me! Next I took remnants from the newspaper that had fallen away or were cut off from my previous dresser redo, and mod podged them to the outer rim of the plate. I always save paper and fabric remnants from projects because I know I can always use them later! I hate to waste and love to reuse.

After using the emery board and exacto knife to clean up the edges, I mod podged the outside of the newspaper to protect the surface, it looks...awesome!

It's almost like a lens. If you look at the plate of the dome from different angles, you will be able to read more of the ad. After carefully cleaning the glass with some windex, I took the same picture under natural sunlight. You're able to see the color and age of the newspaper much better here.

Why can't advertisements look like this anymore? And yes it's hard to give this lovely dome away, but it makes me happy to think someone else will enjoy it! This is all yours if you enter the giveaway!

Here's a few close-ups of the pages:

And if you're wondering what the whole manual looks like:

The knobs have a wonderful patina and will go great as decorations, hooks, or drawer pulls. And the anatomy book is a bit creepy, but the pages are really fun to frame. I've actually used some to create unique cards and envelopes. There are a lot of worksheets/quizzes in there, but I'll make sure to give the winner 2 pages with anatomy drawings (just like the one of the shark above). A total of 10 pages in all!

So you want to win all of this right? This giveaway is open until July 4th. Everyone has 2 chances to win by doing the following:

• Leave me a comment to enter and let me know what you like about the giveaway
• Follow me! And leave me a comment that you are doing so. If you're new, PLEASE PLEASE follow me! I would love to have more excuses to have giveaways. And I want  to follow you back so leave me your link as well! 

Good luck to all!

loving,

emily

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