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We recently had a surprise farewell party@ Saisaki for our boss, L, whose last day was on 15th November. For her farewell gift, we were all supposed to fill up an Ikea photo box each, with the central theme being shoes (L is a shoe lover…or collector…heheh…). I agonized over mine for days, and just couldn’t think of what to do. Furthermore, we were supposed to complete the boxes by the 11th, and I was in Singapore from the 10th to 13th, so I begged for a deadline extension.

While in Singapore, I kept a lookout for miniature shoes, or any shoe-like accessories…and I got lucky on my first and third day there! On the first day, I found four dangly handphone accessories with little shoes attached….and on the third day, I hit gold! There was a stall in Isetan that were selling charm bracelets, and OMG, they had like tons of tiny miniature shoes!! I picked out another six in pink, red and blue with tiny diamente on top…sooo cute!

As soon as we got back from Singapore, I made a beeline to Toys R Us @ Midvalley. Earlier in the evening, I’d already decided that I would decorate the box like a bedroom, with the miniature shoes scattered all around. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any doll furniture small enough to fit the box…=( The best I could find were wooden furniture sets for dollhouses, but the cabinet itself took up almost all the space in the box! Darn! I decided to try Jusco’s toy section, but just in case, I hid the furniture sets (there were not many left!) at the back of one of the shelves…*grin*

At first, I still couldn’t find anything suitable at Jusco’s toy section…but just when I was about to give up, I ended up on one aisle that had the cutest dollhouse furniture from Japan! A tad bit pricey, but at that point, I was desperate, people! After spending almost half an hour comparing furniture sets and opening up boxes to try to see how much furniture can fit into the box, I finally settled upon a bedroom set that consisted of a bed, dressing table, wardrobe, side table, carpet, photo frame, and all sorts of super-duper-small-sized stuff. As the furniture was white with lavender details, I bought some light and dark purple paper from The Paper Boutique as well as some ribbons to serve as the wallpaper.

By the time I got back home, it was close to 9pm and I was panicking big time! I scattered everything on the floor of our study room and proceeded to use pliers to remove all the shoes from the bracelet and handphone straps. After that, I begin UHU-ing all the small items from the furniture set together…clock and photo frame to the side table, lipstick, perfume bottles, etc. to the dressing table. Once done, I left those to dry while I started on the ‘wallpaper’ of the room. Finally, everything was starting to come together…and after some fiddling around (the furniture was so damn small!) and arranging the shoes, I finalized the layout and started glueing everything into place.

Headache, people!!!

By the time I finished everything, it was 1am, and I was dead-tired…but really satisfied with my creation…=) The next day, I glued the remaining lavender paper to the back to cover the unsightly hardboard, and covered the side with the ribbons I bought. I had to really press some of the shoes firmly into place as I used double-sided tape instead of glue for those shoes so that L could still pull them out and use them as charms for the charm bracelet, or as handphone accessories.

Almost there…:

And if you were wondering how the final product turned out to be….well, here’s a pic…=)

Trust me, I was so relieved I managed to finish everything in one night…it was like a whole load off my shoulders…=) But I have to admit that I did have four freaking hours of fun putting all the pieces together…!