Graphic 45 Carousel

I worked on this for a long time.  First, let me just say that this is the third project in my JoAnn's wood gazebo series. The first was the Secret Garden Gazebo and the second was the Bohemian Bazar Tiki Hut.
There is one more to come.

The carousel is by far my biggest ever project. It measures a bit over 18 inches high, by 13 inches wide. It breaks down into two main pieces. The carousel itself and the big hat box.

You already know that it all started with the wood gazebo that holds the roof up.  The gazebo sits on a hexagon shaped box that I've altered. The box sits on a 12" wood plate that I got at Hobby Lobby. The 3D horses and the bench are attached to a lazy Susan that is screwed into the wood plate. That whole structure sits on a big round box that I altered to match. I'm not sure what made me think of a Merry-go-round, but there it was twirling in my head and needing to be created! To get a real sense of how it all works, you might want to watch the video imbedded towards the end of this post.

Finding the 3D wood carousel horses took weeks and weeks of looking on the web. I eventually found not one, but to sets of vintage, unpainted Christmas ornaments that fit the scale. I'd looked at so many carousel's by then, that I was able to sit down one day and just paint each horse out. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, given that they are a combination of the designs in my head! Those 3D horses were just the beginning of the process. I needed more animals, so I started looking again.

After many hours, or is that weeks of research, I found an Etsy shop called Nana's Little Nest. Cindy creates laser cut wood pieces and thrives on customized projects. After first buying a few pieces of her horse, I emailed her again about different sizes and different animals.  We collaborated on 3 different sizes including the ones you see here and while she will still make the various carousel/Christmas ornament animals, they will be sold exclusively from my online store.
Painting, papering and decorating the whole structure took quite a while. In the end, the hexagonal box can be opened to save items like the baby's hospital bracelet, lock of hair, etc. I envision the big box to hold a birth announcement, invites, small treasures, as well as cards he or she receives. Here are a few more pictures.

I think you can see from this last picture that I used two of the wood elephants to make the bench.  I'd like to share the video I made, so that you can see how the carousel moves!

Hope you enjoyed this project,
I wish you a wonderfully happy crafty day,
M-C