Egyptian Tomb Inspired Book Nook

Welcome to my first Instructable! During 2020, I was taken with beautiful images of "book nook" dioramas going around the Internet. I don't have any real experience with miniatures but I decided to give it a try anyway as a quarantine craft. This is the result! I certainly made some mistakes along the way, but overall I'm pleased with how it turned out. This may give you some ideas to try designing a diorama of your own.

I went with an ancient Egyptian theme mostly because it's cool, but also because I thought I could get away with making things out of foam, which sounded the simplest and cheapest to me.

I found a cardboard box with a hinged lid at the craft store: I wanted to use that as the base because it would be easy to open the box up and access the inside. I used a craft knife to cut the front of the box open. Then I used a little electrical tape to smooth out the cut edges. I picked electrical tape because of the color, but if I did this again I might use masking tape: it has a better texture for painting and gluing over.

I spent some time looking at images of Egyptian tombs online and found some pictures of doorways carved and painted with hieroglyphs that I wanted to imitate.

I started by cutting a rectangle of my thicker foam sheet, just slightly smaller than the inside of the box, then cut out the opening. I also added a couple of stacked rectangles at the top to give it more dimension.

After a little experimentation on a scrap foam sheet, I used the tip of a small screwdriver to carve the symbols I wanted into the foam. I don't actually read hieroglyphs; I just copied pictures I saw online. It would be rad if I accidentally cursed myself but most likely it's just gibberish.

The most important detail I included was a carving of Ma'at, the goddess of balance. I also used a nail file to weather down some of the edges to try to make it look older.

Finally I coated the entire thing with a layer of modge podge glue. Foam doesn't hold paint well because it's such a porous material, so the glue creates a seal around the foam that paint can hold on to. All of the foam in this project got the same treatment.

My parents have a painted sheet of papyrus that my mother got on a trip to Egypt as a teenager; I thought it would be neat to recreate that image as a tomb painting. Rather than try to paint it by hand, I loaded a photo of the papyrus onto my computer and then recreated it in an image editor. I then printed my new version onto a sheet of shrink film.

I made a mistake here: I forgot that the colors in shrink film become much more saturated when the film is shrunk in the oven. The result ended up a lot darker than I wanted. If I did it again, I would use colors much lighter than what I wanted in the full size print.

On the plus side, the shrunk down film has a slightly rough texture that works great for fake stone. It also can be painted, which helped with blending the "painting" in with the other surfaces later on.

To get a rough stone-like texture, I grabbed a few sheets of foam and a hammer, then took them outside to the sidewalk. I whacked the back of the foam with the hammer so that the front side would pick up texture from the asphalt. I ended up using two different hammers; a regular one and a rubber mallet, which has slightly different results on the texture.

I cut one sheet into large bricks that I arranged on one side, leaving space for my tomb painting. I deliberately had some space in between the bricks and uneven edges to try to make it look more realistic. I have to admit, this process was so incredibly fussy that I got sick of it. For the other sides I just carved grooves into a full sheet of foam. I glued everything in place, using some paperclips as clamps to hold the edges down while the glue dried. I also did another fit check with the doorway to make sure it still fit with a layer of foam around the box: I ended up having to shave some of the edges down a little.

I started using an old sheet of paper to make the core, firming a half cylinder that I glued shut. I wrapped it in a sheet of stone textured foam: some rubber bands helped keep that in place while the glue dried. I added some smaller pieces of foam to the top and bottom to shape the column: the easiest way to keep those in place ended up being a few small thumb tacks/brads. I carved some hieroglyphs into the foam then coated everything with modge podge like all the other surfaces I wanted to paint.

I had initially intended to make a mummy case out of modeling clay, but a quick test of my very poor sculpting skills made me decide to try something different.
I used a photo of King Tut's coffin, printing out several copies focused on different parts of the case. I cut these out and glued them to a sheet of black foam, then cut them out again. I glued these pieces together, layering parts to try to make the result as 3D as possible. I was very pleased with the results, though I went back in with a marker to cover up all the white paper edges with black.

I started by giving everything a base coat of black. This was also when I finished installing the doorway and the column. I decided to paint the outside black as well; the slick outside edges of the craft box also needed a layer of modge podge before they would hold the paint at all.

I had a few false starts on painting the stone, before finally setting on "parchment" colored paint, which looked the most like sandstone out of the combinations I had tried. I also used some watered down brown paint to add some depth to the cracks and crevices. Finally, I used bright colors to paint the carvings on the door and column, imitating colors I'd seen in my online research.

This is a part of the project I would skip entirely if I did this again.

I had an idea of adding sand for some texture and ambiance. The only sand I could find at the craft store, however, was a pale "sparkle sand" that I didn't think looked very realistic. I also was worried about making the sand stick in place.

What I tried to do was mix up a cup of sand with some glue and a little bit of paint. I wanted to make some sticky sand that would stay in place and look a more "sandy" color. What I got was a crumbly paste that spread on way too thick and was hard to work with. I ended up letting it dry then using my nail file to break off most of the sand chunks.

My second attempt worked better: spreading some glue, then sprinkling unmodified sparkle sand on top, then shaking out the excess after the glue dried. That looked nicer and more natural. But again, if I remade this project I would probably skip the sand entirely.

Just for fun I used gold paint to draw some pyramids on the side of the box. You can't see the sides when the book nook is in place on a bookshelf, but I thought it made a nice touch.

And the diorama is done! I included photos from a few different angles and in a few different types of lighting so you can see all the details. If I were to make this again, I might try to add some electric lighting somehow, but I think having it unlit works OK too.

All in all, this was a really fun project and I think it turned out pretty well for a beginner. I hope you found the process interesting and maybe a little inspiring. Thanks for reading!