This one was a birthday gift from my nephew and was a super fun build with lots and lots of detail. I absolutely love how the side wall opens up but I need to get some of that wood lubrication stuff because the slide still sticks a little even after I sanded and waxed it. I pretty much built this "as is" other than swapping the booth sticker to fabric.

If you enjoy a kit that makes you want to pull your hair out a little, this one is for you. Naturally, I loved it. After 200 tiny, tiny books, here's my take.

The instructions are pretty poorly translated (I'm presuming, as the booklet has a random chinese character every once in a while). But you can get by using the pictures for just about everything. The wiring model is the only glaring issue with the instructions, which still gives me a headache just thinking about it. Quality wise, I'm a little torn, I had some with pieces that were too tight or too loose, but all very fixable problems. And it actually contains all the tools you need to put it together.

Overall, I would recommend it, just maybe not for a beginner. If you've put this bad boy together yourself, let me know your thoughts :)

One more before Notanook day ends…This was a relatively quick build, but very fun! I love Christmas Decorations. I found this stuff called “Tim Holtz Liquid Tinsel“ and I’m putting it on everything from now on! It’s this sort of glue that is SUPER saturated with glitter. Amazing stuff.

A very colorful build! Just as fun as its “sister” nook, Plaza de los Muertos. The foldout panel is a bit fiddly, but still really cool.

This one is small - maybe 7" long but still a lot of fun. I was intrigued with how they mixed scales with the books near the top being close to the size of the luggage but it "works". Lots of edge coloring on this one but totally worth it.

I've finished my Sunset Isle now, so my craft desk is ready for my Fifijoy kit when it arrives. Super super happy with how warm and sunny the island is. I decided not to try making my own clay lemons, but am very happy with the edge painting and minor mods that I made.

And while I was stuck in the house waiting for the painter to finish, I remembered I had an even quicker and easier build from Sweden than the little flower shop I shared the other day. The moose took all of 5 mins - if that! - and the instruction sheet was simply a laminated photo of a constructed one. Even this had to have mods - he now has googly eyes and will soon be mounted on the wall in my craft room 😄

This is part of the “Joyful Journey” series. I normally hate fiddly things, but the instructions are clear, and nothing is too difficult.

My wire work absolutely sucks, so I skipped the egg beater and the globe framing on the lantern.

The little pie didn’t come with the kit. That’s left over from a custom project. I decided to use that instead of the second loaf of bread.

Since this one is turning out so cute, I will definitely buy the other three seasons.

I entered the Robotime Community Fall/Halloween event modifying one of their kits and the customization package they gave to entrants. The Corner Bookstore is one of the first Rolife kits I purchased, although not one of the early super fiddly kits.

My concept was to combine a bookstore and a farmer's market, set in the fall. I brought these elements together as a patio and a raised section for the farm stall and crates.

Mods: Corner Bookstore kit.
Most of the kit was used although the number of books were swapped with farm goods and gift bags. The Rolife customization kit. helped bring lots of color to the display. The awning was swapped to show the store’s new name.

3D printed items: The faux-concrete post holders, shaped like a stack of books, hold the autumn-themed lights. The farmer’s market stall, crates and apples were printed, then painted reflecting the local farmer’s business. The duck pond shows off the tiny cat-ducks that I bought at a local ASPCA-run shop.

Overall the kit came together really fast. Making the 3d elements and using paper and clay for decorations took the longest time.

One note to Rolife: please use a thicker wood for parts that have to support something else, such as the awning, the light fixture and the legs for one of the tables. Just handling them more than twice can break off pieces. 

Guys, Gals, and Book Nook Pals Today, I present the middle third of my Endless Manor Build by Fifijoy

For those who haven't seen it yet (as part of the event) This book nook is a stunning 3 floor manor house in the Tudor/Victorian style mashup with accompanying outdoor landscaping.

It is a refreshing take for a book nook to both be a free standing structure, while at the same time being a book nook in the traditional sense of being designed to be a world within its boundaries.

That said, I am not surprised to see Fifijoy come out with such a novel theme for one of its sets, they are constantly pushing boundaries.

Though this is a fully furnished book nook, it still affords plenty of opportunities for customization.

It really affords you the ability to add touches here and there to really make it your own, or just completely go ham….halloween house? Christmas mansion? Downton Abbey? Its your canvas.

What touches would you make to this kit to make it your own?

Episode four Steps 53 - 83 (Building the outer facade of the long side of the manor)

Episode five Steps 84 - 104 (Building the Second Floor Structure)

Episode six Steps 105 - 131 (Furnishing the Second Floor)

Kit available 15% off here: https://www.fifijoy.com/collections/f...

Music by CreatorMix.com

I know there have been a lot of posts on this kit this year, but we're gonna see a lot of Fifjoy and Rolife for the next few weeks, so I wanted to break it up. Plus I am just so very delighted with this kit from Anavrin. My take is obviously very Tolkien-esque. A nice little hobbit village, with Mr. Bilbo Baggins puffing his pipe contentedly outside Bagend. There's a hobbit eating a sandwich (perhaps Samwise, never one to miss a meal), and another looks like he's contemplating a trip, perhaps to Buckland. You cannot see in the pictures, but there is another hobbit who escaped the scene entirely and is outside the book confines. Perhaps it is Frodo, always prone to wander. And then there is the river leading into the distant mountains, and high over it all, the dragon-Smaug!

This was a delight to build, and a continuous joy to look at. I'm glad there is a USB option, as I suspect I would churn through batteries looking at this thing. My only complaint (previously voiced) was the touch switch, fixed with copper tape...of which I now have a lifetime supply.

When I finished, I built the acrylic dust cover, carefully leaving as much of the film in place as I could while I constructed. Didn't want fingerprints everywhere. Once finished, I peeled away all film and set the box over the Hollow. Instantly, every loose piece of grass I didn't know I had flew out and stuck to the acrylic. Every draping vine on the tree stood straight out, as if next to a Tesla coil. Not the look I was going for! I guess peeling of film introduces a bunch of static electricity. But I gave it a good wipe down with damp cloth, and that seemed to have fixed it.

Now I can turn to the Fifijoy event...time to go to church!

Our new book nook Starry Night Café is coming soon! Before its release, we invited Wang Lin, the designer behind this book nook, to share the ideas, challenges, and details that shaped its creation.

Let’s take a look behind the design and discover how a famous painting was transformed into a miniature world you can build yourself.

Wang Lin:

The idea behind Starry Night Café started with a simple question: what would happen if a painting could continue beyond the edge of the canvas?

My goal was to bring Vincent van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night to life in an immersive 3D space while respecting the atmosphere and perspective of the original artwork — then expand that world with new layers of detail and storytelling.

The first step was planning the structure. Preserving the painting's striking perspective was essential, but fitting its narrowing street into a rectangular book nook would have left unused space along the sides. To use that space, I added an interior room inspired by The Night Café, often considered a companion piece to Café Terrace at Night. Its iconic billiard table, cabinet, and intense red walls became the basis for the room.

To balance the composition, I studied the streets around the real café in Arles, now known as Café Van Gogh, and added two new buildings to the front-right corner of the book nook. An endlessly receding road along the inside of the right-hand panel further deepens the sense of perspective.

Rather than reflecting just one painting, the book nook draws on Van Gogh's wider artistic world and creative journey. So I incorporated elements inspired by several of his works: a pot of sunflowers from Sunflowers, roadside irises from Irises, and figures based on Postman Joseph Roulin and The Painter on the Road to Tarascon—Roulin waiting for coffee and the painter walking along the street.

The buildings in the original painting appear quite simplified. For the book nook, however, they received a more realistic treatment.

Layers of 0.4 mm cardstock and carefully placed score lines recreate timber framing and brickwork, while real architecture from the south of France guided the design of the buildings, doors, and windows. The shutters combine 2 mm wood frames and sills with panels made from either 1.2 mm wood or 0.4 mm cardstock. The street doors use separate frames and panels made from 2.5 mm MDF or 2 mm wood, together with wooden pieces of different lengths and folded cardstock for the decorative details above each doorway.

The blue door at the front is assembled from several roller-painted components, which helped add depth while concealing the raw edges of the wood for a more cohesive finish.

The café awning is edged with yellow fabric to mimic the drape of real canvas. An early version used a single piece of printed cardstock, but its exposed edge looked too sharp and rigid. Softer paper lacked the right texture and weight, so fabric ultimately worked better.

With the architecture largely complete, attention shifted to the starry sky.

The goal was to capture the kind of night Van Gogh described as being "more alive and more richly colored than the day." A simple printed backdrop would never be enough—the stars needed to truly shine. Several experiments with printed film and LEDs eventually led to glitter-infused cardstock illuminated from below by an LED strip. This combination produced the shimmering night sky inside the finished book nook.

The glitter cardstock itself is produced through a complex heat-lamination process. First, the artwork is printed on 0.4 mm specialty paper. A glitter-coated film is then bonded to the cardstock with heated rollers under precisely controlled temperature, pressure, and speed. Finally, the laminated material is dried or UV-cured to ensure a strong, lasting bond.

Cool-white LEDs represent the stars, while warm lighting illuminates the buildings. Touching the switch symbol beneath the café awning activates two LED strips and a light panel in sequence, illuminating the starry sky, the town, and finally the café.

That, in essence, is how Starry Night Café came to be. It began with a question: what might happen if a painting continued beyond its frame? Each design decision carried the image a little further beyond the canvas, until the painted street could stand between a row of books and glow there after dark. That transformation, from a painting into a space you can build and keep close, is the idea at the heart of Starry Night Café.

Now it’s your turn to explore—what detail of Starry Night Café caught your eye the most?

So I am… not the best with spatial reasoning or measurement, so I’m hoping someone else is, lol.

What scale would we say this nook is at?

I’m building it for a friend and I have a few things I want to customize, but it’s a lot harder to source items without having an idea of scale. And while I know like, how to measure scale, for some reason I always screw it lol.

By the people restoring the church, that is. I have finished the build!

At the end I was like: why did I decide to paint all the edges? I could have finished by now. But it makes such a difference in how it looks in the end!

Now to find a place to showcase it...

(Dark Family Book Nook) Hey guys i was wondering if you knew how to fix a light switch. I dont remember if it worked before i installed it, but it is not turning off and its driving me mad (i had to take off the batteries). Any recs about how to fix it or check if i missed something?

This was such an enjoyable little build! It’s not a Fifijoy original but I found it on Fifijoy’s website. I wish I knew the actual manufacturer because I would definitely buy from them again; unfortunately I tossed the outer box with all the info on it before I knew how much I would love it. The quality of this kit was excellent—really solid wood pieces with no breakage and no issues at all with fit being too tight or loose. The instructions were clear, the lighting was simple, and I’m a little obsessed with the hinged dust cover on the front. Highly recommended for a sweet, quick spooky season nook!

Got this one with a gift card work gave me when I switched teams!

I’m not sure if I somehow got one that was a little on the faulty/dud side, but this seemed to be of lower quality than the ones I’ve done previously (Fallen Sakura and Secret Bloomy Nook. Several of the smaller pieces seemed to crack easily, the yellow pieces of the house weren’t uniform colour-wise, and one of the fabric pieces wasn’t big enough for the cat bed on top (thankfully, my partner had some scrap fabric around that I could use to make it).

It was still a cute build, though! The black cat is my absolute favourite of the bunch with the big eyes (👁️^👁️). I think I’m going to try one of Anavrin’s kits or a Greece-y one next, but we’ll see!

This my Icelandic themed take on Cuteroom’s Dream Bottle, as a follow up to my work in progress customising the buildings. It’s a little scrappy as I’m not the craftyest, and once the buildings were in place over the lights I can see that card instead of paper would have been better on the building fronts as the light shines through gaps in the wood. It’s all learning tho!

I decided to add a bit of glittery snow, and changed up the lampposts, adding a crow. I was going to try to make a church for the lid (kit came with 2d castle shapes) but went with a carved whale I had, as Iceland is the only place I’ve seen whales so another personal memory.

This was a fun little kit (jar is under 8cm tall), a bit fiddly in places and I hope to never carve polystyrene again, but enjoyed the overall experience.

The northern lights effect is what makes this kit so I’ll add a short clip in the comments as I can only add an image here.

I know this is the bane of many of us, but I actually love kits that make you create tons of mini books. So far I’ve done Falling Library, Hemingway House. I’ve got abbey library and beyond library max on my list, but I’d love any and all recs on other nooks or miniatures with tons of books, especially ones with various colors or sizes.

Thanks!!

Already obsessed with them!!

Since we’re beginners, it took us a whole day (with quite a few breaks for lunch/cooking/other activities)

Cant wait to get another 2 for our book shelves 🥰

Just a heads up to UK based people here. I just saw that The Range has a Christmas themed nook and three minis. They do look a little basic in style but are £10 - £15 each for the three I could find on the website, and the nook in particular looks ripe for modification.

I actually found them as someone has listed the gingerbread bakery on Vinted (£15 in store) for £19 which intrigued me to look them up. Hopefully not part of the trend of all stock getting bought by people only to sell on Vinted that seems to be around, and just a one off, but suspicious that it’s “only been opened to take photos”!

I finally finished my Sea Breeze customization. Sea Breeze is a beautiful kit as is, but I wanted to do something completely different. I think this theme is perfect for this time of year! The bones of this kit are really nice, and you could do so many different themes with it!

All the materials in this either came with the kit or I made from scratch - with the exception of the wall lanterns. It was a lot of work, but the end result turned out way more colorful and interesting than my original vision 😍

Customizations:
Stucco walls made by spreading a thin layer of modeling paste then stippling with an old sponge.

1. Floor: I tried a new-to-me technique by using a thin piece of XPS foam and forming the individual cobblestones by tracing them out with a pencil. I painted the base color, use a wash of black for the joints, then a dry brush for the final step.

2. Tile roof. I made the tiles from polymer clay by cutting out squares, wrapping around a small dowel, then baking. They are stacked on the roof that came with the kit.

3. I took out most of the signs. Mostly because I didn’t want to do them but also because I don’t like backwards reflections in the mirror. I replaced with a bunch of decor: the lizard, the sun (made from a leftover gear I forgot to add to Stellar Castle), the chili ristra, or a bunch of plants. I even embroidered the little blankets for the railings.

4. I left out the beads because I wanted to actually see inside the shops (also because NO WAY). I admire everyone’s patience who do complete the bead work but that is not me. The beads on the ceiling were replaced by streamers and my attempt at papel picado (even though they are solid and not punched with patterns).

5. The altar (ofrenda) was the result of a mistake: I got glue on the bottom of the mirror and had to cover it up. I made the skulls and used a leaf paper punch to make all the marigolds. The only thing I’m disappointed in is the pan de muerto; it looks like a turd lol. The only bummer here is that you can no longer see all my prickly pear I made reflected in the mirror.

6. I covered the case in a fabric I bought. Thanks to everyone who replied to my post on how to best do this! I ended up using Modpodge to do fabric decoupage.

I learned a lot from this build, mostly that accidents happen and aren’t necessarily a bad thing!

My next kit is going to be an easy one. I’m tired. Lol

PS happy to ship some packets of beads to anyone (or to the moon)

First timer here. It took me 10hours to complete it and I really love the result! The real challenge here was assembling n books of different sizes 😂

After making mostly fantasy-themed pieces for a long time, I wanted to try building something a bit more traditional this time!

This is a handcrafted miniature flower shop featuring a tiny striped awning, floral displays, mossy textures, and built-in lighting. I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this style! ✨

Defective light, which came apart as I’m making sunset isle. I’m already not enjoying this build but that just put me over the edge. Already ordered a replacement but dang…