Book Nook Workshop

Built & reviewed by Ian Scott Horst

(Ian has built over sixty kits and moderates the Wooden Asia facebook group for fans of Chinese and Japanese-themed kits.)

Once upon a time, a reputable Book Nook brand developed “Giverny Garden,” a really lovely kit that depicts the scene of the French impressionist artist Monet’s inspiration. In the way of booknookdom, in rushed the imitators producing a whole roster of kits of varying quality also based on Monet and his legendary paintings of flowers. One of those was “Bridge Over A Pond of Water Lilies,” in “The impressionist series” by Art Bear; it’s available for cheap on Ebay, and it is a very modest kit.

In only 96 pieces, it shows a bridge in the Giverny Garden, surrounded by greenery. The box is topped with a three-dimensional water lilly. There’s an angled acrylic piece meant to represent the stream below, and the original kit has a motion detector but no dust protector beyond the curved clear piece over the lotus. The real problem here is that this kit is a little ugly. The plant cutouts are sort of vague shapes, and everything is washed with a blue or green jumble meant to suggest Monet’s painting style but having very little to do with the actual imagery. Enter the experts on this blog who gave me an idea. What if I totally repurposed this kit? What if I didn’t just customize it, but bashed it into something new?

First, that bridge. Rolls of washi tape helped me turn it from wood to stone. Second, that greenery: I have written elsewhere how much I love well designed and illustrated flat 2D greenery. Well, alas that’s not the greenery here. It still dominates, but I’ve glued a bunch of green fluff and faux wisteria bits to distract from its shapelessness, and colored all the edges green with my Guangna markers to make it more inviting. I painted everything that was the blue painterly effect texture to white. I’ve attempted to evoke a round Moon Door with my modifications to the front frame, which for obvious reasons had to stay oblong. I added some leftover peacocks from another kit. I wallpapered over the outer box side panels to look like a Chinese kit; and the hint of a tile roof, Book Nook style, with some corrugated cardboard. 

Courtesy of Temu, I added two Chinese court ladies with parasols to the bridge, and a pair of swans now swim in the stream. I colored all the edges on the floating lotus up top, which now looks much pinker. The arches up top don’t seem very Chinese; I wanted to make the entire roof top more Asian-looking, but with technological limitations and a teeny apartment (no room for a power saw!) I’ve done what I could. But now here’s where my conversion gets dramatic. 

The original had a pretty robust lighting setup with a motion detector, which I have discarded. Or rather, tossed into my spare electronics box. After reading about all the customizations on this blog, my big conversion idea was to make this suitably lush setting the scene of a summer rainstorm. At Evan designs I found what I needed: I purchased their thunder kit and lightning kit; then I dug around in my electronics box and found a warm yellow and a green LED. 

Thanks to the guidance here I was able to splice all of these together and place them into the Nook. The green and yellow lights went down below under the acrylic, the lightning LEDs are up top hidden behind greenery, and the speaker is up the ceiling battery compartment where some of the original lighting and motion detector were to live. As you can see, I left the battery component open in back for the two needed switches (one sound, one lighting) and the battery back could be slid out from there (just 2AAs); I also left the original back panel showing for evidence of where this came from. So did it work?

It’s my own opinion, but I find the results absolutely magical. The two colored LEDs wind up blinking with the thunder, kind of an unintended effect, and then the lighting flashes. None of these are timed together, but the randomness really simulates reality; the multiple flickering and the eerie glow from below are really atmospheric, and that thunder really sounds like thunder. In a darkened or nighttime room, the effect is really dramatic. Of course there’s no actual rain (how would THAT work??) but some of the hanging greenery moves a bit as I sit near a window fan most delightfully.

See two movie clips for the full rainstorm effect.

This did take quite a while of work. I was able to push it along all the while working on other things, and then I also had to wait for the international mails. Sourcing the additions, modifying the existing parts, building the actual kit and strategizing placement of the electronics was time consuming, and frankly I probably spent more on modifications than the original kit cost, which was in the neighborhood of US$20. It feels like a great first effort: I’m sure gonna keep my eyes open for cheap kits to bash. I’m waiting for an incredibly simple mermaid-themed kit from Ebay that ran me all of US$8 that will be my next effort.

But here, added to my shelves of Chinese-themed kits, is now the one, only and original “Li Xia, Early Summer.”