With the 4th of July coming up next month, I thought I’d try my hand at building a little ramshackle roadside fireworks stand from scratch! I built the entire stand from foamcore and textured it with steel brushes to resemble wood.

I searched for vintage fireworks images and found a ton of great old posters, which I affixed to the front and sides of the stand, as well as old packaging that I was able to print out and turn into bottle rockets, sparklers and fountains. For the little smoke bombs, I painted wooden beads black and glued white embroidery thread in the hole on top for the wick.

To make the lit sparklers, I use a pom-pom making method with silver tinsel for the tops and then glued the sparkler to a piece of white floral wire.

To make the flags and bunting, I printed the images on inkjet printer fabric. For the flags, I cut them out and folded them in half around a trimmed and sanded toothpick and then glued them. I aged the edges with a Tim Holtz ink pad. For the bunting, I glued the half circles together at the tops and then sewed across the length of the bunting, pulling the thread taut to create the bunched effect. I then took a piece of red ribbon and glued that across the top to cover up the stitches.

To fill out the stand, I also printed out little patriotic top hats, pinwheels, a bird house and Cracker Jack boxes. I thought they brought a little nostalgia to the overall look of the stand.

New 4th of July Miniatures