Colmado Doña Carmen: a 1:12 Puerto Rican Corner Store Build Diary

The counter goes in

A green plank counter now stands in front of the shelves, with the blue louvered doors on the side wall. This is the first time the room looks like a store you could walk into.

Colmado room box from the front with stocked shelves, a green plank counter and blue louvered doors — From the front

Colmado room box seen from above showing the counter, the shelves and the tile floor — From above

Christmas on the storefront

The store sign went on the header, the strip across the top of the open front. Under it hangs a little ¡Feliz Navidad! banner: each pennant is cut out, folded over a thread and glued in place on a printed spacing guide, so the letters come out evenly spaced. A poinsettia garland finishes the edge.

Store header with the Colmado Doña Carmen sign and a Feliz Navidad pennant banner — The header with its banner

Colmado Doña Carmen sign on a cream plaster header strip — The sign before the banner

Small red, green and cream paper pennants with letters, cut out and folded — Pennants cut and folded

A paper bag for the counter

A brown paper grocery bag stamped with the store's name, folded from one printed piece with a zigzag top, like the bags the colmado used to pack your groceries in.

Tiny brown paper bag with a red Colmado Doña Carmen stamp held between fingertips — Small enough to hold on a fingertip

Stocking the shelves

Bottles and coffee went up first, then the cans, then the boxes and bags, working from the top shelf down so my hands didn't knock anything over.

Wooden shelves with the first rows of bottles, coffee and cans — First rows in

Shelves with bottles, cans, crackers, sugar and detergent boxes — Filling up

Fully stocked colmado shelves against green and red walls above a patterned tile floor — Stocked

Shortcuts for the tiniest items

Folding dozens of bottles one by one gets tiring fast. Instead, a whole row of bottles is printed on one strip that stands on the shelf with a small foam-board block behind it. From the front it reads as a full row. The cans are rolled one at a time.

A long printed strip of malta, juice and milk bottles on a cutting mat, about 10 inches long — A row of bottles on one strip

A pile of tiny rolled paper cans with red and green labels — Rolled cans

Printing, cutting and folding the groceries

Every box starts as a flat printed net: Brisa detergent, Isla Dorada crackers and sugar, coffee, cornstarch and Doña Carmen rice. Cut, score the folds, then glue. The cutting mat's grid is in inches, so you can see how small each one is.

Piles of cut-out flat box nets in blue, red, brown and green on a cutting mat — Cut and ready to fold

Folded miniature cracker, detergent, sugar and coffee boxes on a cutting mat — Folded

Folded Brisa detergent boxes on a green cutting mat — Brisa detergent

Folded Isla Dorada sugar boxes — Isla Dorada sugar

Doña Carmen rice bags — Doña Carmen rice

The shell

Weathered two-tone walls, green above and deep red below, a patterned cement-tile floor and a pair of worn blue louvered doors. I papered the back wall first, then the side walls.

Empty room box with green upper walls, red lower walls and a patterned tile floor — Walls and floor done

Room box from an angle showing blue louvered double doors — Louvered doors, distressed blue