Make a room with me, the sticker suitcase
A sticker-covered charity-shop find becomes a girls' bedroom in eight steps. The before, the during, and the moment the lid finally closes.
June 2026 · 4 min read · By Margaret
Every room I make starts with a suitcase that doesn't yet know what it wants to be. This one came home with me wearing every sticker a six-year-old can think of, umbrellas, rollerskates, a bow, a determined orange cat. I love these the most. They've already lived a life before me.
What follows is the build, the way I think through it, and the small choices that turn a tired old box into somewhere you'd want to be small enough to live.
Meet the suitcase
Pink, plastic-covered, and unmistakably pre-loved. A pound-fifty at a Sunday car boot. The shell is sturdy and the latch still snaps closed, that's most of what matters. The stickers will stay; they're part of the story I'm trying to tell.
Open it up and listen
Lid up, latch loose, breathe in. The heart-and-flower lining is what tells me this is going to be a girl's bedroom, not a study or a kitchen. The pieces decide themselves once you let the suitcase speak first.
Backdrop check
I tape a blush card behind to test how the colour palette holds together before I commit. The lining is busy enough, I want soft furniture, white textiles, almost no clutter. The card stays for the first three pieces in.
Anchor pieces first
The dresser-and-mirror goes against the back wall first. It's the tallest thing in the room and it sets the room's eye-line. The vanity table goes on the right. Two pieces in and the room already has a personality.
Soft things
A fluffy off-white rug. A round footstool. A little white branch chair, the only piece I bend the colour rule for, because she earns it. This is where the room starts to feel inhabited.
Mirror, mirror
The pink standing mirror lands on the right wall. The little branch-chair gets nudged left-of-centre so the eye has somewhere to land between the dresser and the mirror. Tiny adjustments, five millimetres here, a turn there, are most of the work.
The bed comes home
Last big piece: a purple four-poster against the left wall. I always put the bed in last because it's the one piece that locks everything else in place, once it's down, you can't really move anything else without redoing the room.
Close the lid (almost)
I leave the lid open at this angle on purpose, closed it's a suitcase, fully open it's a doll's house, but half-open is the whole point of these little worlds. You see the room and the case at the same time. That's the bit I love.
Total build time, between cups of tea: about four hours. Total time spent staring at it afterwards before I finally box it up: probably more. Each piece is one of one, when this one finds a home it won't be remade. That's why I write these down.
If you'd like to see this room come up for sale, the newsletter is the place, I post pieces there a day before they go live in the shop.
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Written by Margaret at the workshop. Browse current pieces →