Looking back at another piece... leaf cabinet

I picked up something different at a flea market yesterday, so my next project has begun... but you'll just have to wait a bit until I get it done before I can tell you more.

In the meantime, let me throw out here a piece I finished up last year. Unfortunately, I have to admit this one was not made of upcycled materials.

This was a new cabinet for the first floor of my home. I live in a rather unique home, the first floor is entirely open, just one big room. There's a catwalk that goes across the room from above, connecting the bedrooms on the higher floors.

Partly because of that open format, the kitchen area is low on storage. The new cabinet allows me some extra room for bowls, the food processor, crockpots, etc.

Most of the cabinet is made from simple MDF board. I intentionally didn’t use real wood because I wanted it to be a very smooth surface without any grain.

For the top, I cut leaves out of pressed wood so that the textures in the wood mimic the look and feel of a tree. (My house has several different levels, reminding me of the Swiss Family Robinson tree house so I've been working toward a "tree/leaf” theme throughout the house.)

The leaves are stained a medium color, providing a hard contrast with the black in the rest of the piece. I routed out the shape of the leaves into the top of the cabinet so that they fit in flush to the surface. The whole top is then covered with an epoxy resin.

Finally, the “glass” is plexiglass that I sanded on one side to provide the opaque look.