In my picture book, The Museum of Everything, a museum is a place where we can look at little pieces of the world, one at a time. And sometimes together, with other little pieces of the world. A little piece of the world can be anything. Maybe something made of colored glass, with sunlight coming through:

Or maybe rocks and shells and sticks and other interesting little bits of nature:

Windowsills make good museums, I think, all by themselves. But sometimes it’s fun to make special ways to display our collections. You could make a tiny pedestal out of a thread spool. Maybe even glue it between a couple of blocks of wood and paint it, to look like an ancient column:

If you (very carefully!) cut v-shapes into the sides of a box, it makes a nice holder for a skinny jar that can hold sand and seashells, or other treasures:

A small pillow can be elegant. You can make one yourself, or you can use a sachet, those little fragrant pillows that we put in drawers to make them smell nice:

Sometimes jewelry comes in fancy hinged boxes with satin inside:

When our daughter was younger, she collected jars of sand anytime she traveled, and labeled them with where they were from, and when she was there. It’s a museum of travels:

Museums often display objects on simple rectangular pedestals, often painted white. You can just use a small box:

The object on this pedestal is a cloud globe, like the one on the very last page of The Museum of Everything. It’s pretty easy to make. Find a small glass globe or jar — there are some very nice ones that hold mustard, for example. Paint the outside of half of it sky blue. You can make the edges sharp by putting masking tape on first. You can put moss in the bottom for grass. Then find a little bit of quilt batting — I tried cotton balls, but this worked better. Hang it with a needle and thread from a toothpick suspended over the opening at the top. It’s amazing to me how something so simple can be so magical.