Woman recreates former colleague’s desk in miniature form as parting gift

A woman has recreated the desk of a former colleague in miniature form as a parting gift, complete with tiny monitors and containers made from McDonald’s sauce pots.

Dawn Fielder-Davis, who works as a buyer for gift company The Letteroom in Hampshire, has had a love of arts and crafts from a young age as her parents had an interest in making dolls’ houses, among other things.

This led to her also developing an interest in crafting projects, including the miniature version of the desk used by ex-colleague Hanna, who she has worked with for five years.

Mrs Fielder-Davis said she put the mini desk on top of Hanna’s real workstation on her final day – January 31 – and the latter said: “Oh my god, that’s amazing, I can’t believe you’ve done that.”

“She laughed at the titles of the mini books which the monitors are resting on top,” 53-year-old Mrs Fielder-Davis told the PA news agency.

“She laughed about those because they’re bookkeeping for dummies – and she is going into bookkeeping – and customer services for dummies, and she worked in customer services.”

Mrs Fielder-Davis, based in Mere, Wiltshire, pieced the creation together within a week – complete with a signature fake cake jewellery box and the two monitors Hanna used.

“(Hanna) made these jewellery boxes that were made to look like cakes and the most popular one has three cherries on the top,” she said.

“I actually made it using a shrimp plate and turned it upside down and turned it into a little cake.

“I was sitting there with tweezers trying to get little beads into position without shaking too much.”

Other elements include a 3D-printed chair Mrs Fielder-Davis’s husband helped to make, and a tiny tub which is upside down under the desk, because Hanna would always rest her feet on an upside down tub while sitting on her chair.

She added: “I put a bottle of water on the desk which I found in one of my kids’ doll houses as she was one of these fitness people that always drank a lot of water.

“I made a tiny little can of soup out of a bit of a glue stick and a label from an Aldi leaflet, because there were always cans of soup on her desk.”

She said she found most of the items in her tiny masterpiece “laying around my house” or were from work, including cardboard to make the desk and McDonald’s sauce pots to make containers holding mini documents.

When she posted an image of the gift on a miniatures Facebook group, it drew more than 5,000 interactions and numerous comments, including one labelling the handiwork “the most treasured leaving pressie ever”.

Mrs Fielder-Davis said: “I posted it at 11pm one night and I just closed the phone down and was a bit embarrassed really, and then the next day there were 200 likes on it.

“Then I went away for the weekend and my husband asked how many likes there were and I said 2,000.

“Now it has passed 5,000 – I’m gobsmacked.”