Eucalyptus jewelry cabinet made for my wife's Christmas present

I don’t think I’ve ever stressed over a project as much as I have this one. I’ve made furniture for my wife before, but this is the first time that I’ve made a “nice” gift for her. I put a ton of thought into every aspect from the offset sizes and curves on the door frames stiles and rails, to the contrast of the knotty pine back against the straight-grained eucalyptus case.

The case, door frame, door panel, and drawer fronts are all made from eucalyptus. The case and door frame were stained. The drawer fronts and door panel were not. The finish for everything is amber shellac.

This was also one of the first projects that I got to use a majority of tools that I made in the past including my panel gauge, try squares, straight edge, etc.

The case is doweled together (the first time I’ve ever used dowels for main case joinery) inspired by the work of James Krenov. The drawers are joined with rabbets reinforced with dowels. All the dowels were made with a dowel plate from scraps left from the main cabinet and door frame pieces.

The handle was hand carved from a scrap left over from making the door frame. It’s joined to the door frame with two 1/8” dowels glued into the handle and door frame. This is also the first time that I’ve used haunched tenons; which make building the door frame a lot easier.

I made inserts for the drawers using 1/4” foam core board, velvet fabric, and a hot glue gun; a real simple method I found on Google that results in a really clean, nice look.

The pics are:
1 – The finished cabinet closed.
2 – The finished cabinet opened.
3 – A close-up of the door handle
4 – The main case pieces after dimensioning them.
5 – A close-up of the drawer showing the velvet-lined inserts.
6 – The door frame after a dry fit.