A hobby of a different kind

I haven’t worked on miniatures at all since my last post.  I’ve been a bit busy doing some other stuff.  Last weekend?

I went to a friend’s house (both Sat and Sun) where we canned 38 half pints of crabapple jelly, and 20 pints of crabapple butter.  To be completely fair I wasn’t even around for all of it, but did help out a lot; if I say so myself.  This weekend?  Helped same friend paint her breakfast nook and foyer pretty much all day Sat, and then today I roasted tomatoes to make sauce (along with some carrots and, umm, cucumber.  I mistook it for a zucchini).

After I roasted those for 2 hours, then put it on the stove  for a bit to thicken up I (with hubby’s help) shelled some lima beans, blanched and froze them, along with some ears of corn (all lots of yummy stuff from the farmer’s market).

Then I made dinner.

The local natural food co-op makes these to-die-for pita breads that make great pizza dough.  Some pizza sauce, spinach, squash, and just a little bit of some vegan mozzarella style cheese (yes, I’m vegan) and no more hunger.  Then hubby reminded me of the remainder peaches his dad brought as a present last weekend (oh yeah, my FiL, his girlfriend, and my BiL visited last Sunday after I got back from the canning escapades).  I remembered that my bread machine has a jam setting, so I made some peach freezer jam.

Hopefully there will be time for miniatures next weekend.  Though I’m pretty sure I said that last weekend…

 

A little DIY

Get it?  A “little” DIY?  HA!  Ok, so comedian I’m not…moving on.

I haven’t done much with the house this week, but I have been working on miniatures.  I snagged some cheap furniture sets from Doll’s House Parade (for 50% off no less) that came in the mail this week.  Shipping was cheaper and faster than I expected; I highly recommend them!  These little cheap sets are everywhere.  Here’s a picture of a chair.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with the it except that it didn’t really match my decor, and they’re a dime a dozen.  That, and I have this weird thing about red velvet…just don’t like it (for the record, Magoo heartily disagreed).  So, I decided to change it up a bit.  Since I got the furniture at such a steal (seriously, my whole order was $32 with shipping, and I got a 10 piece living room set, a bathroom set, and a music room set…oh and a 1:12 tea set) I didn’t mind the possibility of  messing it up, so I took off the cushions, and sanded it down as much as I could get into the little crevices.  Then I pulled out my mahogany stain (it’s a good thing I have a huge can) and gave it a good coat.  I waited a few minutes then wiped the excess off; I didn’t want it to be completely black.  Then I recovered the cushions in some fabric I have that I thought would go well in my living room, and while the final chair isn’t as professional as I’d like it to be; I’m pretty happy with it.

My upholstery skills could use some work, but overall I’m really happy with the way it came out.  I think it fits in so much nicer now.  You can still see some of the red peeking through in the stain, so it’s not as mono-chromatic as one might expect. Now I just need to do this to 3 more chairs and 2 sofas.  Great.  Nothing like creating more work for myself.  I’ve also been scouting online tutorials (mostly clay food) and really want to try making some, but am hesitant to spend more money…on clay of all things.  I think I need to slow down, and work with the things I have.  I have plenty of time for clay!  In a fit of wanting to try my hand at making something though I saw a few tutorials on basket making from 1 Inch Minis and decided that I could certainly swing that since I already have all the materials necessary.  Yay for free crafts!  I sat down with my printed pattern, some laceweight linen I’ve had in my stash (oh, did I mention?  I’m a knitter with a huge stash of yarn) forever and got busy making baskets.  The first one I made as kind of a trial.  It’s 1:12 scale, and not bad.  Then, kinda knowing what I was doing, I downsized everything by half to make a 1:24 basket.

Sorry it’s blurry; sometimes taking pics of mini things is hard.  All my handle attempts have come out terribly, but the baskets themselves are pretty awesome.  Not perfect, but who needs perfect?

Just for the heck of it; one more side by side of the chairs.

 

Progress…finally!

Why yes, this is a picture of the living room with a light on.  I had an ah-ha moment with the lighting while looking at some instructions (again, for like the 20th time).  So, I put some more of the shell together, and got to it.  I’m pretty excited with the way it’s turning out.  My wallpaper doesn’t match 100% in the corner, but the stains do a well enough job of blending into each other, and I can put some trim in the corner if the wallpaper really bothers me.  I did manage to paint myself into some corners by installing some of the shell, but as it’s my first time I’m going to give myself a pass.  I also worked on decorating the dining room.

For the molding I stained the first 1.5″ of the wall, then put up the wallpaper, and finally used a couple of my already stained coffee stirrers for the molding.  Once I fit the floor in I’ll add a couple more vertical pieces to the wall to make it look more like panels.  I really wanted this room to be green, so I found this seamless pattern, and played with the colors in photoshop until I got what I wanted.  I’m printing all my wallpaper on my Canon inkjet printer.  I’m using pastel art paper (cutting it down from 9″x12″ to 8.5″x11″).  I’ve found that if I do a borderless print, and stack 2 prints vertically (so the picture is roughly 5.5″ tall) it’s pretty much the perfect size for wallpaper.  I like the pastel paper because the ink soaks in a bit, and is just a little blurry; makes it look old.

I think I’m going to really regret not papering or painting the ceiling before installing it, but c’est la vie.  Not much to be done about it now.  Now that I have the bottom floor lights pretty much squared away I need to install the floor, paper the remaining walls, and assemble the rest of the shell up to the 2nd floor.  Since I’m over the electrical hurdle now; I think it’ll go much more quickly.

 

Finally some clear directions

I’m still gun shy about the electrical work.  With the L shaped house I just don’t know how it’s supposed to work.  So, I’ve come up with a plan to run most of the wiring on the exterior, and run it inside on the floorboards for the overhead lights.  Since I’m planning on doing siding and all my floors will be “hardwood” or “tile” that I’m going to lay on paper first it can wait for a while.

I had a happy accident too.  I liberated some coffee stirrers from a local coffee place for my hardwood floor.  I stained them to match the fireplace (and the stair treads, and the chimney pieces…) except they came out much darker than my fireplace.  I figured I must not have stirred the stain well enough the first time, and in a moment of not really thinking it through, slapped another coat on the fireplace.

This picture actually gives it a bit more depth than you can tell in real life.  It’s black, like I might as well have taken some black paint to it black.  Oh well, I thought.  I can just paint it, or wallpaper it with the rest of the room after all.  I moved on to my hardwood floor.  Made a paper template of the room I was covering, used my Easy Cutter (that thing seriously rocks) and made the floor.  I think it turned out pretty awesome.

Once I put it in with the fireplace I remembered some vintage grungy wallpaper I had downloaded, and then dismissed as I wasn’t sure I wanted to go that Victorian or that grunge.

The lighting in this pic isn’t great (it’s also a cell phone pic…) so it’s hard to tell, but it looks pretty awesome.  All dark and foreboding like.  I made a trip out to Magoo’s house yesterday (and saw her semi-finished room in person; it’s adorable!) and she convinced me to go for it.  All that other stuff (well, except for the windows, doors, etc) from the last post?  So not going in this house, but that’s ok cause this is going to be a lot of fun.

 

It has not been forsaken

I promise!  I’ve just been avoiding it busy.  Here, have a pretty picture.

Stuff I have bought for the dollhouse.  Windows, doors, you know…the usual.  Way more newel posts than I need; not sure what my thought process was there…  I picked up some wee flower pots at Michaels (all the way in the back near the wood working stuff) for $1.19.  That was exciting.  The stripey paper is some scrapbook paper that I thought would be really cute in the kitchen, but it’s a bit bright for my shabby plan.  We’ll see.  The fabric I picked up on a lunch excursion to Creative Quilting with Magoo.  That store was amazing, and way bigger than I ever thought from passing it every day for 3+ years.

I know I said that my next thing was decorating, but I realized that actually my next thing is installing tape wire for lighting (yes it must have lights).  I’ve done lots of internet research, but it is a bit intimidating.  DH (Darling Husband) works late tomorrow, so I’ll probably settle in and work on it then.  Assuming I don’t electrocute myself, or burn my little house down.

 

The dry fit

Yesterday I did a dry fit of the shell to check out any warping issues, and get a feel for the rooms.  Don’t I sound all experienced?  The mini blogs…I read them.

Things I’ve learned from the dry fit:

• I have some serious warping issues with the 2nd floor.  It doesn’t want to fit together properly and is causing problems with other pieces, so I need to try and straighten it out.
• At the very least I have to decorate the front hall before I put it together.  There is no way I’m going to be able to get my hands in there once it’s all glued together.  It probably wouldn’t hurt to do the majority of it, but we’ll see how my decision making process goes.
• Because I’m planning on changing out the bay windows that are standard to the house to curved bay windows I have a few extra of the standard, and I think I’m going to add one to the front hall (and get rid of the 2nd door on the porch; it just seems unnecessary) as well as the back wall (furthest wall on the right in the first pic).
• My porch plans may change.  Instead of doing a full wrap-around I may just do this bit that’s already there (and is supposed to be the roof of the 1st flr porch).  In studying the inspiration picture there are some structural changes made that I’m not sure I’m up to doing.

So yeah, dry fit is good.  Now my warped pieces are under heavy things hopefully straightening out.  It’s time to find/make some wallpaper.

 

Beginning the Fairfield

I built the foundation one day last week.  I now kind of wish I hadn’t primed the whole  thing, but c’est la vie.  It’s so much smaller than I thought it would be!  I know it’s half scale,  and I know I read the finished dimensions, but still it’s tiny.  Which turns out to be an  excellent  thing because it fits on the table in my craft room perfectly (with the laptop and  other things  that live on the table).  It’s a really good thing I got that room in order  otherwise I’d  probably  be doing this on the dining room table, and have this stuff everywhere.

This morning I got up, and started putting together the fireplace.  About halfway through I  decided to stain the outside to give it a bit of umph.  I’m going to put “brick” in the fireplace part  for a bit more realism.  I found a nice picture online, and have sized it appropriately (I think) and  will take it to work on Tuesday to see how it goes.  Hopefully this will be an easy way to get  wallpaper, patterns, etc as there are no miniature shops around here, and I really don’t want to  have to wait for shipping for everything.  There’s an insert piece for the mantel that goes in the  holes, but I may use some trim to make it a bit more fancy.

I also put together the stairs, and since I was in a staining frenzy I stained the treads to match the fireplace, and painted the staircase the same green that’s in my kitchen.  It looks really good with the dark treads.  I seriously can’t get over the tiny aspect of it all.

Anyone familiar with the Fairfield will notice I’ve made my first change.  I really didn’t like the stair railing as it was in the kit (flat, no detail, etc).  So, I cut it off, and have ordered new rails, newel posts, etc (I also ordered supplies for the porch addition).  So far nothing has given me a lot of trouble.  The stairs were a bit finicky, so I glued the right riser to the wall first (the instructions say to do this last) then I was able to stand the stretchers up vertically, and after a few were in place glue the other riser.  I then filled in the rest of the stretchers, painted, then glued on the treads.  It worked better for me than the way the instructions wanted me to do it.

That’s it for me today!  I think the next step is putting the shell together.  :D

 

Giving in…

Someone *cough* Lime & Lace *cough* really wanted me to blog about my fall into miniatures, so here we go.  My last foray into blogging didn’t last long, but I think if I keep it to the mini aspect it’ll be good.  
This is the house I’ll be building.  It’s a Greenleaf kit of which I’ve read mixed reviews.  I got it in the mail today. It’s more than a bit daunting to receive a flat pack of stamped balsa wood, and know that eventually it should be a house, but that’s the fun part, right?

I’ve never done this before, and I’m already thinking of doing some kit-bashing (already learning the lingo too).  This person added a whole other section in the middle of the house, and this house with the 2nd story porch?  I’m so doing that.  The porch just adds so much; how can I not?  Welcome to my new madness.  It should be pretty interesting.