A Couple of Small Things....

 This week, I actually had some time to do some miniature crafting. The photo below is the start of a pair of evaporating pans, used in the maple sugaring industry prior to mechanization. As the diorama for which these items are being made is static, i.e., the items will be a sealed room box and safely glued down, I'm using some simple materials and paint to mimic metal, etc.

The pans were made of cardboard from the back of a writing tablet, scored, folded, glued and reinforced with finer cardboard tabs. The handles for the pans were made from the wire end of a pair of eye pins, of which I have a lot, shaped around a thin piece of wood, held on with recipe card tabs. The edges of the pans were rounded with some crochet cotton.

And this is what they look like after many coats of paint, reinforced with sealer, and then varnished:

I sealed the cardboard first with a multipurpose sealer, then painted it in hippo grey. This was then dry-brushed with lighter grey, a bit of red iron oxide, pewter metallic, and the bases (which sit over the fire) darkened with black. Once all the paint is dry, the pans were given a coat of satin varnish. They now look convincingly like tin pans that have seen a lot of hard use! (I'm looking for amber acetate film, to mimic the maple sap in them.) Did you know it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup? Hours and hours of evaporating slowly over a wood fire, while being stirred and skimmed....

The two small items in front are a hydrometer, made of an extra-long bugle bead with a blue glass bead glued and pinned into the end, and its case, made of an off-cut of brass tubing with a handle made from an earring back.

The pans are sitting on a sledge, which is glued, pinned and ready to paint and age. This would have been used by one or two men pulling it, to bring buckets of fresh maple sap from the trees to the maple syruping fireplace. As maple syrup is harvested in these northern climates around the end of March, the woods are usually still very much covered in snow. Larger sugar bush businesses would have used a dray horse to pull a much larger sled, but this operation is the kind a farmer and his family would likely have had, for producing syrup primarily for their own use.

I'm off for a visit to my children out west. Marilyn hopes to have the diorama room box done by the time I get back the first week in October, and has found the perfect photo of a maple sugar forest, complete with snow, for the backdrop to our joint diorama project. There are lots more tiny items to be made....

Now, if I can only figure out how to create a new label for this project, to make the process easier to find! 

New Group (just 2 of us) Project

 The proper size heart punch has not as yet arrived, and we'll be heading off for a short vacation shortly, so Marilyn and I decided to get started on our joint winter project, a maple sugaring diorama which we will donate to our local living history museum, Kings Landing Historical Settlement, for use during their Maple Sugaring Weekends end March of each year.

Marilyn and her chief carpenter are starting on the actual diorama (roombox), while I'm beginning the many pieces needed to flesh out this scene. I've begun with a pair of evaporating pans, and hope to have a photo in the next day or so. We are working with instructions by Ruth Armstrong, published in 3 parts in the summer 1992 issues of Nutshell News. Mrs. Armstrong specialised in metal miniatures, but we are not metal-workers, so we'll be using card, matte board, wood and the like to create our sugaring equipment. 

We are awaiting the landfall of Hurricane Lee, which we all fervently hope will be downgraded to a tropical storm when it hits our shores; however, we are moving everything that could be picked up by heavy winds to a safe, roofed place. We'll likely take the clothesline down too, as the last time we had a really bad storm, a tree came down on it and tore off part of corner cedar siding on our house.

Going Ahead....

 

I've begun putting the leaves on the wild rose bush in my garden vignette, starting with the baby leaves on the tips of the branches. Yesterday, we got together for a mini meeting, and that's where this process was started. It's going to take a lot of leaves, and a lot of time, to get it looking full and bushy! 

The punch company is sending me a replacement, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it won't be too many weeks to get here, as I think I may have to place some of the flowers, buds, rose hips etc. before all the leaves go on.

An exercise in patience, for sure, and I'm doing my best....

On-Line Shopping is the Pits!

 Well, the long-awaited heart punch for the garden corner vignette arrived yesterday, but I need an 1/8" (4 mm) punch, and what arrived was a 5/8" (16 mm) punch. We are now having to arrange the return of that one, and the acquisition of the proper one, but I think we're dealing with another country, and another language, which means it may be weeks and many more dollars before the small punch arrives, if ever....

Another long wait, therefore, before I can get back to that project. Perhaps I should dig out another unfinished one, and see if I have enough of whatever on hand to complete that instead. However, I will stay hopeful that I will, one day, finish all my unfinished projects!

It's almost enough to make me give up my hobbies; however, I'd probably lose my mind in that case....

I Didn't Know I Had That Many Beads....

 It is taking longer than expected to sort and decide what to keep and what to give away of my bead and jewelry findings stash! This afternoon I thought I was nearly done, but then I discovered three more boxes of findings and beads, along with a couple of tins of broken jewelry waiting to be fixed. Most of the findings and a fair number of beads will go, with a few kept for cosmetic pots, jars, bottles and vases. It'll be another day or two at least, as sitting hunched over my work table with my magnifying glasses slipping off my nose, tweezers in hand, is very wearing....

This is an overview of the two tables in use for this sorting project. There are beads, boxes and baggies literally everywhere. Believe it or not, I've already emptied five plastic boxes, one of them very large indeed. One of my bead sorting containers is full of jewelry findings and a large assortment of beads, ready for delivery to our local hospice shop.

The two shallow plastic boxes at left are among the ones now empty, having been sorted into one of (currently) 3 boxes; one holds nothing but small beads, while the larger holds various sizes of "useful" beads and a smaller one is currently holding baggies of seed beads I hope will find space of the larger box. While I was at this job, I decided to pull various other boxes and trays of things set aside for mini use. With luck there will be no more than two boxes of these little but useful items at the end of this exercise. 

I want to do some real minis now.....

Still Here, and Waiting....

It has been a while since I posted. In the meantime, we went on a short holiday, worked on the Provincial Highland Games, traveled a bit locally with a friend, and tried to bring the household under control. We are about to have another short trip soon, then a visit with our children in late September, and if all goes well, we are having a serious holiday next March/April.

My garden corner is still waiting for an affordable 1/8" (3 mm) heart punch for the roses, and this is proving to be a very elusive quest indeed! No one in town sells punches any more except for our local Michaels, and they only seem to carry huge ones. There are scrap-booking places, but they don't carry punches. (I guess that hobby is dying out somewhat!), and I don't have any mini friends who do have the size I need.Yesterday I did find one on-line, for $15.98 Cdn, but with shipping and handling it came to close to $40 - I refuse to give in to the new commerce! I will keep looking. I'd even be happy to rent one for an hour or so, if I could find someone who had one....

There has been some good come of this, though, as I've tidied up a lot of my hobby supplies, and now I need to sort and get rid of any beads I'll never use.

Hope the sun is shining for you and that it is not too hot.

Two Plants for the Garden Corner

 There are two finished plants for the garden corner, both of which in Real Life grow in my garden; the dianthus and the hydrangea. The former is meant to create a pop of colour in what will otherwise be a very "faded" garden....

It took 3 different plant pots before I was happy with the pot the dianthus are now in; the first was too big, the second still too big, and the third one was just right! These little flowers were made following a tutorial by Michaela of Michaela's Miniatures, a German blog. I coloured white paper with alcohol markers, dotted on a centre of white paint, and when that was dry, added a tiny pink dot with a fine marker pen. 

Close-up you can perhaps see the detail in these flowers; there are tiny sprigs of real greenery between the paper flowerets, which are fixed to two cupped snowflake punchies glued back to back. The hydrangea buds are painted seeds of some kind I found in my spice cupboard; as the label had come off the container, I can't tell you what they are, but they are red-brown and about the same size as poppy seeds.

As I'm going away for a few days, there will be no blogging for a week or so, but I hope to be able to get to work on the roses very soon.