Winter Is Here

Miniatures are still being constructed, but are having to take a back seat to Real Life, unfortunately.
Mid-month I got news that my sister on the other side of the country - Vancouver Island - was dying. We lost her this Monday; 23 years with Parkinson's Disease had resulted in a body that could no longer carry on. She will be missed.



Yesterday it began to snow; today, this is what my garden looks like, complete with one of this year's fawns - Virginia Whitetail, for those who want to know - in its heavy, dull brown winter coat.



And here is the doe, watching her baby. Soon baby will have to make it on its own, as mom is likely going to have another baby before too many months pass.

Yesterday, Marilyn and I delivered the Remembrance Day Project to the Engineering Museum at our local armed forces base. We had expected to simply drop it off, but when we arrived there were a couple of dozen soldiers awaiting us, along with some officers, including the lady Colonel who is in charge of the Engineers. It was very flattering to have such a nice fuss made over our project. I will try to get a photo of it; I didn't realize there is no finished photo of it on the blog. We were each given a heavy souvenir coin of the regiment, and a guided tour of the museum in which our project is going to be living.

I am still working on the Camp project, as well as on things to go into a new room box that I will talk about in another post.

See You Soon!

For the next little while, I will be away from my computer, so there won't  be any posts for a couple of weeks. I am still trying to learn the tablet, but I have yet to figure out how to post anything from there. Guess I'll "read" myself to sleep while on the road.

We were interviewed at the Moncton Miniature and Doll Show on Saturday in connection with our group Remembrance Day Project. Many photos of the project were taken; it will be interesting to see what gets published eventually.

Remembrance Day Project

The project is currently living in Louise's house, but as Marilyn took photos, she will have them up on her blog, Charminis (side-bar right) before too long. I still have to make the veteran's beret....

Remembrance Day Project Update

If you have taken a look at the Charminis site (see side bar), you have seen the work Marilyn has done to age the inside and outside of our project. A little bit of outside aging remained to be done, so the project came back to me. If you look at the photo above, this is the before version of the dugout side.

I felt that after five decades of rain and wind, the sandbags would have become quite dirty, possibly have some algae growing on them, most likely moss as well, and dirt would have collected over the years here and there.



I have a wonderful colour of paint called English Ivy Green; I tend to think of it as "sludge green", and it is a go-to choice when I have to create algae and moss effects. Some was dry-brushed up and down the metal siding of the dugout, some was rubbed here and there on the sand bags, anywhere I felt wind would have deposited soil and seeds and where rain might have pooled to provide moisture or create algal growth.



Dirt made from railroad ballast, glue and paint was glued into crevices, moss was planted here and there where shadow and moisture created a good environment, and bits of grass caught hold in various deep soil pockets. It adds decades. The problem is when to stop; I hope I have quit in good time.  Aside from a beret for our veteran, the vignette is pretty much finished. Marilyn will do the final reveal on her blog, the Charminis site.

Saturday's Work

A load of old tin cans. Stay tuned to see what will happen with them....

Our Veteran Has Been Dressed

You can click on the photo for a larger view. He has one major problem, which is that his arms are too short for his body, which means that his coat sleeves have continued to be a pain in the neck. I've cut them back twice, and the arm with the cane still disappears in the sleeve!

He has a wig, his eyebrows have been made a bit more realistic with mixed flocking, and he has a military mustache to hide his smile. I think he looks rather wistful and serious now, a better face for a veteran revisiting an old battle site.

Although it is not that visible, on his blazer pocket he has a gold-colour badge; prior to WWII, armed forces insignia tended to be made of metal, rather than embroidered patches as are in use now. At this scale, the badge is representative only, but is made to look like the badge of a Province of New Brunswick, Canada battalion that fought in Flanders in WWI.

All that is left now is to finish the landscaping, and add in a few small details. I also made a very battered, worn, torn and stained knapsack, which will hang in the dugout; it was too damaged for the soldier to take back home....

Do check in on the Charminis blog; Marilyn will likely post photos of the dugout as it is now.

Well, We Are Further Ahead....

Although we didn't get our project completely finished today, we are well on the way to being done. The landscaping is forging ahead, the small pieces are ready to be placed, and the veteran is nearly ready to go.We have added a dead sapling to our setting to add some height.

We are getting together again on Wednesday, to plant the poppies. I hope to get our gentleman done for that date. We did meet with our historical advisor today, and have some more information for how to  make this project a distinctly local one. Our hope is to display it at a number of different venues, and then ultimately to donate it to a local group.

We are already thinking of our next project....

Rusty Barbed Wire!

"Nuff said! The pen is for size purposes. The wire is made from ancient beading wire or something, the spool it was on has lost its labels.

How to make it? Well, twist two pieces of fine wire together first of all. Then fold another piece of fine wire in half, and start wrapping it around the first piece of wire and cutting it off. Do this until you can do it with your eyes closed, every quarter inch or so. Go into town to buy super glue gel, because the bottle you had was borrowed and the borrower tossed it as it appeared to be dry, but neglected to inform you thereof ;o) Now drop a drop of glue gel on each little knot, dust with cinnamon, and go eat lunch and allow it to dry thoroughly.

Separate the little bits of wire you wrapped around, and trim to size. Dab bits of terra cotta paint here and there to simulate rust. Miniature barbed wire ready to go into the Remembrance Day project. We are working on finishing the landscaping tomorrow, but my veteran will have to wait another day or two for his blazer to be finished.

Our Scale Veteran Is Getting Dressed

We are using a donated china figure to populate our Remembrance Day Project, and I get to dress him up for the job

. 

He is wearing real wool flannel pants, made from a sample of men's wear fabric, and now has leather shoes, which allow him to stand up on his own, no stand needed. I am currently making his blazer; sewing in miniature is time-consuming, as I do whatever I can on the sewing machine.



I am using some wonderful navy blue Pima cotton, which looks and feels like real wool with the iron-on backing. The jacket is lined to avoid bulk; the rectangular thing is a standard Lego block for size comparison.



Jacket and lining sewn together. At this point, I have to do all the details like pockets and buttons and faux buttonholes, as once it is on him I can't manipulate this tiny garment.



Large pockets in place, the sleeves ready to attach once the shoulders are sewn. I still have to make the breast pocket, but need to go get fusible double-sided interfacing, as I appear to be out. My least favourite part is the collar; it goes on under the jacket and has to be hand-sewn in place. Also in the photo, his cane which will get a Fimo head, and a WWI British canteen, which still needs to be dirtied up. It is covered with a single check from a sample of khaki men's suiting fabric. The stopper for the canteen is a cardboard rivet thingy, filled with Crayola Model Magic, and a bit of jewelry chain holds it on the canteen. The stopper will be painted black tomorrow.

Friday's Accomplishments

Today was dedicated to working on some of the items needed for our group Remembrance Day project, so we can make up for our missed meetings, hopefully this coming Wednesday. That means I have a few days to work down my list.

The first thing today was to paint and age the chair, abandoned in the dug-out at the end of the war.



A dark green colour seemed like a good choice; the interior of the dug-out is fairly dark, with a lot of grays and browns, and hopefully this worn green farmhouse chair will add a small pop of colour. The chair was made by Louise, and I was given the finishing and aging - two things I really enjoy doing.

The next thing was to put some foliage on all those poppies that are going to be planted on the top of the dug-out. I had already made up about a hundred blooming poppies, along with some just opening buds and some closed buds. Wild poppies have very little foliage, and what they have is kind of ferny, for lack of a better word. I used a fern spray punch, then cut that up to be small enough for the poppies. And as poppies have long, thin bare stems below their blossoms, the foliage is down fairly low along the stems.



They still need to be sprayed to prevent fading, but as it is raining today and I hate to spray inside the house, that will be done the next sunny day. There is more foliage that can be added in once the flowers are placed; I find it easier to gauge where extra leaves are needed once the plants are in place.
I guess that will be Marilyn's job, as she is doing the grass for the landscaping....

That leaves the veteran's clothing and wig, and some small accessory items, which I hope will be done by our next get-together.

Not a Good Week

First of all, we are buried in snow; see photos below. I took them from my front steps this evening, to show the amount that we are dealing with right now. It is only the beginning of March, and we have at least six more weeks of winter to go. They are already indicating that we may have another record flood this year, based on the snow pack.




 Photo one is from the front door to the garage. Our apple trees are once again buried well above the trunks. Photo two is the drift pile in front of the kitchen window; this window is at my eye level when I work at the kitchen sink. To get into the house, we go up three steps. So, I estimate this pile is about a meter and half or higher. We had some very heavy winds for two days this past week, so there was a lot of drifting! Photo 3 is out to the road; we are running out of space to dump snow, and there is more coming tonight....



I turned in an odd way last Sunday, resulting in a serious back spasm. It is almost back to normal, but lengthy periods of standing are painful. So I didn't get as much done this week as I had hoped. Today, I did manage to stain the second floor of my steam punk loft project. As the wood used was very rough, there was a lot of hand sanding involved, and my back is complaining! The little chair is for the Remembrance Day project, it will be painted and then rubbed back for wear and aged and dirtied.
The only other thing I managed to finish is to paint a sheet of paper for the leaves for the poppies in the Remembrance Day project.

There is a real beauty to winter, but at this time of year there is also a desire for it to just go away, already!

Wednesday Work Day Results

No storm this week on Wednesday, but we had one on Thursday, so I couldn't go to my volunteer job. That gave me a day on which to begin assembling the poppies for the Remembrance Day project. We needed about a hundred of them, along with closed buds and opened buds.



Check. Done. Now I have to paint the paper for the leaves, which we will then cut out and assemble on our next work day.

Here are a couple of the photos of the project, as it was on Wednesday just before we broke up and headed home. Marilyn at Charminis had hoped to finish the spackling of the ground, but nature being very focused on procreation, her spackling compound grew fuzz....



The walls have been bleached and aged, and the floor is ready to be painted, sprinkled with rocks and sand and other debris. The sandbags are beginning to be placed, as had the rusty corrugated iron.



The landscape form has been installed on the outside; this area will be thoroughly messed up, as it has been abandoned for many years. More sandbags will be installed, along with the rest of the landscaping and of course, all the debris that has fallen into this depression in the ground for many years.

Louise made a chair to go inside this scene, which I get to dirty and partially destroy - I mean, age and scuff up. We are going right along with this project, and beginning to put some thoughts into what our next group project might be....

Remembrance Day Project Update

...but to see it you will have to go to Charminis' site. We worked at her home on Sunday, and she has posted a photo of the setting for some of the smaller pieces we have been working on.

Another Day, Another Pile of Sandbags....

The pile of sandbags has increased somewhat; there are now about 3 dozen of them, including some slightly shorter ones to go over the door lintel. Interestingly enough, the tea dyeing threw me for a bit of a loop; although I had soaked them as long as the previous batch, then baked them in the oven at low heat until they dried, this second batch is much darker on the top side. They were placed on a paper towel in a baking tray, and the bottoms of all the bags is rather lighter than the tops.

Coming up, we have a porcelain doll house figure to dress up; he has already lost his apron (he was intended to be a shopkeeper), and may lose his striped trousers for a pair of gray flannels. He will also get leather shoes and a blazer, as well as a wig and a mustache.



He will be dressed as a WW I veteran, visiting the field of battle years later, in remembrance of his fellow soldiers who did not survive. The figure will be removable from the setting, as he may only appear on Remembrance Day, November 11 in Canada. I think the addition of "real" hair and a "real" mustache will make him look more "real" - that's a lot of reals in that sentence! We had planned to keep his trousers, but I think I need to check how gentlemen dressed in the twenties and thirties; I feel they didn't wear such boldly striped trousers....

We missed our Sunday work day due to illness, and the Wednesday one due to a forgotten appointment; we are aiming for Friday now. Let's hope the weather co-operates....

Building a Field of Poppies

This actually represents two days of work; that's how long it took to make all the poppy stems, buds and opened buds. They are made of built-up "dips" in tacky glue mixed with paint in the appropriate colour. We are still experimenting with what to use for the poppy flowers, although coffee filter paper painted with markers looks promising.

Marker-painted filter paper was used to make the green bud covers on the little red opening buds. It looks nice and bright. I grew up in "Flanders Fields", and have very vivid memories of hedgerows of red poppies, bright blue cornflowers, vivid yellow buttercups and ox-eye daisies, growing in wild profusion on the edge of the wheat fields.

We missed our Sunday get-together due to illness, so are hoping for a snow-free Wednesday, in order to build up the sandbag walls on the dug-out. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is devoted to making about 24 more sandbags.

Hopefully I can get all the sandbags made tomorrow....

Two Posts in One Day!

The cat is out of the bag; if you want to know what our group project is, please go and visit Charminis blog, which you can click on at the right of the page.

And since she has key words, I will see if she will help me set them up at some point for my blog! That way if you are interested in anything in particular, you can go right there.

The Group Project Moves Along....

Yesterday, we managed to work for about two hours on our group project, when we had to dissolve our get-together due to bad weather; it had been snowing, but the snow had turned to freezing rain, and the visibility was not that great. But I did manage to "invent" a rusty tin can, using manila file folder cardboard, a large sewing needle, glue and lots of paint and varnish. An old chequebook donated a corner that with the aid of a leather cover and a bit of gold paint, became a bible.

 I took the bit between my teeth today, as I couldn't go to work because of freezing rain and a driveway full of snow, and roughed up the leather of the bible and the binoculars case. The table got its drawer knob (cut-off quilting pin), old tea stains were left in the bottom of the mug, and the corrugated metal roofing was rusted and aged.

The tin can, mug and corrugated metal all use cardboard; I love this stuff, with several applications of paint and then varnish, it becomes quite sturdy. I'm thinking of some other ways I can use the can experiment, perhaps as a container to start a bunch of seedlings....

Oooh, I think there are tea canister and milk carton printies available on the internet. That will have to wait, though, as this project takes priority. Other projects are jostling for attention, so as my work table is currently quite tidy, perhaps I should make some bits for some of those UFO's littering my storage shelves!

Some Other Bits of the Group Project

I'm going to keep it a secret until we are further along, but we are mainly following instructions from one of the European magazines. I have more small bits to create to add to the scene; the other participants are doing other pieces of it. Eventually, to finish the project off, we will likely have a workday in which we are all going to be working on the same things.

The table base is an old one, re-purposed for this project and provided with a new, old-looking and rough top; it is made of spruce, stained in golden oak and then liberally gone over with antiquing gel.
I still have to put a knob on the drawer. The binoculars were made over a pair of dowel forms, the candle holder is a popped jeans rivet (I think), and the mug is recipe card cardboard. I still need to dirty that up some more.

You Shall NOT Pass!

Yes, Gandalf is 1/12 scale, I also have Gimli, complete with weapons. No, this sandbag wall will not hold back a Balrog, but I wanted something to show scale.

So here are about one quarter of the sandbags we need to make for our group project. The top for the beat-up farmhouse table will dry overnight, then get distressed and put on to the apron/legs of the table.

More tomorrow!

Hello Again, I Think I'm Back....

First of all, Happy 2019 to all of you who stuck with me during my very long absence. Life kind of caught up on us this autumn, but I do believe I am ready to go on with miniatures and the blog again. My youngest daughter has moved permanently to western Canada, like so many young, well educated New Brunswick young people they have to leave for work opportunities. All three of my children now live at the feet of the Rocky Mountains, more or less, while we are far, far away close to the Atlantic Ocean. We can actually travel faster and cheaper to Europe than we can to visit our children in our own country!

Christmas did  bring me a few minis, a jug from my youngest daughter, and a new saw blade from the Carpenter-in-Chief, the third in my mini career. I wear them out....



We are in the middle of a blizzard/snowstorm - what else is new?

I haven't stopped working on minis, there just is not, as yet, anything finished to show. Today, I began making sandbags for a group project, and learned something about tea dyeing - you need to put the objects being dyed right side out in the tea dye!



I put them in inside out, then baked them at 260 degrees for 20 mins, and left them in the warm oven for another 20. Result, lovely dark, dirty sandbag covers. Then I turned them right side out:



They are back in the tea dye, a new, stronger batch as I need them to be quite dirty. This is perhaps a quarter of the bags we will likely need, but doing them in smaller batches makes the task less daunting. We are using recycled fitting muslins left behind by my designer daughter.

Now I have to go and find wood for a beaten-up, old farmhouse table top.