Off to Camp MiniHaHa '13 in the Morning

Everything is just about packed; it has to go in the car tonight, as I have to leave at 7:30 to meet a friend for coffee 2 hrs. up the road, then meet another friend at the Halifax Airport at 1 p.m. As usual, I didn't get everything done that I had hoped, seems to be business as usual...

So I was into large-scale manufacturing, the photo above is of my tidbit gifts; I made 38 of these little succulents. Thanks to Blue Kitty for the instructions, and also to Dollhouse T.V. for teaching me a method to use paper punches on polymer clay - that opens a whole new direction for me to explore in the future. But boy, do you have to roll the clay out thinly! And of course, you have to use a release agent for every punch; there were 5 punchies per plant!

With permission from my fellow campers, I hope to post some photos here when I get back. And I will remember to take photos of my progress on this year's camp project, a streetscape vignette; I am cheating a bit and making mine rather smaller than everyone else, as I am running out of space for big projects. There will be some size differences to contend with, so I don't know just how far I will get with the project.

Back in a week!

Dollhouse Garden Shed Vignette

I've been intending to write about this project for some time, but kept on putting it off. Well, now is a good time, as I can't reveal what I've been working on lately until after Camp MiniHaHa '13 next week. As you can see, I've always liked miniature flower gardens, and this was my first one, as well as being the first "doll house" I ever built, with my husband's assistance for the wood cutting. (I have a bit of a phobia about power tools...)

The shed came from Venus and Martin Dodge's book, Making Miniature: Dolls' House Projects in 1/12 Scale, published in 1989 by David and Charles. This is the book I hold entirely responsible for my interest in scale miniatures. It was a gift from my parents (at my suggestion) for my birthday in 1996, and this little shed was completed in 1999. It is stick-built, i.e. it has framing just like a real building. The flooring and siding for the shed were cut by my husband with a home-made jig on his full size tablesaw, using the rough wooden ends of a box of mandarin oranges.

The shed is not very big, in fact a miniature person  would have to watch the roof beams; I sometimes think it is more suited to 1/16 scale rather than 1/12, but I really went to town on this vignette. This is the back view into the shed, showing all the stuff inside, most of it made by me over the years. To my chagrin, the door opens the wrong way out, just like in the instructions, but it would have made more sense, in retrospect, to have hinged it to open onto the side path. Notice the nice green toad in front of the forsythia and the pansies....

That's part of my real-life garden in the background, but most of my plants have ceased blooming. The mountain ash looks pretty good though, one of these days I must try to duplicate that in miniature. The brick path is painted mat-board, a favourite medium of mine. The flowers in front of the shed are mine too, but the basket at the far end is a resin mini I picked up at a show somewhere. For grass, I used a mix of railroad foam colours with a tiny amount of vivid yellow added, and I do quite like the effect. It isn't as bad at catching dust as I always feared, considering this vignette has been around for fifteen years!

The front has a removable flower garden, planted with spring flowers. Thanks to Joanne Swanson and the old Nutshell News, for starting me on my flower addiction! There are irises, daffodils, tulips, pheasant eye narcissus, grape hyacinths (poppy seeds glued to a stem and then painted purple, with aquarium plastic foliage), and crocuses (flower stamens painted the appropriate colour, again with  plastic foliage), as well as the inevitable dandelion. One of our (now deceased) cats contributed the white fur for the dandelion clock. The up-ended bricks are pieces of cut wood painted to look like bricks. The gnome came off a pick of some kind, and the gazing ball was a Camp MiniHaHa tidbit (thanks Candace!). The idea with the removable garden was that I would make changeable beds for the four seasons, but that hasn't happened as yet, it is permanently spring....

And here is the fourth side; it has a bunny hutch set on a brick surface, and although it isn't visible in the photo, there are bunny droppings under the hutch - more poppy seeds! The bunnies are unpainted pewter, I am not sure whether they will be replaced or not. The door really opens, as does the hatch over the nesting area, using leather hinges cut from a glove that lost its partner. I didn't make the wonderful deck chair, that was purchased from its maker, who came from Prince Edward Island. The garden table is from a planter of some kind. For the wire on the hutch, I used hardware cloth, the flexible plastic version used also in screen door and window replacement. I was given some offcuts of this at the hardware store, useless scraps for them and a gold-mine for me. Hmm, I need to plant a little more grass on the corners, guess it came off when the wooden framing was added recently.

You might have noticed a brass nameplate in the first photo; I've been adding these to my completed vignettes, and they include what the vignette represents, my name, and the year I finished it. This is kind of a neat way to reward myself for actually completing a project. (Although in my opinion at least, no project is ever truly complete, I keep adding and changing things.)

Joanne Swanson is also the designer of most of what is in the garden shed, as I used her designs from the old Nutshell News for much of the furnishings and accessories. She is a teacher from whom I have learned just about everything I needed to know about making minis, and I have the greatest respect for her work and instructions for making things of all kinds.

I hope you enjoyed the little tour of one of my oldest projects; for all its age, it's not half bad, even if I do say so myself.

Working Away at the Inside of the CMHH Vignette

No photo today, I am having some camera problems, which I hope to solve tomorrow. I have begun to build the furnishings for inside the shop, thinking I'd better get going since Camp MiniHaHa '13 is now only about 3 weeks away. The deadline I set myself for this vignette is camp, as I hope to display it there - no, I will display it there!

It will be somewhat incomplete as far as shop stock is concerned, but the outside will be pretty much done and my idea for the inside will be apparent. Many bottles of pretty scented stuff are needed, as well as bars of soap and other wonderful items one might find in a small scent shop in the perfume fields area of France. And of course, there are still more lavender plants to be made, they are quite integral to the scene. That will take time, and I am running out of it a little....

It's been a very damp, rainy, gloomy Labour Day weekend; I do hope the sun comes out soon.

Creating a Miniature Garden Part 3 - Final

Finally, the side garden portion of the Camp MiniHaHa '12 project is done. I added the last bits this morning, now all that is left is to put up the bird shelter and add the as yet to be repainted cat. This is an overview of the completed garden.

The newly added plants in the right side of the garden include bergamot, dusty miller, leucanthemum or crazy daisy, astilbe, and the ageratum and alyssum at the very front. The sunflowers have had some leaves added so their stems didn't look quite so bare. I wish I could still get the heavy gauge covered flower wire I used for the sunflower and hollyhock stems, but I can't, locally. Hopefully once I figure out what gauge I was using, I can order it via the internet.

The right side of the garden has also gotten a dusty miller, and some ageratum and alyssum along the very front edge. The ageratum was made with railroad foliage clusters and custom-mixed flocking for the tiny fuzzy purple flowers. The alyssum is reindeer moss with the tiniest white flower punchies, cut with a custom cutter from Ruth Hanke, of Hanky Panky Crafts. I still need to add some leaves to the hollyhock stems, but have to buy the punch first!

Some of the flowers I developed for this garden will also show up in my Apothecary Garden, which I will be working on in October. Bergamot is what gives Earl Grey tea its distinctive flavour, it belongs in a herbal garden. Dusty Miller is an Artemisia, the family from which wormwood, the dangerous ingredient in absinthe and a flavouring for vermouth, is distilled. And I think I've figured out how to make a fairly convincing camomile plant....

All in all, I am very happy with this garden. It was more work than I had planned, and got fancier than I had planned as well. Now on to decorating the front of the shop, then it will be the inside. I need to make lavender, pansies and possibly a hydrangea, as well as making the prototypes for my gift exchange items and tidbits for this year's Camp MiniHaHa, the end of September.

By the way, most of the plants in the garden were made with scrapbooking-type punches; if anyone wants a particular tutorial, let me know and I will add it on the blog. The flowers are mostly paper, both commercial coloured paper and hand-painted, much of the foliage is also paper, and I also used coloured sand and ground foam, as well as flocking, to make some of the plant parts.

Feedback is always very welcome!

Creating a Dollhouse Garden Part 2

A few days later, and the garden is starting to fill in. The left side has a mauve petunia plant, and in front of the hollyhocks are day lilies. Below them are pinks and pansies, and next to them peonies. Then there are the gaillardias, some blue and some white delphiniums with purple hearts, and a medium-size hosta with a stalk of blooms.

The side of the garden nearest the fence needs shade-loving plants. I have a mauve astilbe ready to plant, but need to come up with something the height of the delphiniums before planting them. I'd also like to add a miniature version of the very large, blue-grey hosta in my Real Life garden. And my mind is trying to create bergamot or ragged robin, as well as some very low-growing edging plants for the very front of the garden, like purple ageratum and white Artemisia. (For some reason, that word capitalized itself!)

The hollyhocks at the edge of the garden need some more leaves, so I have to pick up a geranium-type leaf punch a size bigger than the one I've already used. I'd also like to try some dusty miller plants, as I have two sizes of punches for them; the challenge will be in creating the right shade of dusty gray foliage.

The foliage for the day lilies was made with dollar store plastic grass, cut to a point and the ends curled over. It works very well for this type of foliage. I used to use painted green paper twist ties, but those are now scarcer than hen's teeth! I have a few left, and some red ones, and am saving those for plants where plastic foliage just can't be used. Fortunately, the plastic grass comes in three colours, and I still have two darker, unused ones as well as the remainder of what I used for the day lilies.

To allow Real Life to intrude for a bit, I went river tubing today with my husband and daughter. The rivers here are running quite high, due to all the rain, so it was a lovely drift through a mostly rural countryside. I'd hoped to see some kingfishers (my daughter had seen them on the same trip two years ago), but they weren't out. However, the fly fishermen were - the river is salmon habitat and also supports trout. Lovely day! Next on my bucket list of things to do is zip-lining a short drive away from here - at one point you fly over an inlet of the Saint John River. Just have to hope for more sunny weather....

Follow-Up to Designing a Dollhouse Garden

So here is the garden as far as it is planted today - the back row of tall plants and the rose bush are in place. Next is the middle height row, for which I will have to make some more plants. The area right next to the fence is in shade, so it needs some shade-tolerant plants, like astilbe and hostas. I've made some of the former, but have yet to make the hostas. My real life garden has a large area that is in shade quite a bit of the time, and it contains half a dozen or more different astilbe varieties and at least a dozen, if not more, hostas. So that will be part of my plan for tomorrow - unless the weather is warm and sunny, in which case I may do something out of doors. The rose bush still needs a number of buds, for which I have to go through my supply of mustard or other seeds. Painted the right colour, with a sepal of painted paper, they make very convincing buds.

I don't know what happened to the previous picture, the computer just wouldn't recognize it. So I took another one. At least in this one the dirty dishes in the sink don't show up! Just egg cartons, baby wipes and scissors and other stuff used to build this garden.

Creating a Dollhouse Garden Part I

For the last several very rainy, gloomy days I've been back at work on my Camp MiniHaHa '12 (CMHH'12) project, and I'm quite happy to this point. The first thing was to pave the street side of the shop, and I used egg carton stones for this, using a number of tutorials on the net. My stones are intended to be slate, so they are gray primarily; to add a bit of life I dry-brushed Pewter Gleam paint here and there, to mimic the reflective inclusions in slate. Three colours of gray and a dry brushing of beigy-gray were used to add depth to the stones. Then I planted moss in the cracks. I really am happy with this, see photo below.

The next step was the ultramarine blue fence, made from popsicle sticks, of course. I had seen a photo of a fence painted this colour on Pinterest, and really loved the look, so added it to my setting. Then I placed the little bench, and realized the door would look so much better if it was painted the same colour as the bench, a wonderful light turquoise or robin's egg blue. Love it! I will add some faux door hardware to it once the garden is finished. The two blues really liven up the whole scene.

In a previous post, I had mentioned that I would need to add some height to my planting on the side of the vignette. So I added the trellis, and twisted some brown paper-covered flower wire to create the framework for a climbing plant. It was a toss-up between clematis or roses, and as this setting is intended to be the flower fields of Provence, I opted for roses. My favourite rose is the raspberry-scented wild rose that grows on beaches and seaside areas around the Bay of Fundy. It comes in white, pink or raspberry, and has large, single blossoms.

I used a five-petal cutter for the roses, and shaped each blossom 3 times. Some of them are intended to be just opening, some have been open for a couple of days, and some are pretty much blown. The centre of each flower was coloured with white pencil. The centres consist of wires double-dipped in glue and yellow sand, and then with a ring of orange-y floral foam added below that. I like the result, and my husband recognized the type of rose immediately. I still have to make up some buds at various stages. The leaves were punched with a five-leaf punch using hand-painted paper. It is hard to see, but the leaves aren't  perfect; some of them have been chewed by insects, and like all roses, there are some rust spots on the leaves. I love roses, but don't grow them!

The leaves go on first, of course, and the blossoms are added later. The rose vines are attached only to the trellis, the whole garden area slides out for repairs and maintenance. The base is pink builder's foam, painted, and the tea leaf dirt is being added as the flowers are planted. I shifted some of the larger bottom leaves lower down, and added some of the smaller leaves in their place, as I wanted the vines to be a  little airier. Also, there was a small detail on the trellis centre that  I hoped would show.

There is a problem uploading the last photo, so I will publish this and hopefully, add the last photo later.