Happy New Year!

My sincere wish for all of us is that 2021 will be a better year all around. It has been a horrible year, and it needs to be over. 

The reeded slanted roof portion is in place; the next step is a small sink and a mop drain in the hallway of the klompenfabriek, to be followed by "stucco" on all the remaining walls and "clay" on the floor areas. When that is done, I can install windows and doors, and then this room box should look more like what it is supposed to be!

Thank you for reading the blog, I hope it inspires you or simply gives a few minutes of enjoyment at the joy of tiny worlds.

 

Season's Greetings!

May 2021 be a lot better for all of us than 2020 has been! Minis have kept me sane, and my mini friends report the same thing, but I would sure like for everything to be normal again.

The work on reeding the roof of the wooden shoe factory is on-going, but at this busy time of the year Real Life has to take precedence over hobbies; that said, my sewing machine is probably happy to have a bit of a rest, after all the work it has done the last several weeks. That includes, a week and a half in the repair shop, which kind of put my schedule right off course! (The Christmas tree skirt I decided to make at the last minute, in a quilting design with endless bias seams, finally got finished at about 1 a.m. on Christmas day.

The slanted factory roof portion is nearly done, I still have glue and corn broom straw to work with and probably enough to eventually finish the entire flat section of the wooden show factory roof....

This year here the weather has been very atypical; usually I have a lovely photo of snow and ice to share with you at Christmas time, but it has been 15 Celsius here for several days, and there has been endless rain. It has been looking and feeling more like a Dutch or German Christmas in terms of weather, and the rain is the Scots mist kind, fine and nearly invisible except when it hits the windshield of your car. 

Santa brought us food gifts this year; everything from pickled carrots and jams to international chocolate and snack foods. I think I have to begin walking again, just to keep from turning into a balloon! 

Stay healthy! Be safe! And I hope to be back with miniature progress very soon!

A Little More Done

The Christmas presents are mailed, and the only projects left to be worked on are my own, which should give me a little more time to work on the Wooden Shoe Factory. The inside of the roof of this building is supposed to look like it is thatched, which means adding reeds.

This was the sample I did today; it is a right-angle triangle that will make the roof inside look like a barn roof. The reeding has to be done on the entire length of the roof in the workshop area, so this was an attempt to see if it would work. It did, but I had to adjust the spacing in order to get things to fit into place in a logical fashion. That meant, sigh, taking off the right-hand side of the reeding in order to increase the spacing. The ochre part is the reeded area; the white areas are where beams will be glued into place.

Yes, that was only the reeded roof for the hallway; the long strip is the reeded roof for the workshop proper; I see a great deal of glue being spread upon my fingers, work area, and work apron!

The donor of the "reeds" is this old and used corn whisk; it previously got cut into to make the sleeve fence for the Japanese Garden vignette. Gradually, the corn fibres are being cut out and glued into place onto the wooden block. It will take some time....

 

It's a Matter of Go and Stop

As you can see, construction goes on, but the need to prepare all the individual units before actual assembly is driving me a little bit crazy! The toilet area is done, I just have to install a door in the partition, but I can't glue anything in place yet, as I have to finish the hallway, install the faux slanted area of the roof, and finish the back wall before anything can be made permanent. The buttress and toilet block will help support the wall with the door, and the stairs will go on the left.

A lot of the pieces are currently living in a box, awaiting their installation. The end of the hallway area is next, to finish the walls, and the floor. Right now, the wall between the hallway and the main portion of the workshop is screwed in place, but not glued, as it has to come out again in order for me to work in that area. A slanted beam goes at the top of the wall,  and it has to be covered in "reeds" - I am using an old corn broom whisk, which is nice and dirty as it is used....

So, next up, I need to reed and beam that roof slant portion, and when that is in place, I can do the buttress and wall. When those are done, I can install a small sink area and a bricked drain. Then the hallway partition will be affixed, after which comes the slanted roof portion over the workshop, with reeds and beams. Rinse and repeat - finish buttresses, walls and floors.

It will be a while yet!

 

New Colour of Cellulose Clay

 As mentioned in the last post, Das/Prang air-dry clay has a new colour, Stone. I bought it thinking it was the white clay. Anyway, I find that I like this colour for certain applications, and the photo below shows the clay freshly applied to the wall on the hall side of the wooden shoe factory:

It is quite dark when it is fresh from the package, but as you can see in the photo below, it dries to a nice concrete colour:

I can see using this to represent cement and concrete in mini structures in the future. For the klompenmakerij, it will form a very good, slightly dirty background for the walls of the wooden shoe manufactory. Das/Prang has been used extensively in my structures over the years. Usually, I apply it directly to walls and floors, over a thin coat of wood glue; as it is a cellulose product, this is the best glue to use for it. In my house, the clay usually dries overnight hard enough to sand and paint the next day.

In case you haven't used this product before, it comes in two sizes of bricks, and in white, terra cotta and now stone. I use battens taped to my surface to dictate the thickness of the finished slab of clay, and a marble pastry roller to flatten it out, on a piece of wax paper, which makes it much easier to lift and place on the surfaces. Aside from walls and floors, I've also used it successfully to make brick slips and tiles, which I allow to dry under weights (heavy art textbooks!) between pieces of wax paper and plastic wrap. This takes longer than drying it on the surfaces themselves, of course, more like 48 hours depending on the amount of moisture in the air. However, these days I usually apply it directly to the surfaces to be stuccoed, bricked or cemented.

The brick walls of the Tudor Apothecary and Workshop were applied directly to the MDF base with wood glue, and the bricks inscribed in situ. The tile floor in the workshop was dried under weights, then cut and glued to the MDF floor. Two or three thin coats of matte, outdoor varnish waterproofed the clay tiles enough that I could use spackle compound for grout. The spackle was then tinted after it had dried.

Klompenmakerij Update

I do have half of my hand-made Christmas gifts done and ready to send off, which gives me a half day on which to work on minis. We missed two weeks of virtual meetings, so it was very nice to be able to get together again today.

Work did continue, however, so this is to show you a little of what has been accomplished (and it is just a little, sadly!). However, any progress is better than none, right?

 

The toilet is ready to be installed in the space under the stairs, at the left. I have to add "water" to the pail, and make a lid for the box, as well as dirtying up the wall a bit; it is my experience that gentlemen don't always "aim" that well. Only a part of the floor will be finished, with spackle compound painted gray, as very little of the toilet area will be visible without physical contortions, once the roof is in place. I do think it might be nice to add a duckboard to the front of the toilet box, as the floor is supposed to be dried clay.

The door to the toilet is in the process of  being worked on, part of what I did today, but requires some drilling I can't do with my little pin vice; I'll have to asked the Carpenter-in-Chief to do this for me, as well as some drilling for a little tool shelf.

The wall in the hallway is stained, and I am currently making the sink and grate for the end of this space. To give an idea, I put some of the furnishings I finished earlier, in place. The little knobs in the wall above the bench are for coats, hats and aprons. As I couldn't find my manufactured knobs, I cut some fancy toothpicks down to replace them.

The plastered wall on the workshop side of this wall has now been dirtied up and aged. There will be some tools hung here, as well as on the small shelf near the floor. I used a new colour of Das/Prang air-dry clay for this, a stone gray shade. There are photos of this as it was applied, as well as when it was dry, and I will try to get those posted later. The wall was then textured with a small wire brush, and once dry it was painted with white paint with a little bit of ochre in it, to make it look aged. The "dirt" marks around the edges were done with powdered chalks. I want this workshop to look rough and utilitarian.

This is the workshop space proper; the little stove in the right back corner will be given a better chimney and a coat of black paint before installation. (It's a pencil sharpener.) The yellow object - the inside of a Kinder Egg - is going to be transformed into a propane tank. On the little table will be coffee and tea equipment; a hot plate, kettle, and above it, a small shelf with mugs, and tea, coffee, sugar and milk at hand.

The sloped buttresses aren't in place yet, below the windows, as I have to coat them in plaster with bits of brick showing through. As they were cut from a piece of melamine shelving, I will also have to sand to give the surfaces "teeth" to grab the glue and paper clay.

Two more Christmas gifts to get done and mailed await me; I cut the pieces for one this morning, and the other one requires knitting. Once those are done, I will be able to work a little more rapidly on the wooden shoe workshop, I hope!

Progress Report Wooden Shoe Factory

 I am still trying to do some minis between all the other things I am currently working on. Today marked one of our "live" mini get-togethers; once a month we meet up in person, pandemic conditions permitting. I brought the stairway wall to begin gluing on the rough planking.

Hallway wall planked from floor to ceiling, but not yet stained. I am using skinny craft sticks, as I want my wooden shoe factory to look old and used, and those sticks are quite rough, which is the effect I am trying for.

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This shows the inside wall of the toilet under the stairs; everything in terms of partitions has to be made flat, as the working space is quite tight! The end wall will be whitewashed; right now, it has its seal coat on. The toilet box will be on the end wall. And the hall wall has been stained. There is going to be a dark area, with a small sink and faucet at the end, below the (invisible here) window. The door to the toilet opens out into the hallway, which will partly hide that sink and the duckboards on bricks under it. However, I will know it is there....

View from the other direction; the hallway side of the stair wall is being planked. This is a tedious job, as each stick has to be chamfered along the edges, and these darn sticks are skinny, too. Again, once they are in place, they will be stained. This area will have a light in it. I may have to put a candle on the toilet box, or hang a fake light bulb on a cord, with a pull-spring, for effect.

I have to have the toilet and sink in place, along with shelves and a tool holder, knobs for coats and other things, before the partitions can be glued and screwed in place, again due to the tightness of the stairs/toilet and the sink area. The back wall of the larger workshop will need to be finished, as well as the floors. I should be busy for a while yet!

Back to the Klompenfabriek (Wooden Shoe Workshop)

 It's been a couple of insane weeks, with so much happening that miniatures have had to take a back seat for a while. We were unable to get together for our weekly on-line mini meetings, but I have been working, although not as much as I had hoped.

This is a head-on shot of the klompenfabriek as it is is now, with the buttresses still leaning against the outer walls below the windows. When the base was screwed onto the walls, the floors became uneven back there, not uncommon with MDF, which is the Carpenter-in-Chief's dolls' house building material of choice. The stringers for the stair are in the stairway space, and the wall along the side of the stairs has been cut, doorway and all This will also be the bathroom for the workshop, so I have to seal-coat and then paint both sides of the left wall white, make the door to fit, install the privy box, and then place the stairs.

The gap between the buttresses on the left is for this half wall; this is the workshop side, partially filled in with individually shaped wooden planks. The original design had house siding, i.e. overlapping boards here, but I felt that a small workshop would more likely purchase inexpensive rough planks to cover the walls. Above this planking, the wall will be "stucco", better known as paper clay....

On the hall side, this wall is completely planked. I used dollar store craft sticks, as I wanted the walls to look rough and not fancy. They will be stained in oak; as that paint is oil-based, I will have to do the work outside in the workshop, as I really dislike the smell of oil-based paints in the house.

The smaller buttress against the back wall, between the half wall and the privy door, will have a small sink and a bricked grid to stand on; that is the next part of the work to be done. (I have to make both the sink and the grid.)

The interior walls will be paper clay stucco, with bricks showing through here and there. The working Dutch door is in need of muntins in the window, and I admit to being worried that I will get glue on the perspex windows....

The floor is supposed to be "dirt", and will likely also be made of paper clay. I hope that Das/Prang clay is still available in the stores; there are constant shortages of hobby materials due to the pandemic, I am told. I have some clay, but not enough for the whole building.

Hopefully, I can make the time to do some more work on this project in the next week or so, in between knitting, making Christmas gifts (they need to be mailed mid-November) and all the normal things life tends to throw at us from time to time!

Finished a Couple More Things

 This afternoon, Marilyn and I were working away at our miniatures for our weekly session via Skype, and I managed to finish last week's planter and plants, as well as finish a basic shabby chic bathroom shelf. I am happy with the way they turned out. The planter will go on the side wall of Floriana, my shabby chic flower shop, and the bathroom shelf will be dressed with odds and ends and go into my sales box. I think the shelf might have been an old CMHH item.

As there were some leaves left over of the arrowhead plant in the planter, I potted them up to place somewhere in Floriana; perhaps they will spur me on to make the Autumn window display!

This Week's Mini Creation

When I looked at the date of this project, I gasped; it was published in the January 1998 Nutshell News/Dollhouse Miniatures, to which I subscribed at the time, and I had wanted to do it since first seeing it. It took me 22 years!

The lattice planter is a David Krupick tutorial. As I was using what I had in my scrap pile, the wood doesn't exactly match (witness the gap in the top of the diamond!), so rather than varnish it and leaving it natural wood, I'll stain and paint it, then add some age.

The leaves are printies that came with the article back then, which I will make up and plant in the planter. As yet, there is no specific place for this piece, so we'll have to see if I keep it or sell it.

 

No Minis, But Perhaps Food for the Soul?

My back garden today, around 5 p.m.

A young sugar maple, just beyond our downstairs terrace.

Taken from the front steps, this is the view out to the street.

Why these photos? Autumn has been very rapid this year, and some of the trees are already bare; I have posted photos of the garden in deep snow, and thought I'd let you see the beautiful colours here at this time of the year.

This weekend coming up, which is Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend, will be the end of most of the leaves, although I expect our apple trees to keep their leaves for a few more weeks. Winter is so long here! The trees will not leaf out until late May.....

 

This Week's Project

 

The one time I visited the Kensington Dolls' House Festival, I came home with a lot of bits and pieces and a number of kits; this is one of them, a church kneeler kit from HiJinx in the UK. I really like the way it turned out; it will go into one of my Tudor settings, once I sew it up into a cushion.

The kit was a delight to work; it came with everything, and I have lots of thread left over. I wondered why the amount of thread had been so generous, as kits usually have just enough to work a design plus a bit extra for people who don't like to work with small ends of thread (or who make a lot of mistakes, have to pull the work back, discard that thread, and continue!) If you click on the photo, you can see that the sides of the kneeler have a pattern of crosses, while there are diamond-shaped shapes, flanked by crosses, in the four corners on the top.

While packing the kit to take this photo, I found out I should have worked the design in cross-stitch; I worked it in half cross stitch needlepoint.

Lesson: Even if you think it is half cross stitch, read all the instructions before starting! 

Fortunately, the pattern worked even in half cross stitch.....

 

Loft Project Radiator

The last two Wednesday virtual mini meetings I was able to attend, I worked on the radiator for the Loft Project apartment. This is the result, finished during our session today; it will be spray-painted a nice ivory enamel colour, to counter all the darker, autumnal colours I hope to use in this project.

The radiator is made of paired, glued craft sticks with decorative ends made from inexpensive wooden fan blades; I had a lot of those, as they were what the spiral stairs were supposed to be made of. (I still haven't completely given up on the stairs, but am  weighing my options there.)

The craft sticks were drilled to take a piece of brass wire to thread them together, and the horizontal "pipes" are flat round wooden spacer beads cannibalised from an old necklace. Two brass, knurled beads cover the upper ends of the wire. The "pipes" are made of plastic kit waste, which I actually managed to drill with my pin vice, to take the ends of the wires that hold the radiator fins together. The faucet is made of sewing pin bits and beads, again drilled in place on the plastic waste pipes. I did not drill through my finger tips, but admit that I did poke my finger with my awl blade....

Knitting is going on; one and a half socks, three knitted slippers, and half a mitten are on the go right now. There are also some partially finished, small knitting projects left over from pre-Covid, that I fully intend to finish (i.e., my intentions are good, we'll have to see if I achieve them!)

 

It May Be a While

 Because Christmas is fast approaching, witness the birds leaving here, the trees already turning colour, and the cool nights and mornings, I decided to get a bit of a head start on Christmas gifts. That means I may not be posting on the blog as often, but I hope you will check in once in a while. Due to the pandemic, mails are slow right now, and I think I should send any gifts off before the middle of November.

I am back at my volunteer job one day a week, for four hours only right now, and the knitting group has started up again; the huge donation of yarn that arrived on Monday means that the needles will have to click madly to use it all up. We are doing some knitting for charities and they need their supplies for the winter sooner rather than later.

The blinds are installed in the Loft Project, and I think I have what I need for the hardware on the windows. The next big job is pipes and wiring; decent weather is required for me to spray-paint out of doors, and with all the tropical storms/hurricanes, there has been a lot of wind up my way lately. We are also dealing, this far away from the west coast, with smoke from forest fires! 

Stay well, please; consider Hallowe'en patterned masks, and holiday season ones, as it looks we will have to wear them for some time to come. And we may as well have some fun while wearing them....

Window Blinds

I decided to add some window blinds, rolled up of course, to the two windows in the Loft Project. As well, I papered the two ceilings in the project. The photo below shows what I found to use;



The ceilings are an ogee-patterned, textured scrapbooking paper; two sheets were plenty to do both ceilings, make a mistake, and still have paper left over for some future small project. The paper was from Michael's. I also used odd stuff to create the blinds; a piece of wallpaper frieze, about 4" or 10 cm wide, that I had picked up from the freebie table at camp, thinking it might make good wainscoting for a witch or wizard scene. Combined with fringe (selvedge of a piece of natural cotton muslin), mini braid, gold embroidery cord, and a jump ring and tiny bit cut off a jewelry finding, all rolled onto a skewer, created the blind in the photo below;



I like it, as does the Carpenter-in-Chief! Tomorrow, I'll hang the blinds, and put hardware on the windows.

More Progress

The lower edge has been finished, again with a file folder cardboard strip faux painted to match the stained oak floor finish. Originally the space between the pillars was going to house the spiral stairs, but I am still not sure about those! The pillars will be enamel-painted in cream, with some aging to give them character. They are made from the wooden inside of some commercial tassels, and some doweling; remember, this building is intended to be cast iron construction.

The table, chair, ottoman and rug were originally intended for this project, and I still like them in this space. The vase is an inexpensive Mexican ceramic, with some very old (like, among the earliest I ever made!) grasses and plants in it; the colour works with the overall autumnal effect I associate with steam punk interiors, and I've always loved mossy green glazes.



The upper level is still bare; I will likely re-purpose the pencil sharpener Victrola with a wooden base and some more interesting colouring, but it would suit the setting. The interior window openings are framed, the windows are glazed, but not yet fixed in place. The lower one will be partially open. And the outside of the window framing has been "rusted" and aged.

The project is developing its own character; it represents a corner of the loft apartment of the owner of the book shop in the books. As space is limited, I have to think seriously as to what is needed to give the effect I want. I am kind of interested in trying a steam punk desk or chest of drawers, based on a framework of match boxes; there are a number of very interesting ones on the internet. The walls will, of course, have "stuff" on them, like shelves and paintings and pictures.

Ideally, I'd like to do some steam punk piping, again in cream enamel, and add a radiator and assorted dials and gauges where they seem appropriate, as well as a coffee table or something; I am still looking at possibilities there. Right now, I mainly want to finish this structure. The outside walls will be brick, with the slanted roof sheathed in verdigrised copper. I intend to light this structure, which will be a bit of a challenge, given the lower level ceiling height; I may have to resort to wall sconces and a floor lamp there. Battery packs will be hidden in a removable roof, with the handles being disguised as chimneys; I'm thinking of a small weather station on the roof as well, and will have to see what is available for things like a miniature anemometer.

And I am thinking very seriously of doing more portions of this project in materials like matte board, foam core and the like, with faux finishes, of course.

Some Progress

The spiral staircase, which was a major part of this project, and the reason I came home with a pretty much unfinished building, is now hanging on by a thread - I may assign it to the burn pile! However, in the meantime, I did do some work on the Industrial Loft Project, aka the Steampunk Apartment Corner Vignette. My idea for this loft is that it is cast iron construction, so lots of metal to fake up....



My decision was to take baby steps. Yesterday, I cut fine strips of file folder card, and used it to make a finished edge around the second floor; it was faux-painted to match the stained boards, and I am quite happy with it. The same finish will eventually go around all the raw edges of the project. Above is one of the windows in the process of being glazed. The Carpenter-in-Chief said I should not have the wide muntins of the window on the outside, as rain would collect in the metal corners and the window frame would rust out. OK, I agreed, and decided that I would cover the outside edges with fine, painted strips of sturdy scrap booking card. The purplish thing is the closest I came to black, so that was the colour I chose. I think a fair amount of card will go into this construction!



It's taken most of today, but one of the windows is in place, ready to have the interior framed glued in place. We were going to make the central section swivel out, but that requires, a) pin hinging and b) pin hinging having to be drilled in a laser-cut window where you can't get your pin vise in straight. I've given myself permission to make is simpler; the upper pane will be permanently closed, while the lower one will be permanently open. It is currently under weights awaiting the glue drying. You can see the nice finish on the edges of the second floor.

I would like to suggest hardware on these windows, and will have to research that. Also, I'm thinking that roller blinds would be an interesting touch, as this loft is now a home; they would be rolled up, of course, so not too difficult to create, and could have interesting hardware too. And perhaps I'll look for an interesting dark tiny tie print for the blinds.

Time Sure Goes Quickly....

...even when you're working on several things at once, as usual. I finished wickering the little doll's bed, just need to design and make the rockers (which were missing from my package (an estate sale purchase) and the cutlery carrier is ready to crackle and age. I've been working on sorting - again - and trying to find a punch I need that I seem to have lost or misplaced. I've also embroidered a small mat, and am glad I have an optometrist's appointment in two weeks as my eyes probably need new glasses - my vision gets blurry after about an hour's work, and then I have to stop for an hour or so.

As I would like to get back in the mini groove, I dug out an old CMHH project, from 2016 I think, which has been a bit of a thorn in my side for the past several years. It is the least finished project of all the camp projects, with the exception of the castle, as I ran into many problems in the course of trying to realize my vision. It is meant to be steam punk to match the bookshop in repurposed books project; the owner of the bookshop lives here, so I hope to have a desk with parcels ready to mail out, and all the stuff I can fit in that will add to the steam punk vision. It's pretty small, the footprint of the base is 9 x 9" or about 22 x 22 cm.




This is the structure and all its belongings; electrification stuff, the pieces of the roof which is meant to have a space for hiding the battery pack, rotating windows currently held by tape, sticks I am not sure what they are for, etc. I think there may be a set of library steps somewhere in that pile of small wood pieces! The box it was  stored in had an awful lot of unidentifiable scraps of wood, dowel and foam board in it.




That ladder thing is the beginning of the spiral staircase, made of fan blades. They're why I got so little done on this project, I think I had to make them twice. I've been studying other people's spiral stair projects, and perhaps I have figured it out. We'll see! (The steps rotate around the support pole.) The second level has to have supports at the cut-out corners of the stair opening, that's next. Once I have that sorted, I can continue on with the stairs. One tutorial I looked at used supports every four steps, and I kind of like that idea, as it creates a space under the steps that would be perfect for the imaginary inhabitant's cats.

This project is currently held together by painter's tape and gravity. I need to plot piping and electric conduits over two levels, and figure out if the battery can support the lighting needed, before I can glue it up. Here's hoping I can get my construction mojo back....

Yes. Still Plugging Away

I have to admit, I am having difficulty sticking with my self-imposed task of finishing some of those things that have been lying around forever, but boy, is it slow going! The constant bad news takes some dealing with, and with the library open again with limited hours, I am doing far too much reading, I'm afraid.



After looking through all my stuff, I was unable to find the lantern part of my street lamp, and I am blaming the cat. She definitely swiped the peak of the street lamp! So I decided, now or never, and went on-line to find the original tutorial; well, here we go again! The photo is there, with the diagram for the lantern portion, and a sample shown on the background of a cutting mat, but guess what? The site has apparently been hijacked by a Real Life lighting company, because when you click on it, you get normal size, manufactured, fluorescent lighting offered to you. Are you as ticked off by all those wonderful tutorials and DIY's that are no longer available as I am? There are a lot of pirates on that internet! I spent the morning re-designing the lantern based on the base and the peak measurements, which I probably should have done in the first place.



This needs staining and a coat of paint; it is a colonial cutlery caddy. Chances are this will end up in my pioneer room, lamp base vignette; I do have some pewter cutlery, and that vignette is where I display my pewter miniatures.



This is a lovely little dolls' bed being woven, from an old kit; I am almost done with it. I will admit that I am finding it difficult to distinguish between the wires I am weaving through, and those on the other side; my eyes are definitely changing, and not for the better. This will be done soon, I am determined! It was missing the rockers, so I have to design those. (The base is 2.5 cm or 1" wide.)

I also  finished the rest of the groceries I was working on; they will go into my kitchen stash for eventual use in something or other.  As well, I'm cutting out and finishing a La Casa Miniatures vintage Valentine card kit. And reading good books. And continuously looking for things that I put in a "safe" place....



That's it for now!

Some Work Happened

There hasn't been much work on minis the past week, but there were some repairs. A beam dropped out of my little flower shop vignette, perhaps due to the very hot and humid weather we have been having. That is fixed now.

I repaired a small piece I picked up from an estate sale; it turned out to be signed by Alice Zinn, a lady who has been making her livelihood from hand-crafted miniatures for some years.



The little frog stool had a leg loose and a leg missing, but I was able to replace the lost one. This is a child-size stool, destined for my toy shop (another mini I hope to get to "one of these days".) The box is still being glued up, it is a cake box with a transparent window, from an Ann Venture kit I had picked up at the same estate sale. Addendum: Lady Iolanthe, in her comments, said it was a toad stool rather than a frog stool; I trust her as I am her mother! And it makes a very good pun on the part of the maker of the stool!



It is a very nice kit; the only thing I haven't put together yet is the milk carton. The paper is lovely quality, both matte photo paper and glossy paper for the two cartons. The components of this kit will, hopefully, find homes in things like food prep scenes.

I tidied up my work space yet again, but there is more cleaning up needed!

Okay, Things Are Changing - Again!

My effort to post here this evening resulted in the new blogger which everyone is apparently very unhappy about! With Marilyn's advice, I have reverted to Legacy Blogger, in the hope that they can fix the glitch that doesn't allow me to post photos.

With summer in full swing, and things opening up a bit, we haven't worked as often on minis; however, we did get a face-to-face last Wednesday, as our wood shipment had arrived. That means that I can soon (I hope!) get to work on the staircase for the Klompenfabriek.

In the meantime, I did sort out the books in the Book Shop in Altered Books, a CMHH project. It involved gluing books together....



Except for two shelves, they are are more or less permanently stuck. The ones that aren't are "real", i.e. opening books with text and illustrations in them. At some point, these will be replaced by other faux books. As this is a book store, the books are now in groups, like they would be in a real bookstore. Now all I have left to do is re-make the lantern for the street lamp, check out the wiring, and then this project is - mostly - finished.

In the meantime, I am working on some semi-finished projects. "Semi-finished" sounds better than UFO's! Among them is this little bench cupboard, a FAME project that Marilyn taught. I am changing it somewhat, to make it fit with some of my other furnishing items.



I also made up a puzzle box, which has a real puzzle in it; it was a "Bits 'n Bobs" project from Ann B., a British camper who came to our mini camp for a couple of years. Another SFP (that's semi-finished project!) being worked on is a lovely upholstered easy chair, for which I used the last bits of one of my favourite fabrics. This one is also a CMHH project, from Janet H. of Maggie Melinda, another former camper. I'd like to finish both the bench and the chair by next week. We'll see!

And That Is That

All the foliage plants are done: 

So everything has switched places again; I wonder what I did? Anyways, these are the last six.



OK, it all changed again, but I didn't do anything; this is a photo of the whole grouping. There are two of each plant, one set to keep and one set to sell or pass on....

I hope to be able to start on my klompenfabriek later this week, as our wood shipment has arrived and it contains my stairway stringers. Onwards and forwards!

More Plants, Kind of Boring?

We didn't have our usual Wednesday afternoon virtual meeting, but I worked on potting up some plants both then and today; this is the newest batch.

The coloured ones are begonia varieties, while the three green ones are maranta varieties; I'm used to the smaller prayer plants, but must admit that the the tall ones is quite new to me. There are only half a dozen or so plants left to go, except for one other pink begonia, the rest are marantas. And along with one more tall maranta, there are two pretty large ones and two huge ones.

These printies are probably the nicest ones I've ever seen. As mentioned, they are from 1 zu 12, the German magazine. This week I was gifted another copy of that, and there are half a dozen things in it that I'm just itching to put together!

Books....

Almost 6 dozen of them! I decided that if I'm going to glue my books together in the Books project, then they'll not be some of the special ones I got as gifts over the years. Those will stay separate, and I will cope with them when (if?) the shelves tip over again.

And it occurred to me too that in a bookstore, the same books get grouped together on the shelves; that's what I should probably do with the books that are sort of assembled now. There are some children's books, so perhaps I should put those on a separate shelf.

Tomorrow should be another miniature workshop via Skype, and I intend to work on plants. There are quite a few of them that need shaping, gluing onto stems, and planting. I found two nearly used-up tubes of toothpaste, so that will give me two white flower pots for the red- or pink-leaf plants.

Sometimes, Mess Occurs!

The last few days, I've been involved in photographing and writing up my completed Camp MiniHaHa projects for the past 17 years, for a blog the camp has begun to help us cope with no actual camp this year due to Covid-19.

This was the only completed project still to be photographed. The last time it went on display somewhere, some (!) damage occurred, and it turned out a bit more extensive than I thought. The only thing that didn't get messed up at that display was the"glass" portion of the street lamp; I think our cat was responsible for that disappearing. However, I continue to hold out hope that I will find that missing centre one of these days, if only my memory would kick in and tell me where the heck I put it the last time I saw it.

When I made the two bookshelves at the left, I had a hard time getting them to fit within the confines of the space in the altered books. Well, I have admitted again and again that I am straight-line challenged, and in sanding them - manually, with a piece of sandpaper around a block - the ends were somewhat rounded. Access to the box interior is by removing the back wall; the shelves stand against that back wall. I hate to glue anything down permanently, and the hundred or more books in this setting may just have to be stuck together  to keep them on those shelves. But I will try sticking them on shelf-sized slices of acetate first; if they fall out, they will fall out as a unit and not as individual books, I hope!

The first solution (I'd love for it to be the permanent one!) is to glue a solid wooden plinth under each shelf, to even things out. The shelves are, however, tall and top-heavy, so I suspect more support will have to be found. Already repaired are the front window, and a very tiny delicate book stand, that lost one of its  wee supports.

 Perhaps I should consider a system where I can slide the entire shelf on a support that is part of the back wall, books and all. Oh well, here's to experimentation!

More Potted Foliage Plants

There is still at least one more pair of begonia plants to make up and pot. I hope I have enough pots! The light green plants are the first of the prayer plant (maranta) family; there are at least another dozen to go.

While the green-leaf plants look good in terra cotta pots, I planted the red ones in white pots, as there would otherwise be too much red. The remaining begonia pair is pinkish, and I have to decide what sort of pot would look good with them.

As mentioned in the previous post, these plant printies are from 1 zu 12, the German magazine. They are very good quality, and I did have them professionally printed, one of my few outside trips recently. Our scanner is not very good with European A-4 paper, and tends to cut off the edges all around.

To shape these, I first ran a ball stylus around the outside edges of the leaves, on the back. Then I flipped them over, and made a little hook-shaped crease in the centre, as one side of their leaves is smaller than the other; another name for these is elephant-ear begonias, a very good nickname! The wire stems are fine gauge, light or dark green or red, with a 90 degree hook at the top which I use to glue them down on the leaf printie.

Boutique Pulchinella continues to fill up.

Begonia Plants

I am making plants. All of the plants I am working on are foliage plants, and this first batch is begonias, all colours of them. The printies came from an issue of 1 zu 12, the German-language miniature magazine. There will, eventually, be two pots of each plant.

I have returned to half days at my volunteer job (museum accessioning), and my co-volunteer gifted me with three terra cotta pots; the green begonia is in one of them. I have never before come across pots in this size; they are in between the wooden ones I use and the terra cotta ones available at places like Michael's (North American hobby shop).

 My collection of white plastic caps will also be used in this project; in my house, most of the smaller plants are in white ceramic pots of many different shapes and sizes. There are four more begonia varities to pot up, and then there are about a dozen maranta varieties; the most common of these is known as a prayer plant. As some of those are quite small, they will go into my tiniest pots.

Toothpaste caps and the like are kind of a cliche in miniatures, but sometimes simple things are more eye-catching - in a good way - than complicated ones. And they're free....

Soon!

Having some problems with my eyes the last few days, a lot of visual migraines, so I haven't been doing minis. However, once things settle I will be back!

One Toaster and One Coffee Grinder Later

That kitchen scale is still giving me all kinds of grief, primarily because I can't find a dial for it that fits. Our computer will not scale photos down far enough, and my efforts, twice, to draw my own have resulted in ink that refuses to dry and smears. I will find a way!



The coffee grinder is done! What caused the most trouble, at the end, was not the teeny scale of the things, but finding a way to fix the crank handle and the coffee receptacle in place on the wood. And I still need to find my tiny silver stickers, to make a label for it. Yes, the drawer does open....

I ended up using a piece of thickish card for the crank handle, with a tiny bit of decorative toothpick for the knob. Those were then threaded on to a small piece of brass tubing, and a pin run through the lot and glued in with tacky glue and super glue. I hope it holds!

The toaster looks good! But it still wants a label. The cord is buttonhole thread, though I may eventually change that to cordonnee embroidery cotton - it looks a little delicate right now. The feet are seed beads, the groove was filed into the side of the wooden toaster block, and the handles are half circles of manila file folder glued onto cut-off pins that are glued into the body of the toaster.



The toaster was based on a tutorial on-line, but I changed quite a bit of it. The body was a sandwich of a slab of wood, with thin pieces on the edges, another slab, and another slab with thin pieces on the edges. I painted the inside black before assembling, except for the top edges. Once the pieces were glued together and thoroughly dry, I sanded the corners and added a base with rounded corners.There are at least 3 coats of pink paint, with sanding in between coats, and then a coat of gloss varnish.

I'm happy! The coffee grinder with the movable drawer is by far the smallest piece I've ever done. And I discovered that there are grinders with domed tops; those tops, however, have a little sliding door into which the beans are put - far too complex for miniatures!

I'm Going Cross-Eyed

The last several days have been packed with non-mini things, which means I am not much further along with making accessories to fill the blue shelf unit - which, by the way, I am unable to find. I seem to have put it somewhere so safe that I have no memory of it....



The Lego block is there to give an idea of the scale at which I'm working. The vintage toaster probably has enough paint that I can continue to finish the details of it, like the handles, lever, feet and cord and plug. The coffee grinder is giving me grief; I fear the wood I used for it is the crappy stuff from Michael's. The drawer has been rebuilt three times and the knob will not glue in place, so I am going to stain it and then super-glue that knob! (And hope that staining it will not cause it to swell and reject that darn little drawer!)

The design for the coffee mill is from a Dutch mini magazine, and I kept thinking there was something wrong with it. I finally figured out what that was this morning; the construction has the dome on top with the flat side down! In a real coffee grinder, the domed part is where the grinder 's crank handle is, and it is open to allow one to put in the coffee beans. The ground beans are then accessed through the little drawer. Hah! It was designed by a man....

The metal part is part of a cheap earring, with a hole punched through the bottom. I'll glue a spacer bead under it, and then string the crank handle and shaft on a head pin through the hole and the spacer. As the wood is so thin, I think I'll make the crank handle from sturdy cardboard, the kind you find on the backs of notepads. Painted it should look like metal - I hope!

I also hope to make a vintage breadbox from the tutorial in 1" Minis by Kris. It is made of mat board and cardboard, and should be another interesting challenge.