It's Going to be Quiet for a Bit

I have developed epicondylitis, known as golfer's elbow - it's like tennis elbow, but on the other side of the arm. Unfortunately, it's my right, working arm. It's been going on for six weeks or so, but I thought I had overdone it with my knitting earlier this year - a repetitive strain injury, so I stopped knitting.

So I'm being good and icing it and doing exercises, and not doing much of anything else, at least for a day or two. Then we'll re-evaluate and see if I can go back to working in small doses. I am very bored, and may start cleaning....

I'll see if I can get some shop work done by the Carpenter-in-Chief so that I can get on with some of my other projects when the arm is not giving me grief. And there are flowerbeds begging to have their mulch removed, my least favourite job of the spring, but it would be something to pass the time!

Stay well.

Again Two in One Day

The morning glories are planted in the French planter; they need "dirt" and some under-planting, but that will be for another day. Do enlarge this picture by clicking on it, the tiny dark thing in front of the morning glories is the coral bead plant I found in the magazine mentioned in the previous post. It's in a tiny cobalt blue ceramic horn of plenty pot.

The morning glories are 1/4" (6 mm) circles, each with a magenta centre and a white, acrylic ink star in them. There are 25 or so of them on the plant; I didn't count the leaves, just filled things in until I liked the look of things. The flowers have calyxes, i.e. each one is set on a twisted piece of wire dipped in white paint. I think I am crazy, but I may add some jewelry wire tendrils and some buds.

The coral bead plant is made with a small clump of model railroad foliage, with some mixed foliage scatter over top, while the tiny beads are HO gauge(?) oranges. I found the best way to attach those was to dip the tip of a toothpick in glue, pick up an orange ball, then sort of smear that in place on the foliage clump. Not very elegant, but it worked!

What Happens When You Surf the BLogs

This post is geared towards those readers who also check in on the Dutch blog, Huis ter Swinnendael. I stumbled across it just minutes ago, and was surprised to see the little painted bench in the most recent blog entry. I own perhaps half a dozen copies of the magazine, Dolls House Nederland, bought second-hand along with some other Dutch magazines, as well as a few copies I picked up in person at the Arnhem Show, and I treasure them.



In the June 2010 issue of Dolls House Nederland, I found the tutorial for this bench, fell in love with it and made my own version for my Provencal Scent Shop, a Camp MiniHaHa project from some years ago. The bench sits outside its ochre wall, with a zinc planter filled with lavender on its top. The bench is dated 2013 - I date most of my projects.



Huibrecht's experience with Rika echoes my own; some years ago, two friends and I went to the Arnhem Show; one Dutch Canadian (me), one American Canadian (my mini friend Debbie P.) and one English miniaturist (Anne B.) We couldn't navigate our way through pre-payment for the tickets, so one of the staffers offered to deliver them to us, on arrival, at our hotel. It turned out to be one of the senior staff of the magazine, who stayed and chatted with us for nearly an hour. A very warm welcome to the show, indeed! I have always appreciated their kindness to three travelers from away.

Ten or more years ago, the magazine ran a series of articles on constructing The Rembrandt House, with articles running for years, offering furnishings for it, as well as period accessories, that readers could make for themselves. They also ran an earlier series of articles  titled The Medieval Project, done as a series of free-standing  projects that were placed together to form a whole,  and I would sell my right arm to own all the instructions for both; I just have parts, but they are such tempting parts!

In the meantime, there was an article in that June issue of DHN for making a plant, "koraalmosje"; it is small with orange flowerets, and as I have the supplies for it, will make myself some.

I recognized some of your names in the Comments on Huibrecht's blog! We live in a very small world....

Progress Report

I made a pair of New Guinea Impatiens plants today. And some sunflowers. I also painted the "stone" plinths, and started a second pot of lavender.



The plinths are made of a block of wood, with wood top and bottom, and some cereal box cardboard decorations, topped up with part of a jewelry finding.




The wall pocket has one of the sunflowers, and the others are destined for fall floral arrangements.



Tomorrow, if the energy continues, I'll finish the second batch of lavender and start on some of the other plants to go into the arrangements. Making flowers takes time....

I Keep Finding Stuff to Add

The planting bench has been painted, and needs to be aged. There are a great many flowerpots, not all of them aged as yet. The three plinths have their base coats, now they need definition. And I found yet another cool flower pot to paint, as well as a second small urn. A grouping of New Guinea Impatiens - the orange flowers - are ready to be planted. But my eyes are sore, so the rest will have to wait until tomorrow.

What has become plain to me, today, is that I need to tidy up my supplies yet again; there are several places with assorted baskets, more with planters and urns, and I still haven't found my paddle wire. Who knew I had more than half a dozen watering cans? Or assorted gardening tools, including a very nice set of gardening shears. And not to mention, seed packets, signs, tubs and barrels. I think I might be a miniatures hoarder....

Well, Getting There

Not a great deal to show for today; I have to go into flower making mode soon to fill some of the containers I've made. Another small display base, mainly a fancy base with a plain back, has been assembled and is ready for me to dress up. It will also likely be used to showcase items at shows.

The potting table was made from a kit, I think. It will be painted and "dressed" with items and will also go into the sales box. I have two more potting tables kicking around....

This gives some idea of what the display will be used for, with interchangeable backdrops depending on what I'm featuring. With "wallpaper" and a rug on the floor, it could showcase miniature "antiques" or embroidered items, for example. Once we're free to move around, I'll install the slide-out for the backdrop, as I need to visit my local glass shop for plexiglass.

Lavender in a Weathered Pot

I am so pleased with this new technique! It is an amalgamation of several lavender tutorials I checked out yesterday. The foliage is, of course, lycopodium; there is as yet no artificial substitute for this. It does, with time, deteriorate somewhat. The pot is a repainted resin miniature, aged and mossed and with some algae added to it.

For the lavender blossoms, I used a slightly coarse white sand, and glued and shaped it to the tip of the wires. The sand was then painted in grey-green, the same colour used for the stems and the foliage. Once that was thoroughly dry, I dry-brushed it with lavender paint right out of the bottle. I let that dry for an hour or so, then used a nearly completely dry brush with purple paint and just stroked it on. Do enlarge the photo, I think this will be my go-to method for now for lavender!

This pot will sit on a short plinth, still to be made. It will also be aged, as if it has been in the garden for many years. At my Real Life house, there is a lavender bush outside my front door, more than 25 years old. We almost lost it a couple of winters ago, but aggressive pruning had brought it back to life. It is still under snow and leaf mulch right now, but I hope to uncover it in a couple of weeks. We are not frost-free in my neck of the woods until the end of May.

The foliage wasn't grey enough for my tastes, so after it dried I dry-brushed it with light grey paint, just on the tips; this gave it more of an effect of powdery grey. Another trick learned!

Display on the Way

A few months ago, I picked up a new (old) package of self-adhesive, chipboard letters. Although I suspect the adhesive is probably no longer viable, I will use the letters to identify my display vignette for shows. The other items are also on the way; the little gray thing will become an autumn wall-hung
floral display, and the item in the clamps is the French-style planter for the trellis in the background. At the moment, the letters spell out, Boutique Pulchinella....



I am really pleased with the way the display itself is going. The upper portion for the signage is ready for the lettering. I deliberately aged it, as I wanted it to look old. The cheap paint I used - white over gray - is starting to skin over a bit, but I let some of those pieces remain, as they look like the sign has been repainted many times in its existence. If you enlarge the photo the detail will be more obvious.

The molding below that will be part of the retainer for the removable backdrops. The piece of trim at the base will become the bottom track for that. I can't really work on it any more until I know the thickness of the plexiglass I'll need, bit I can do the tiling. A bunch of lavender is in progress for the gray pot on the post; the post itself is being auditioned for a short pillar fragment, although I think I'll likely go with a square one. Pillars are fairly easy to cobble together from left-overs of wood; yes, I am still playing in my scrap pile! Although, I do have that partial baggie of round woodsies, they might work nicely for a round pillar. Hmmmm.

It's Been a Week

Still working away on minis, although there have been a number of "days off". Yesterday our daughter finally got away and home again; her ticket to fly went through 3 different dates before the flight became a reality. She said there were perhaps 40 passengers in the 737 jet that flew her from Toronto to Calgary....

The Carpenter-in-Chief had a decidedly low-key birthday, as we couldn't get out to purchase him any birthday gifts, nor could we go to a restaurant for a celebratory dinner; however, I managed to bake a brownie birthday cake, which is more than half gone already, and we will go out for dinner - likely by means of take-away - when he decides what he would like to eat.

The backdrop I've been using for the last few photos is being fitted out as a display for my sales items once the shows begin again, probably not until next year here! I can't quite finish it, as I need plexiglass and I am not sure the glass stores are open. The plexi is intended to slide out to allow me to insert various backdrops, depending on what I feature for a particular show. That way I can temporarily attach items to the "wall" using self-adhesive dots without damaging the wall finish. I hope to find some anti-glare plexi once I am able to go out again. However, I can paint the basic wall and the signage, as well as install a tile floor. The tile should work for both inside and outside flooring, but I have to make it quite flat so that tiny light-weight miniatures won't "float" above it. Still deciding whether to use air-dry clay or paper or wood for that.

Keep well, everyone!

More Stuff to Work On, and a Snowstorm

We had quite a bad snowstorm overnight Friday, which kind of threw us for a loop for a while. Today the weather presented us with sleet and some hail, before melting down to some light rain. It seems Spring is still far away.

I played in my scrap pile yesterday, and that resulted in the white garden shelf, garden carry-all and the bittersweet wreath.



This made me think that I should perhaps create some warmer weather ideas, so with that in mind, I will try a few flowers in the next few days. This would be a good time to place the trellis in a tub, and begin to grow some flowers on it. An ornate flower pot is getting a couple of coats of paint, and I will plant some lavender in that. And then there are all the ideas I've sketched in my notepad; I will keep busy during our enforced stay at home for a while yet.

The book nook project is waiting on me figuring out how to do the mirror angle; my last physics class was more than half a century ago! I am thinking about it, though. It is unlikely the Moncton Miniature and Doll Show will happen May 1, so this may be a good opportunity for me to try some garden-oriented things, quick and engrossing.They will keep until the next show opportunity, and the backdrop I've been using could be useful in more ways than one, so that's another project to work on.

Stay well, everyone! and Happy Easter.

Keeping Busy = Time Passes Quickly

This is craft stick and file folder cardboard planter fence, based on a Real Life one I saw on-line a couple of days ago. I aged mine, so the colours aren't as bright as the originals.

It is based on an advertisement for a picket fence planter; the fence posts are craft sticks with roofs made of scrap wood bits, and the galvanized metal half buckets are painted card. It still needs some sort of base, most likely a triangular base sort of thing, so it will stand up. If I can't sell it at a show some day, it can be used in my flower shop setting. It was a fun thing to do, taking mostly time and using very little material.

and Another Interlude....

As it was 14 Celsius at noon today, we decided to take a walk around our country block. This is a definite sign of spring! At the bottom corner of our property, we have a culvert that mostly just has a trickle of water in it, except in spring when it can become wild enough to drown small animals. Today, it had melted enough that there was actual water flowing out of the pipe.



A few days ago, when my daughter and I went for a walk, we saw a sort of inchworm caterpillar; today, there was an actual woolly bear, so it must be spring, right?

Inspired by nature, I took another day off from the Book Nook, and created a floral arrangement that is destined for my flower shop's autumn window.



This is based on a Pepperwood Miniatures arrangement in an old issue of Dollhouse Miniatures, from Sept.-Oct. '09. I used model railroad oranges for my bittersweet berries, and used Copic markers on a piece of computer paper for the maple leaves. The veins on the leaves were drawn in with an extremely fine artist's dip pen - one I use at work for putting numbers on museum artifacts - and white acrylic ink. The stem of the berries is left over from yesterday's silver dollars, while the stem of the leaves is brown floral wire, painted and with tea dust bark sprinkled on.

I'm happy! There was an eagle or osprey circling above us as we were walking today, and in a patch of woods down the road ther must have been a million twittering birds, likely sparrows or finches.

A Short Interlude

As I was trawling though the internet yesterday, I came across a tutorial - via Jicolin to Mamiblue - for a money plant (lunaria).  The supplies I needed were all at hand, so I tried it.

I am not altogether happy with it, as the money plant I have next to the television is much more golden beige in colour. But I persevered, and it is pretty good. Do click on it for more detail.

The tutorial suggest the glassine windows of business envelopes, or baking parchment; I had the latter. I used a brown felt-tip pen to (attempt to!) go around the edges of each seed head, and then added a few tiny strokes with a brown fine-tip pen. The little tip of the plant is brown sewing thread, the stem beige basting cotton which I painted to match the wire plant stems.

The challenge for me in this was the tiny size; vase and all, this bunch of flowers measures 1.5" or approx. 3.5 cm in height. The seed heads were cut from a small, 4-petal blossom. And I used a mix of tacky glue and superglue gel to attach the thread stems to the main stem. I managed not to stick any of the bits to my fingers!

Somewhere I have a tutorial for assorted winter berry plants....

This was a short interlude, now I have to go back to panels for the Book Nook insert.

Pillar Bases Are Constructed - And a Confession....

At 10 a.m. this morning, this is what my work area looked like. It snowed again yesterday, with some of the biggest flakes, or rather clumps, I have ever experienced. April Fool's from the weather, I guess!

I discovered that my walls were too long for the space in the bookshelf; I hadn't allowed for the outer layer of cardboard or the cloth I hope to stretch over it all. Long-time readers of this blog will know that I am straight-line challenged. (So apparently is my younger daughter!) So displacement activity, also know as "clearing your workspace", occurred during the rest of the morning. In the process, I discovered a really good razor knife I forgot I had, and it helped me over the fear hump of cutting 3/8" or 1 cm off the front edges of the walls, floor and ceiling. It worked! The edges are nice and smooth, just as I had dared to hope.



After the clean-up, I can actually work on the table again. The pieces I cut off the front edges of the box were recycled - part of the idea behind this challenge - as the upper pillars for the mine passage. They need to be trimmed to size, covered in card, and "carved".



The bases of the pillars are made of foam board with layers of cereal box cardboard "carving". If you
click on this photo, you may be able to see the three layers of carving, with a raised strip running down the middle. This project recycles, right? The strips are the folds of the cereal box, and I have saved a couple more of these to use on the narrower upper pillars, and the border of the area with the carved panels. Before I hit the bed, I'll harden off the cardboard with sealer, then tomorrow I can do the black base coat.

The blank space will hold a "carved" panel, with a border strip along the faint indentation visible on the wall above the gate frame - I hope! This whole project is growing as I go along....

The Hinge Problem Is Solved

And I am very pleased with it. Do click on this photo, to see it full-screen; this will allow you to see the details.

I replaced my hinges with heavy strap hinges and plates. with lots of sturdy rivets in them. As file folder card (manila especially) is thin but strong, I used that for the hinges. They are actually set into the door post. That involved drilling with my pin vise and then reaming out the excess wood. For glue, I used the tacky and superglue method, which seems to be working well. The tiny rivets are 1/16" punch-outs in thinner card that the stuff used for the other doorway.

The lock is a miniature copy of an actual medieval lock; all it needs is to have the hasp sealed and then painted. As it takes at least an hour for the superglue and tacky combination to dry to my own personal satisfaction, I'll do that after dinner. It's made of wood, cardboard, wire and thread.



The candy shop now has a marble counter. I ended up using brown paper to do the final sanding coats with, as everything just scraped off the paint. It is not "expensive" marble, and it is a satin finish because it is old and well-used. The veining was done with both paint and ordinary pencil, with a final wash of white to blend everything. Next for this project is the false ceiling to hold the fittings for the eventual light I intend to install.