Made Some Mistakes....

 

The handles on the evaporating pans are on the wrong side, which probably means making a couple of new pans. The backdrop is there to give you an idea of what this scene may look like, but keep in mind we're in the early stages yet. I bricked the fireplace on Wednesday, but decided to paint the bricks as I did not like their original colour. As the bricks are a plaster product, the paint had to dry thoroughly; also, I worked at my volunteer job Thursday.

The stuff on the back of the fireplace is the hood and chimney, made in cardboard, currently being held in place by a drinking straw, so that orange thing will go away! And of course, the whole fireplace hood needs to be painted to look like well-used metal. The sled too needs to be stained, as well as the one bucket, and they all need to be dirtied up, um, that is, aged.

Tonight I'll put a seal coat on the card, and then I can do the faux metal painting over the weekend. It's an interesting project, for sure, but so many small bits and pieces!

Among the smallest are the spiles, i.e. the taps, if you like, that are inserted into the tree to allow the sap to drain. The ones above are very old, made of wood, except for the one at the top, but as they are maybe 1 cm or so long in miniature, carving wood that way would be horrible.

These three are the basic spiles; I will use the type at lower right, more cardboard to paint to look like tin. The narrow end goes into the tree, and the hook is for the sap bucket to hang below. I also have to make quite a few of those, along with their hinged lids that prevent forest debris and perhaps bird droppings from getting into the precious maple sap. Fiddly work, but I'll work a way to do it quickly. I photographed the spiles at my volunteer job; we have a large number of them, so I had the real thing to study!