Item 5, I Think, of the Old-fashioned Kitchen

The plate rack was made during our virtual mini meeting this afternoon; there is only one more item in this collection, a shelf unit with some drawers. I am still deciding what colour to paint this grouping; apple green is very inviting, but sadly not very sale-able! It needs some hand-painted designs on it. This grouping was made to match the little robin's egg blue bench in the scent shop, with a naive design in cinnamon and cream, vining stylized flowers. We'll see!

The Provencal Scent Shop Ready for the Show

Well, it is not permanently finished, but this is what it will look like for the show on Saturday. The shelves are now full of merchandise, bottles and packages I've been finishing the last couple of days. There has been another power outage, as well as today's nasty mix of sleet, freezing rain, snow, fog and plain rain, but it has made it a good time to do work, at least during the short days. At this time of year, that means from 7 a.m. to about 4:30 p.m., and the days are only going to get shorter for a while yet. (Funny, the blue check sections of shelf are going off in all directions; in actuality, they are a tiny blue gingham print. Must be pixilated!)

The low, middle shelf unit is currently holding purple floral dishes, which are there only temporarily; they will eventually be replaced by bins of soap, still to be made. I am cheating somewhat, using some flat roundelle beads from a kid's craft department; wrapped in tissue and with a little sticker on them, they should look pretty good. Along with those, I'm going to try to make "artisanal" soap from polymer clay with interesting inclusions to represent spices and herbs.

Each of the shelf displays comes out as a whole; they are stuck to a piece of transparent plastic, fitted to the shelf, with glue dots (Zots). This keeps the contents securely in place, and allows me to re-arrange the shelves as I want, much easier than working within the tiny confines of each shelving section.

The wrought iron furniture is temporary; the shop will get a shabby chic display shelf eventually. Somewhere in my pile of magazines is the exact design I need, but there isn't time right now to go through hundreds of dollhouse magazines - these are what I get many of my ideas and instructions out of, along with my nice collection of books on miniatures.

The hanging bar below the purple centre unit will eventually get bunches of dried lavender hanging from it; for now, we are making do with pots of lavender. And I think the floor needs a shabby chic rug, something light with roses or something....

I'm Going Cross-Eyed!

Today I came across a treasure trove of shop boxes on the internet for perfumes, bath salts, soaps, powders, you name it, including an entire range of boxes, labels and bags on a Wild Rose theme. Just perfect for the Provencal shop. But boy oh boy! Putting those tiny things together is frustrating....

I have 10 tiny clips and each box needs 4 to hold corners together to dry. So that means 2 boxes at a time can be glued up. My glues that I would normally use for this purpose have given up the ghost, so I am using a toothpick to dab glue-stick glue onto teeny tabs. All the folds have to be scored, of course, and for that I am using an old hat pin type of thing. My fingers are sticky and sore. My eyes are burning. But it is going to look so nice when it is finished, provided of course that I can find a way to keep the lids on the boxes down. Tomorrow I will attempt to punch tiny circles out of self-adhesive labels to make box closures. Failing that, I will have to cut and sand balsa blocks to fit into each box....

My hope had been that some of the rose-themed boxes would fit over cuts of standard basswood, but they are off just enough that that won't work. However, I think I will use basswood sticks to help fold the tops down neatly, kind of like a hand-held jig. There are a couple of nice gift bags, those will need a bit of reinforcing top and bottom, and thread handles through them. Bits of coloured tissue in these will suggest the bags are holding products.

In the meantime, the Tudor house roof is being finished; I had to add some strips to the roof crest to glue the cardboard roof tiles on to. The upper side corners of the removable main and second floor walls have been chamfered to take the beam supports, those will be put on tomorrow. Then the chimney comes off the house to make it easier to "brick" it; I will be using sandpaper bricks for this, as I can't use paperclay due to thickness limitations. Then the chimney cap and pots will go on.

The lamp base insert's floor and wall have been antiqued, the dresser has been glued up, the table is made up, so that is also coming along. Once a fireplace crane and faux fire have been added, I can "dress" that vignette.

Yesterday we got more than 30 cm (over a foot) of snow, along with a 13-hour long power failure. The generator is ordered, I just wish it would arrive; sitting around the house wrapped in a quilt with fingerless gloves on my hands means no work gets done on miniatures, and the show is next weekend! And now, with all the snow and the cold, the installation people probably can't work on it.
Oh well, maybe it will get a little warmer.

And my work-table is a right mess!

I've Been Working

Pretty tame, but boy, do those tiny bottles and jars take time! Especially when I get the hunger shakes while trying to position a seed bead with superglue on top of a skinny plastic bead....

The little display boxes are made to fit a specific number and configuration of jars. The jars themselves are made of a plastic pony beads, with the top of a split paper fastener glued on. Some of them have tiny labels cut from dollhouse wallpaper scraps. The display boxes themselves also use scraps of wallpaper, along with printies from the internet. These will go into my Provencal shop.

The table is a House of Miniatures kit, nicely rabbeted with holes drilled for pegs to hold everything in place. Only, one hole was rather off centre; luckily I was able to drill another without messing up the whole leg. This table will be stained, painted, and antiqued to go into the lamp vignette base.

We are expecting a snowstorm, so tomorrow will be a good day to work indoors; I did my volunteer job today to avoid getting caught in the storm tomorrow. My carpenter-in-chief likely won't be able to work outside tomorrow, so the Tudor house may get some more bits done as well.

At some point I have to make a piece of shop furniture to display miniature soaps; I kind of shudder at the amount of work in the soaps alone! As well, I would like to make a display counter to hold the cash register, and am thinking of incorporating part of a plastic box as the "glass" for that.

Somehow, miniature vignettes just never seem to get finished, do they?