One of My First Minis, a UFO: The Artist Studio

If you are going to have an artist's studio, you need paintings to go into it; these are 10 small paintings I did many years ago for the studio. The coin for comparison is a 10 cent piece. I am not really an artist; I cheated with this, borrowing books on learning how to paint from the library and doing the steps in miniature, on pieces of matboard. My favourites are the scene with the cows, as the water looks very much like water, and the seascape with the rocky shore. My least favourite is the winter scene in the top row, as the bushes are too red for my liking.

Some five years ago I did some more miniature paintings, 5 of them, as gift exchange items for the Camp MiniHaHa attic roombox scene we did. Those were all portraits in the American Primitive style, worked from illustrations in an art book. So somewhere out there are 5 more, probably unsigned, paintings!

The furniture for studio came from a couple of sources, with the artist's working furniture made from Helen Ruthberg's book, Miniature Room Settings. I love the drafting table, which has a metal rail and knurled knobs (old watch parts) on the sides, a metal edge on one side and a stop at the front. She also designed the tabouret, easel and work table, and many of the tools on top; T-square, set squares, brushes, sandpaper paddle, cleaning brush, etc. The little tabouret contains a rubber brayer, sticks of Conte crayon, a portfolio, and as yet unfinished paint jars and a turpentine can.

Here is a less cluttered photo. The box with the tubes of paint needs a little colour added to it, time to get out the marker pens. And that easel and table  are far too clean for a working artist!

The living furniture came mostly from Carol and Nigel Lodder's book, Making Dolls' House Interiors. The two chair seats were made with hemp jewelry cord, and were inspired by Vincent van Gogh's bedroom chair. I am very fond of the warm golden brown colour of my favourite stain, Ipswich Pine, and use it for just about everything. The two shelf units are unpainted, as I need to decide on my artist's colour scheme.

The photo above is a closer look at the living furniture. There is a roombox for everything to go into; I wanted it to look like a factory loft conversion, so had put a roof skylight in, with textured glass. Unfortunately, the framing let go, I re-glued it, and now the glass doesn't fit. My intention was to make a removable front with mesh wired glass windows and brickwork top, bottom and sides.

The roombox for all this stuff (and more that I purchased) is the one Ms. Ruthberg suggested, with a raised area at the back, where the artist lives, and the studio space at the front. It has a door, but it is too short, so needs to come off. (I suspect I made it with instructions for a 1/16 scale scene!)  I am having a hard time with that, as I made it myself with laboriously sanded panels in it, and glued-on items rarely come off without damaging the MDF they are glued on. It is huge, and lives on a shelf in the basement storage area, until such time as I get the courage to take it apart and re-do it. There is a bed, but the mattress has yet to be made. I've already got a wonderful, aged oriental carpet to go into this scene. Oh yes, the raised area needs a railing, something else I have to make as yet.

By the way, any decorative work on the furnishing was done with files, knives and sandpaper. I am not really comfortable with power tools. My husband gave me a Dremel tool years ago; it lives in his workshop and he uses it....

I am working away at the Camp MiniHaHa '12 project, as well as finishing off some small UFO projects, like antique boxes, a couple of small benches, Versailles planters, bucket bench, flower box, and a birdhouse bench, all items that have been sitting around for years. Some of them will go into the CMHH project, others will go into my box to take to shows and, hopefully, sell.

Designing a Dollhouse Garden and Making Plants

Last year's Camp MiniHaHa project has been tidied up a bit, reinforced by wooden framing on the edges of the vignette and along the interior floor. The edges of the walls were framed with wood veneer strips to hide the pink bufoam, but were unable to correct the bowing of the uninterrupted wall; you can see the shadow created by the bow in the foam. I've decided to live with this; really, I have no other choice, if I try to bend things I'll wreck the whole structure, most likely.

These are some of the flowers I've prepared to landscape the outside of the vignette. Some of them were from the kits we were provided with, some are my own design. The next step will be to plant them to see how they will work best. I am hoping to have a wrought-iron fence along the edge of the setting, but have to see if that will hide the flowers too much. I kind of think I will need something like a clematis climbing up the wall by the chimney to extend the garden upwards a little. Designing a miniature garden is almost as much work as designing a full-size one! And of course, there is the birdhouse with the robin, and the cat, to fit in as well.

The areas painted dark brown are going to be garden beds, along the chimney wall, and a slate walkway in front of the shop. The bare section is where I hope to put the polymer clay "granite" footings for the fence, as you can see there isn't all that much space. I think there may be a shabby chic wrought iron plant holder by the window, and some other planters and pots as well. This little scene needs lots of colour.

It is intended to be a little shop in the area of France where they grow flowers for the perfume industry, primarily lavender, although I will have other scents available as well. This means making lots of bottles, all of which will need nice labels, which I have yet to find. Also, soap and bath salts and toilet water and other pretty scented items. And of course, furnishings for inside the shop. I did buy some very nice pieces at Victoria Miniland in March, but am leaning towards making my own after all; I visualize this place as being rather shabby chic in appearance, so somewhat worn off-white or white appeals to me for the furniture finishes.

While in Arnhem last March, I bought a wonderful sheet of printies from Iris Arentz, which will inspire the interior of the shop. She did a soap market stall, which is the inspiration for my project.
Lots of saturated colour, like deep gold and purple....

Making Miniature Flowers

So it was bad weather yesterday, and the bad weather culminated in an 8-hour power blackout, starting at suppertime. I spent the afternoon and evening making up flower kits to go with last year's Camp MiniHaHa project, until the light failed. I made up some more today, old kits I had lying around and had never done. The hollyhocks and sunflowers were made last fall, the smaller flowers were the product of two days' work. All but one kit came from CMHH, these were produced by Adrian the Flower Lady and her friend Elizabeth: left to right, back row first; campanula (which will have to be planted closer to the ground), gaillardia or blanket-flower, daisies (more leaves needed) then front row left to right: pansies (a gift from someone, I like my way of making pansies better), stokesia or aster, and dianthus or pinks.

I coloured the pinks foliage with a white pencil as it needed to be grayer. The campanula (I have two varieties of them in the real-life garden) had the upper points of their petals recurved to increase the bell shape. I used paint thickened with texture builder to build up the centres of the gaillardia, stokesia and daisies, then dipped them in glue, and then in coloured decorative sand to make them slightly bigger. The centres of the gaillardia were then edged in maroon around the yellow, using a marker pen. Google Images are great for close-ups of garden flowers that are not in my own garden.

This is my nursery bed, i.e. the plants will go into the actual miniature garden in a rather more naturalistic way than they are here. The colours work pretty well together. I need some intermediate-size flowers, peonies kind of appeal for that. As this garden is purely imaginary, I can have things blooming out of season, so maybe some hydrangea, zinnias, moss phlox, petunias and other things will add to the cottage garden feel.

Tiny paper blooms helped to brighten up the last two days quite nicely!

Another Miniature Medieval Tapestry Completed

This design came from one of the British magazines, and I loved the colours, so of course, I had to make it. It is kind of scary, really, that I know so many of the DMC embroidery floss colours off by heart....

Like many of my pieces, the embroidery was finished a year or more ago, but I had not as yet backed it or put the loops on; one of the things  about myself I am really trying to change, is to completely finish something rather than partly finish it.

What I like about it is the lovely, faded colours, which remind me of a fresco painting. The design is quite old, a Moorish ship, I believe, and one doesn't often get to use turquoise and purple in a piece without it being garish. And the border; chartreuse green and maroon just happen to be favourites of mine. The piece was done on 32 or 36 ct. Monaco or Davos-type fabric, rather too thick for minis. I should have used linen, but I don't always have the smaller counts around when inspiration strikes. There are still a couple of tiny pillows worked on the same fabric to finish.

I finished another project too, today, so I should rest well tonight!

Mini Day Out and the Miniature Doll-Making Class

 Half of the room, industriously working on the bodies for their miniature people, who were mostly in the oven at this point....

Other half of the room, the rain had finally ceased and there was a sort of view out the window.

Some of the miniature people, some with bodies, some without, none of them painted as yet.

 Short, tall, chubby, slender, beautiful, homely - another look at the little people. The well-endowed lady is an elderly witch. The lady at top right even has her face painted!

We even had a bathing beauty, who will be in a bubble bath. And those long limbs belong to a fairy as yet without a body.

This was such a fun day, everyone got right into doll-making. Most of the participants had never made a doll before, so the results are really quite amazing. We began the day in serious rain thanks to Andrea, the storm, but only one person was unable to make it. The participants appeared to have a lot of fun, too.

Some of the participants were old friends from Camp MiniHaHa, but many more were people I had never met before. The Mini Day Out is a joint venture of the Valley and Halifax-Dartmouth mini and doll groups. They have two of these a year, as well as their regular meetings, of course.



Polymer Clay Doll Workshop

This weekend I will be teaching a polymer clay dollhouse doll workshop in Nova Scotia, and as I hadn't made dolls for quite a while, I decided to do a few body parts. By just after lunch, I had four ladies ready to put together; they will all go into the Tudor market hall, eventually. A man has been sculpted, but not yet bakes; tomorrow, I hope to give him 3 friends to share the oven with (hehe!)

My old clay is giving me a bit of a problem; it has tiny air pockets in it that pop up when it is baked, despite a lot of "working" the clay. Hopefully I can sand these tiny imperfections out, or hide them with paint. Legs don't worry me, as the ladies will get stockings and shoes to cover any imperfections, but problems on hands and faces are more worrisome. These ladies all have inserted eyeballs, that's why they are staring like that.

It's a funny thing about making individually sculpted dolls; old and middle-aged dolls are no problem whatsoever, but I have a very hard time making young faces! These ladies are mostly of the older variety; once they are painted there might be other faces jumping out. Oh yes, that is another weird thing with dolls; I can't really decide what I am making, they decide for themselves.....

As well as making the dolls, I am also working again on last year's Camp MiniHaHa project. The raw edges of the pink foam have been covered with stained or painted wood, and the next step will be to repair some of the chips in the "stucco" that happened when one of the pieces of framing decided to

 go on crooked, and had to be redone. My goal is to have it finished to display at camp in September. As it requires lots of stock in the shop, I will work my way through a fair bit of polymer clay in the next few month as the shop will sell soaps and scents of various sorts made with lavender and other plant essences. Waiting to be worked on are Lite Brite pegs to be turned into bottles, and then I have to find appropriate, tiny labels and boxes for these items. Although I bought some very nice furniture for this shop in Victoria, BC in March, I am still inclined to try and make my own shop furniture, sort of shabby chic.

It is my hope that I will be able to post more regularly, now that my life is more or less back to normal. However, I won't do an iris tutorial, as Joanne Swanson has recently done that on her blog site, and my design for irises is based on hers; the only thing I do differently is to build the petals up on a tiny 1/8" circle platform (see tutorial on poinsettia plants).

Catching Up Once Again....

I'm feeling very guilty for not posting more - but I have excuses. Well, for the next little while I have excuses.

First of all, I was away to the west coast and Alberta, visiting family and attending my son's wedding. This Saturday I am my designer daughter's assistant for the Red Dress Campaign fashion show in Moncton, as well as helping her sew some trims. Next week Saturday is the Moncton Miniature and Doll Club Show, for which I've been doing some embroidery. Then, the middle of May my son and his wife are having the church wedding here in his hometown, for family and friends, with people literally coming from all over for the event. I am decorating the reception hall. Then, in early June, I will be heading to Nova Scotia to teach a one-day polymer clay doll-making course for a miniature day out event there.

So, it may be just a little while before I make another post or put up another how-to for plants. I think the next plant will be an iris, the leaves of my irises are just peeking up above the leaf mulch, and most of our snow is gone, just a little left deep among the trees.

Stick with me friends, I will return, I promise!