Trash to Treasure Challenge Episode 2

 Fortune favoured me today, as I found the absolutely perfect piece of felt, as well as the perfect piece of scrap-booking paper, at my local hobby store. I needed these for the "box" in which the project can be placed. The box itself was a broken affair made of foam core, with a couple of seriously bent corners. But, I managed to do a work-around, and I am really pleased with it.

The other side of this foam core is black; I think it was a left-over piece from an Art College project of my daughter's. One corner was totally bashed, so I cut it off. I liked that! So I decided to cut off the other less dented corner as well. Better. Hmm, might as well be consistent, off came the front corner. And I love the result. There is another dent in the back corner on the outside, but fortunately it doesn't show!

And here is the box with the perfect piece of scrap-booking paper on the "walls", and the absolutely perfect piece of mottled grey-beige felt on the floor for the carpet. Looking good, but I had to trim out the edges, which exposed the inside, roughly cut, of the foam core.

The foam core is only 3/16" (about 4 mm) thick, so as I haven't used much of my card stock as yet, I decided to trim out the edges. Now it looks, dare I say it, like a wooden corner vignette! I just love the effect of the weathered and painted bricks, perfect for my "vision" of this T2T project.

While looking through my pin supply to fix a bead knob to my "silver" box, I found an old pin with a ball head; the pins in this box were inherited from my mother, and came from The Netherlands many  years ago. The department store they came from was boarded up the last time I visited my old home town. Anyway, the pin with the ball head was the sort that used to come in men's clothing from department stores, and it is the perfect size for the box knob, with the added advantage of not having to have a pin put through it; the head of a plain pin would have been kind of visible. I only use these plain pins for miniatures; my sewing pins have glass or plastic heads, so they are easier to find on the floor. (The Carpenter-in-Chief swears that any dropped pins are bound to end up in his feet.)

Love it! We are allowed 6 pins, and I have used only one so far....

I want to make a couple of pieces of furniture, but as I can only use a 6" square of foam core and I have already used some tiny scraps to make books, I have to really think  how to tackle this. As well, if I upholster, I have to do it with a 6" square of fabric; I will experiment with a used dryer sheet, to see if I can get enough fabric out of such a piece to use as upholstery. If only I could find a decent spray can top for another piece of furniture for this project....

Trash to Treasure Challenge!

My mini buddies, Marilyn and Louise, are both working on "secret" projects, so we had to come up with something different for our usual Wednesday afternoon virtual meeting. Marilyn had come across a challenge for the members of the Miniature Enthusiasts of Edmonton (hereafter referred to as MEE), and challenged us to follow this. They are doing a Trash to Treasure challenge, (hereafter referred to as T2T) due April 6, and although we aren't members of that club (they're a couple of thousand kilometres away to the west....), we do know a number of the members from Camp MiniHaHa and also from personal and very pleasant visits while out west visiting my kids, one of whom lives in Edmonton, and a visit to one of my buddies years ago in Prince Edward Island. Louise is keeping her project secret for now, but I suspect it will include flamingos....

A list of 35 items, and the quantities to be used, was provided by Maureen at St. Albert Minis (http://stalbertmini.blogspot.com/2021/03/hello-again-good-to-be-back.html ), and participants have to use at least 25 of them; we can add one item from our stash, of our choice. 

We are allowed four bottle caps; one appears here, in the form of the elliptical silver-grey base for my eventual table. We were allowed 10 beads, and five of them are in use here; the round beeswax candles, the tall vase, and the silver box. We were allowed a 2 x 2" (5 x 5 cm)square of foil; please see the hammered "silver" bowl. We were allowed one mirror, no larger than 2" (5 cm), and I had one in my stash. It has a frame of medium brown card stock, to look like a mid-century Scandinavian-inspired wall mirror. The two books created so far are scraps of foam core, one covered in egg carton cardboard (we were allowed an egg carton), and a scrap of the allowed card stock. We were also allowed three thumb or map tacks, and they form my "crystal" candlesticks  here.

Four cotton swabs were also allowed; the cotton buds of 2 1/2 of them form the mamillaria cactus, in one of the toothpaste tube caps we can use. The "soil" base is a piece of egg carton, and the actual soil is tea leaf dust, also allowed by the challenge. The senecio (Old Man Cactus) is made from a piece of chenille stick and bits of one of the 3 cotton balls in the challenge, along with the other toothpaste tube cap, and the tall cactus is made from actual pipe cleaners. The planter for this tall cactus is the bottle top from one of my father's Old English Leather after-shave bottles, which I have probably had for more than 25 years! It is real wood and the perfect colour for my "vision".

You can find the list of 35 items on Maureen's blog, St. Albert Minis ( http://stalbertmini.blogspot.com/2021/03/hello-again-good-to-be-back.html ). I'm having fun coming up with odd things I can make with unused items in my stash, and will publish a list when the project is done with how much I did manage to use in my setting. I'm not revealing what that will be quite yet, as I have to make sure I have everything I would like to have, on hand. My item from my stash, at this point, is foam core, of which I have a number off  small off-cuts.

We can use whatever colouring materials we like, and also aren't restricted as to glues. I've used mostly craft paint so far, but who knows what else I'll come up with.

Working on the Workshop Stove

We were unable to get together for our virtual meeting last week, but we are having two meetings this week. Today's meeting was another virtual one, and I did a little more work on the workshop, assembling a more convincing stove and a brick platform for it to stand on.

The actual stove is a pencil sharpener, in pot metal, with a sort of bronze-brown finish. First of all, I had to take the little conical cap off the pipe at the back; this has been replaced by a new pipe made from a bendy drinking straw, a piece of dowel to reinforce both the long pipe and the curved top, strips of manila file folder for the joins, and eventually a washer for the fitting in the wall. The flashing on the stove's lid was removed with files and an emery board. The stove will stand on a brick base, to make it more fireproof.

Now I have to wait for all the various glues to dry; I used the pot metal, a plastic straw, card, and wooden dowel, so several kinds of glue were used. The one that takes the longest to cure is the metal glue to re-glue the bent pipe from the back of the little stove on to the stove again; it broke off when the cone was being sawed off. Then I get to paint it; right now, spray paint seems the best way to do it, but it is very cold here and I can't spray paint in the house; I may have to make a spray booth out of a cardboard box, and use the storage area in the basement....

When this is all dry, I can test-fit it into the wooden shoe workshop, to see where it is best placed; I kind of want it in the centre of the right side wall, but it may interfere with the space needed for all the shoe-carving equipment. I also have to mark its position on the wall, before I put the paper clay stucco on.

We are having a rare face-to-face meeting this Friday, weather permitting, as we are currently in a favourable phase with regard to the pandemic. I am not sure what I will manage to get done that day, as we are sharing some of our supplies to continue work on our various projects. Those will be dug out tomorrow, ready for my fellow miniaturists to check out.

 

Just a Quick Note

I've been rather quiet lately, and it may continue for a little while yet; we have three family members in hospital, in Europe and in Canada, and in this time of Covid there is, of course, no visiting, so we are having to rely on information from doctors and nurses via the patients' family members. We have been keeping in regular touch with their families for updates, and it sounds like there is good progress.

Today, we woke up to more than a foot of snow (nearly 30 cm); it is very pretty against the bright blue sky, but it is also quite messy. I managed to drive my car into and out of a parking lot that had not yet been cleared of snow, and really worried I wouldn't be able to leave again, but my small car is mightier than I thought, I guess, as I made it back out to the cleared road with only minor slipping.

There has been an urgent demand  locally for hats and socks for the homeless, so minis are temporarily on the back burner, although I hope to get some mini work done tomorrow during our regular Wednesday virtual meeting.

Stay well and stay safe!

Magnolia Shrubs

I mentioned that I was making some magnolia shrubs for the planters outside the flower shop, Floriana. This is the first attempt; although I like the look of the plants, the bare branches looked odd to me. The only thing I could do to finish things up, was to make some flower and leaf buds. For these, I used tiny painted twists of model magic, a very lightweight air-dry clay.

After painting them a very light green, I glued them here and there on the shrubs, and once the glue was dry, brushed the bases very lightly with a nearly dry brush and the colour of the branches. The petals were made from white paper, one side coloured with a pink-purple colouring pencil, following a tutorial in the May/June/July 2020 issue of 1 zu 12 magazine, written by Hannelore Merchel.

They look quite nice in the French wooden planters, either side of the door to Floriana. A very small touch of spring, when it is bitterly cold outside with lots of snow. Because of where we live, the sky is an incredible light turquoise blue, a colour I always associate with the coldest winter days, and the sun is bravely shining.

Back to the wooden shoe workshop now....

 

The Back Wall Is In Place!

OK. I haven't been posting that much, because I will admit it took some courage to tackle this large back wall of the wooden shoe factory. However, after doing the right back corner section, I realized it would be much easier to do all the rest at once, and I decided today was the day.

It didn't take as long as I feared it would; I worked in 10 cm (4") wide sections from floor to slanted beam, and it looks as if it just might work. There is some unevenness where the sections join, but I can likely sand that into shape and use paint to sort the rest. The dividing wall slots nicely into place in the space left for it; I used a scrap  piece of wood during the stuccoing process to keep it clear of the paper clay.

Now that that wall is done - well, except for painting and aging - I can decide where to place my little pot-belly stove, which warms the workshop on cold days. I have a metal pencil sharpener stove for this purpose, but think it should really stand on a brick base, rather than right on the tamped "clay" floor. I also have to decide where to place it; the original has it in the right back corner, but I think it would warm the space better if it was in the centre of the side wall. 

The stove requires piping, and that involves cutting off the metal top in order to add a section to go into the wall. It will also require a fitting on the wall, which I will have to work around when I put the paper clay stucco on that wall. I can't do the floor until I have the walls in place, but I can probably place the windows and the door. That should make it look much closer to finishing!

I am going to assemble two magnolia bushes destined for the planters of the flower shop this afternoon, provided the stink of burning plastic disappears! It looks like the built-in vacuum cleaner has just died...

What Happens If You Don't Think

This morning, I tested the long slanted roof section of the wooden shoe factory, after having finally glued in the buttresses and the toilet block. The roof section wouldn't fit! Scratching my head, I decided I didn't think ahead well enough; the thickness of the paper clay stucco on the hallway wall took up a good 1/8" of space (approx. 3 mm) . Not a huge measurement in the common run of things, but it makes a big difference in 1/12th scale!

Scary! I had to trim back the finished stucco, and hope I didn't chip things too badly. It is all to the better that I discovered this now, as I will have to do the same thing in the corner of the workshop, and it would have been a lot more difficult to chip away in that confined space. The dividing wall hasn't been glued in place yet, as I still have to do the "clay" floors. It was, therefore, fairly easy to lay it flat on my worktable and slice and sand away.

Lots of dust mess, minimal chipping of the rest of the wall(whew!), and now it fits. But, I wasn't thinking ahead again, and I knocked two of the little coat pegs out of the other side of the wall. Sigh! Now I will put those back in place, which involves Superglue, and that item and I do not have a good working relationship....