Paper Everywhere

With the boring outside done (paw prints patched and all) I was finally able to start making Bellerose House look like someplace people could live.

The Dining room has had both walls and floors covered.  The flooring in here (and throughout most of the house) is fake.  The tiles in the raised entry area are just a paper sheet from DHE while the parquet in the dining area is printed from a printable tile found on the internet.  Normally, I wouldn't consider printed flooring good enough as it tends to look too . . . .flat.  It lacks the texture of "real" flooring.  But one thing I've noticed is that by the time I've finished working on a room, very little of the floor remains visible.  Between furniture, rugs and people the floor virtually disappears, so this time I decided it wasn't worth the effort of spending hours rolling, marking and painting clay to create a more realistic tile effect.  At the moment the two different floors in this room sort of clash; they both have detailed patterns that compete for attention.  Never fear though, by the time I've finished there will be more of a break between the two to ease the competition.  The wallpaper in here is a scrapbooking paper with a neutral damask pattern.

 Next door in the kitchen is one of the few floors that are "real" and textured in this house.  Although it doesn't show up well in this photo, the floor in here is "slate" made from a layer of polyfilla into which lines were scored to create a block or flagstone pattern.  It's still a little too dark at the moment and needs some more light highlights to bring it to life.  The walls have been covered with "tiles" above which they are covered with a pale blue fabric.

The next floor up sees a return to fake paper flooring.  I bought this parquet paper to use in the house that is now Preston House the second time I decorated it (Preston House is the third incarnation of that particular house).  I had so much left over from that project that I could use it on several floors since and still cover the floor of both rooms on this level.  Since I decided to keep the archway that directly connects the Sitting room to the Rec room these rooms will have a lot in common decor wise, but hopefully still have two distinct personalities.  The Sitting room is covered floor to (almost) ceiling with a William Morris wallpaper called "Golden Lily".  This paper is absolutely gorgeous and not as badly hung as it appears in this photo (I promise!).  It's just that the paper has a slight glossy sheen that wreaks havoc with a camera flash.

Take the photo without the flash and the paper is flawless, but the room is horribly dark and gloomy.  Until we get some sun back in wintery Tasmania, it's a lose-lose situation for taking photos.  The gap between ceiling and paper will be filled by some wide gothic cornice/coving.  The faux hallway behind the room has been papered with more of the Dining room paper.

Through the arch is the Rec room which again features the William Morris paper.  This time it lines the upper walls and some panelling will be used on the lower walls.  By using the dining table as a stand-in pool table I've decided that the three functions I want for this room (pool room, study and art studio) will all fit.  I wouldn't want to be sitting at the desk when anyone was trying to wield a pool cue though, it could prove painful!

 Up to the top floor and the main bedroom is, well, very yellow.  This is the wallpaper I bought for the bedroom in Preston House but decided not to use.  I used a solid fitted carpet in here instead of say, floorboards and a rug, as I really didn't think this room needed any more pattern or visual interest than that which the wallpaper already gave it.  If I were to remove the fire from along the left wall you'd see a small hole in the carpet.  This is because after I pulled the carpet out of the cupboard I left is sitting out in the open where any cat could come along and chew on it.  Luckily, aside from that one small patch, I still had enough unchewed carpet to cover the room.

 The final two rooms are the least adavnced.  Both these rooms have had floorboards made from popsicle sticks laid, but no other work has been done in them.  As you can probably tell from the photo, there aren't quite enough tiles to cover both sides and the back wall of the bathroom.  I do have a plan to accomodate this, but I can't afford to make a mistake or simply change my mind so I'm procrastinating over starting the walls in here until I'm absolutely sure I haven't overlooked anything.  As for the second bedroom, I simply ran out of suitable adhesive before I reached that room. 

Gonna Be a Bear

I don't know the source for this except to say it was going around my Grandma's retirement complex.


"Gonna Be a Bear . . . . 

"In this life I'm a woman.  In my next life I'd like to come back as a bear.  When you're a bear you get to hibernate.  You do nothing for six months.  I could live with that.

"Before you hibernate, you're supposed to eat yourself stupid.  I could deal with that too.

"When you're a girl bear you birth your children (who are the size of walnuts) while you're sleeping and wake to partially grown cute, cuddly cubs.  I could definately deal with that.

"If you're a mama bear, everyone knows you mean business.  You swat everyone who bothers your cubs.  If your cubs get out of line you swat them too.  I could deal with that.

"If you're a bear your mate Expects you to wake up growling.  He Expects that you will have hairy legs and excess body fat.  Yep, gonna be a bear!"

A Little Fur-ensic Evidence

I accomplished quite a lot in miniatures this week . . . but can't show you any of it because the work was done on my entry in this year's DHE competition and I can't reveal it until after the entries close in September.

I did do a little work on Bellerose House, but it's not much to look at.  I applied some textured paste to the exterior of the newly added bathroom/spare room to blend it into the finish of the existing house.  This takes forever to dry, so it's slow progress.  After a couple of coats I thought I was ready to apply a coat of paint over the whole exterior to tone it all in together and the outside would be finished.  Then I saw this:

If you can't see what the mark in the surface is, perhaps this photo of the cupboard beside the house will help:

 The trail leads right to Charlie the cat's favourite cat bed.  Good job he's so cute or there'd be trouble!

Once I've fixed the footprints and given the outside a final coat of paint, I'll be ready to start decorating the inside of the house.  The dining room walls will be covered with the beige and white scrapbooking paper in the below photo.  The yellow paper I bought for Preston House last year but decided not to use.  It will go in Bellerose House's bedroom.  The pink and teal fabric may be used in the Rec room, but I am worried it won't work with the wallpaper I want to use in the adjoining Sitting room, but I won't know if it does or not until the Sitting room paper arrives.

Although the order with the Sitting room wallpaper has yet to arrive,the rest of the goodies have arrived in the mail.  The plaster cornice/coving is for the gothic themed sitting room.  It's from Sue Cook Miniatures  and is probably the last thing I'll be buying from there, not because of the service or quality of the items but simply because the postage from the UK cost more than the price of the already expensive moulding.  And that's after Sue discounted the postage cost a little.  UK postage charges are just criminal these days!  The doors came from a mob called Minaco on ebay.  For around $8 you get three pairs of door facings.  You can either glue a pair to either side of a piece of wood to make a "real" working door or simply glue one panel to a wall and surround with some trim/framing to create a fake door.  They are a great idea and the cheapest way I've come across to make panelled doors.  The tiles came from Jacquies Miniatures.  The green "modernist" tiles are for the bathroom while the white tiles are for the kitchen.

Provided Charlie neither walks through it, sits on it or eats it, there should be something worth looking at in Bellerose House by this time next week.

Walled In

Bellerose House is starting to take shape with all the internal walls and structures added and the new rooms added over the Sitting room.

In the Dining room, the floor has been raised at the back of the room.  This raised area is where the "entry hall" will be with the "front door" in the centre of the back wall.  The two holes in the floor are where I was going to put two stairs down into the dining area of the room, but I've veered back to the original plan of having one set of steps directly in front of the front door.  A fake door in the side wall (next to the lady in red) will allow "access" to the kitchen.

Next door in the kitchen the rear of the room is also raised up a step.  A fake corridor will run behind the oven to connect to the dining room.  The raised rear area will house the scullery while the kitchen proper will be at the front of the room.

Directly above the dining room is the sitting room.  This is all on one level, but has a fake wall at the back to create the illusion of a corridor running behind.  The doorway will be decorated with a fretwork arch and be left open (no door) allowing a view of the corridor.

 Connecting to the Sitting room is the Rec room.  I've used a fake wall in here to create two recessed windows which will have built in bench seats under them.  Between the windows is a fireplace.  I was going to split the function of this room three ways to be a pool/games room, a study and an art studio, but looking at the space and trying to visualise a pool table in it, I don't think there will be room for all three.  Either the study or the art studio (or both) may have to be moved upstairs.

Above the Rec room is the Bedroom.  There's yet another fake wall here creating a short passage between the main part of the room and the door on the real back wall.  I did this just to make it really hard to arrange the furniture in the room nicely.

Finally, next to the bedroom, two new rooms have been built on.  On the right is the bathroom featuring the bathrrom suite I bought at the local doll bear and miniature fair last month while the left room could either be a second bedroom or study or art studio or a combination of these, I'll make a final decision on this after I decide what will and won't work in the Rec room.

Next up I need to refinish the exterior to make the extension blend in while I wait for all the goodies I've ordered to decorate the house to arrive.  Hopefully I'll be able to show you at least some of these goodies next week.

Second Time Around

With the Lair finished, it was time to do something I've been wanting to do for years . . . . rip everything our of the Bellerose house and start it again from scratch.  Most of you won't be familiar with this house in it's first incarnation, it was the very first house I worked on on this blog and it was horrid.  It was one of those houses that just would not cooperate and I hated it from about five minutes after I first started it.  Now after years of ignoring it I'm finally going to turn it into something fabulous (I hope!).

This is the house with all everything stripped out of it (and a few test pieces of furniture moved back in).  As you can see it's basically five big empty boxes and was made using two cheap shelf units side by side.  As part of the renovation, I'll add a sixth room where you can see the bath in this photo.

The original house was Victorian, the new house will be late Victorian/Edwardian with a jumble of influences from between 1890 to 1910.  The ground floor will hold the dining room combined with the entry hall and the kitchen.  Technically, you would have been unlikely to walk right into a dining room through the front door of an Edwardian house, but in this case it's a better use of the available space.  This is going to be a back to front house, so the front door of the house will be on the back wall.  It'll just be a fake door, not an opening one. The back of the room will be raised above the level of the dining room floor by a platform.  Some fancy fretwork railing will separate the two levels of the room and help define the two spaces (entry/dining).

Next door will be the kitchen, right where it used to be.  Most of the furniture from the original kitchen will be reused in here (oven, table, sink and hutch) but rearranged to make better use of the space and allow for an expanded scullery area.  Like the dining room the back of the room will be raised up a couple of steps to define the areas of kitchen and scullery.

The middle floor will house the sitting room and what I'm currently calling the Rec room (as in recreation room).  The Sitting room will reuse the original gothic style sofa and chairs and the gothic theme in here will be enhnced with the addition of some of Sue Cook's plasterware and some William Morris style wallpaper.  Style wise this room will probably be a bit behind the times of the rest of the house, but hopefully it will good good enough you will be able to forgive the residents for not keeping it more up to date.  The Rec room will have a combination of uses, part study/office, part games room (including pool table) and part artist's studio.  Basically it's a place to spend your leisure time whether you like to read, paint or play games.

The top floor will be for bedrooms and bathroom.  The main bedroom will have a chinoserie theme (using up the paper I bought last year for Preston House but decided not to use).  Next door to this will be the bathroom which may be one large room or I may divide into two to create a bathroom and a second small bedroom.

So, here's hoping that this house will be better the second time around.

'Ere Be Dragons

'Ere be dragons . . . . Or at least 'ere be one dragon.  As promised last week, the Dragon Wizard has summoned up another companion in the form of a serpentine oriental style dragon.  I call him Claude, not very oriental I know, but take a look at that face and tell me he doesn't look like a Claude?

 Claude started out as a wire skeleton over which some kitchen alfoil was wrapped to create his "muscles".  He was topped off with a skin of polymer clay.  A small tear shaped cutter was held at an angle so that only the rounded bottom pressed into the clay to create his scales.

Claude's eyes are dark blue gemstone beads that were inserted in his head durring sculpting.  This is the first time I've tried using solid eyes in polymer clay creations and had them turn out well.

Claude was wrapped around an unturned ceramic mixing bowl and held in place with balsa wood scaffolding to create his shape before being baked in the oven.   He's a little top heavy so you may notice a discreet stand holding his neck up in some photos.

Claude was supposed to have his head turned around to look more directly at the Wizard, but this just proved to hard to position for baking.

 Aside perhaps from a few touches here and there, the Lair is now finished.  I used DHE's "Garden Pavillion" kit to create the Lair, or rather I used the Pavillion part of the kit.  I would like to use the "Garden" section to add an oriental garden infront of the Lair, but this would make the Lair twice as deep and I can't think where I could put it.  I don't know where it's going to fit in now as it is.  Nor do I know how I'd keep some (1:1) cats out of the garden if I made it.  So for now, I'm going to start on a few of the other projects I'm bursting to do and I'll come back to the possible garden at a later time.

Lair Work

It's been another busy week in the Dragon Wizard's Lair with the furniture from last week finished off and a few new additions added.

The daybed was finished off with a red brocade seat cushion which was then almost totally hidden from view by the addition of the Dragon Wizard's new companion.  I was planning ahead and made the doll I knew I would want to accompany the DW at the same time as I made the ladies for Pennicotts.  All she needed now was dressing, wiggin and her make up putting on.  Much like the DW, she is dressed in an outfit of chiffon and brocade and hand wigged.

Once she was dressed and wigged she was glued into position on the daybed and her gown was pinned into position to drape nicely.  It was then sprayed with starch and allowed to dry.  When the pins were removed this was the result:

A few pieces of jewllery finished her off nicely.  The companion is meant to be glamourous, yet still leave DW to be the star of the show.  Aside from forgetting to put shoes on her before glueing her feet onto the daybed, I think she turned out pretty well.  My current plan is to put a pair of slippers under the daybed so it looks like she kicked them off before putting her feet up.

I made the daybed and the Companion to sit along the right side wall, but as soon as I tried the finished bed/doll in position I realised that she looked better the other way around, so I swapped the daybed with the console table moving the daybed to the left wall.

This arrangement means that the large cabinet has to sit at an angle to fit in.  I showed you the start of the cabinet last week.  This week it has been finished off by adding "paintings" (images printed off the computer) to all the cupboard doors and drawer fronts.  These were glued in place and then surrounded by "copper" fixings made from copper toned faux leadlighting outliner.  The door/drawer knobs are all blobs of the outliner too.  The open sections at the top were filled in with paper scrolls and a metal bead to resemble small pot or inkwell.  A small gold dragon statue sits ontop.

The console table (now on the right side of the Lair) has been topped off with a bonsai tree.  The bonsai was made from pieces of wire twisted together to form a trunk and flared apart to create spread roots and branches.  I only had green wire and so had to paint it brown.  The paint doesn't stick well to the wire so you can still see some patches of green that will need to be touched up.  Lichen moss was glued onto the branches to create the foliage.  I found a shallow bowl (or maybe it was a deep plate?) in my stash and glued a couple of small polished pebbles into it.  The bonsai was glued atop one of the rocks with it's roots spread over it.  Some autumnally toned fake railway foliage was glued around the rocks in the base to finish it off.

 I'm not sure I like the right side with the console table there, so maybe I'll end up moving the daybed and Companion back over there . . . . . . . Perhaps.

 Anyway, here's how the overall Lair looks with the current arrangement:

  What do you think?  Should the console table and daybed/Companion switch places?  The Lair is now nearly complete, there is just one more major item yet to be made and added: a dragon.  (Well, he is a dragon wizard after all).  The dragon will be a long snakelike oriental type and (if I am good enough) will wrap around the dragon wizard as though answering a magical summons. Yep, I've saved the hardest thing for last.

Starying away from miniautes, a couple of months back I showed you a section of the cross stitch I had been working on.  Well after many years of work, it is finally finished and here it is:

Nope, sorry, that's Ginny.  Here's the cross stitch:

Ginny again . . . . .  Finally, I moved the cross stich to somewhere the cat didn't want to be and managed to get a photo:

The design is called "The Japanese Garden" by Anchor's Maia range.  It's 30cm x 40cm or 12" x 16".  I started this about six years ago, so now you know that I don't finish everything as quickly as I do dollshouses.  The fact that this design has an oriental flavour and I am currently working on an oriental-ish dollshouse is just a coinsidence.

Long Time, No Blog

I have been a very lazy blogger lately.  I have no excuse, I just didn't feel like blogging, so kept finding other things to do instead.  The next thing I knew it was almost a month since my last post.  I think this level of blog neglect is a record for me.

First up I need to warn everyone that my email address seems to have been Hacked.  If you recieve an email from celestial@y7mail.com please delete it immediately.  I did not send it and it will probably do horrible things to your computer.  I have sent up a new email account with a different address and will not use the celestial address again.  I am also totally unable to access the celestial account so if you've sent me an email over the past few days I won't recieve it and I've also lost my contacts/address book so if I had your email address, I've now lost it so will be unable to contact you except through non-email means (i.e. blog comments).

When not panicing over my electronic security (or obvious lack thereof) I've been hard at work on the Dragon Wizard's Lair.  The inside of the Lair is starting to come together now I've started adding furniture.

 Along the left side of the Lair are some stacked chests, a daybed and a stand.  All are hand made, the daybed and stand from balsa wood with some laser cut panels in the daybed.  The chests were printed from a printables website sometime ago for a project I decided not to use them in.  I've since completely forgotten the site where I found them, but they look quite convincing as long as they are tucked up a back corner. 

The red hanging covers the patchy wall where I blocked off the side door that came in the kit.  It isn't necessarily the hanging that I will use, it's just one that was left over from the Oriental Folly.

 Along the opposite wall are two more pieces of furniture.  The tall cabinet at the back is not finished, so still looks a little odd. Before I started it looke like this:

I cut the top off and re-attached it underneath the bottom.  The door of the (formerly) bottom cupboard were bashed out and a range of shelves and drawers made out of balsa wood were aranged in the cavity.  More balsa wood made a pair of drawers to sit under the unit.  With these drawers in place, the whole unit still looked a little on the small side so I added some pre-bought chunky wooden drawers under them.  A pair of "fins" carved from balsa wood were added to the top and I had a very unconvincing Japanese style document cabinet.

The console table is more balsa wood and a laser cut panel.  The filigree pieces at either end are cut from pieces of fan blade, the same sort of fan I used to create the railing for the stairs in Preston House last year.

 Outside the Lair has a stronger Japanese feel than the inside does.  The walls are painted the same colour as the internal walls and decorated with some balsa wood strips painted dark brown.  I punched out the internal structure of the windows and doors that came with the kit and redesigned them to have a more asian flavour.  Hmmm . . . . I think I like the windows/doors on the Oriental Folly more than these.  Oh well.  Like the Oriental Folly the roof is made from glueing drinking straws along it and covering them with air dry clay.  This time I arranged the straws closer together so each tile is arched unlike the folly which has an arched tile then a flat one.  The tiles were then painted olive green and covered with gloss varnish.

The weekend also saw the annual Doll, Bear and Miniature fair held at the local Casino in support of the Eskleigh home.  As usual the event was packed and a combination of exciting and disappointing.   I bought a lot of wonderful things including a bathroom suite for the next house I'm going to do and a fabulous fireplace for an absloute bargain price.  Mostly the rest of my haul was knick knacks that will always be useful to fill any empty space.  I don't know what I'll do with the garden gnomes/dwarves but I simply couldn't resist.  Sadly, I didn't find anything to accent the Lair or my Cabin for the DHE competition.  (By the way, if you see a building sitting next to the Lair in a few photos, just ignore it, I can't tell you about it until much later in the year!).

The fair featured all the usual suspects and a newcommer to the fair, Shelly MacLeod of Dollhouse Dreaming.  She is a truely talented artisan.  Here's a sample of her work which I've "borrowed" from her website:

Not only does she make the most exqusite dolls but she also makes houses and is a talented painter.  Her site, Dollhouse Dreaming, is well worth looking at even though none of the photos there actually does justice to the pieces she makes.  There is just one catch, buying one of her absolutely gorgeous dolls would have wiped out my entire budget for the fair.  I guess I'll just have to keep on dreaming . . . .