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 . . . .