Lights and Little Things

Well, for good or bad I sent off my entry in DHE's creative competition durring the week.  Although I don't expect to be one of the place winners, I hope I've done well enough to at least make the judges short list . . . um, well maybe.  Competition conventition dicates that I have to keep it under wraps until the start of September, so be sure to check back here for the big reveal then.  For the time being though, I get to concentrate on Bellerose house without having to juggle two houses at once.

I concentrated on finishing the lights for the house this week.  I should point out that the house is not wired and all the lights are dummies and don't actually light up.  It would be easy enough to add a wired bulb to all of the various light fittings, but I find that "real" lights are just too expensive, especially considering I only ever turn them on in my wired houses just to check they still work about once year.  The Main Bedroom now has a ceiling light in red and white beads.  There are two rings of beads, an inner ring of crystal look and faux pearl beads and a more decorative outer ring of faux pearls and red faux crystal.  Both rings are threaded through a round, flat jewellery finding which is hung by a length of chain from the ceiling.

Another new feature in the bedroom is this little chaise.  After re-arranging the furniture in here for the final time (I swear) I decided that it needed this extra piece to finish it off.  The chaise is made from stiff cardboard fully covered with brown silk.  I added a green cushion and throw to mirror the bed.  I'm still not entirely sure I've gotten this room right, but it will stay this way at least until the room's resident arrives and I can get her opinion.  Or at least see if it looks OK with her in it.

The Rec room lights made last week have been hung.  Like all my lights, they hang crooked.  (grrr)  Initially, I hung the lights lower to better illuminate the pool table, but this interfered with your view of the fireplace and did not look right.  Not too sure if they look right now either . . . .

The kitchen lights were made from polymer clay the same way as the Rec room lights, but weren't painted and were left as individual shades.

The most impressive light fitting of the house is the Dining room chandelier.  After a few failed attempts to make something even grander than this, I eventually simplified the design to be three rings of tube beads, each ring shorter than the last.  Like the bedroom light, these rings of beads were threaded onto a flat jewellery finding.

My next task for the house is to add the people.  At the moment they all look more or less like this:

The dolls are made of polymer clay using my people moulds.  Although I do have full body moulds I tend to make the head/torso separate from the arms and legs and often cut the torso off at the bust and use foam and pipe cleaners to make the body.  This gives the finished doll more flexiblity and saves expensive clay.

The most recent Dolls House and Miniature Scene magazine I recieved had a free 1/48th bed kit by Petite Properties pinned to the cover.  I couldn't resist putting it together, just to see how it looked.  The kit was easy to put together and surprisingly sturdy for something so small.  I didn't need to read the instructions to figure out how to assemble it but when I did glance over them they looked prettu clear and simple.  When I get around to making a 1/48th scale house (hey, now I have a 1/48th scale bed I need a house to go around it, right?) I will definately be looking at more of the Petite Properties kits.  They also do 1/24th and 1/144 and seem prepared to ship to a vast range of countries.  If you're not sure how small 1/48th scale is, here's the little bed next to the gigantic 1/12th scale bed of Bellrose house:

Hmmm . . . however it looks, I don't really have a thing about green and brown bed covers . . . .