After Highcroft . . . .

First, let me offer a warm welcome to new follower Lisa.  You can find her blogs here and here.  She also has a miniatures store located here which caters to the widest range of scales I think I've ever seen in one shop.

Many of you have been wondering what I will do now that Highcroft is finished.  The short answer is that I haven't decided yet.  I have a number of ideas (which I will detail below) but have been holding off making a decision as to which comes next for two reasons.  First, tomorrow is the Tasmanian Miniature Enthusiats Extravaganza in Hobart.  (Typical Hobart, they can't have a Dollshouse Fair, they have to have an Extravagana instead.  For some reason all people from Hobart think that it is a big city and the only place of importance in Tasmania.  Would you believe that Hobart is even trying to bid to host the Olympic Games?  Of course, one expects Hobartians to be a little deluded - it's where all the Tasmanian politicians hang out!)  I am hoping to find two matching candlearbra's for the Great Hall in Highcroft (and you all thought I was going to leave them mismatched) If I can't find any, I'll have to buy online and pay for postage.  I may also find something that inspires a new idea, or changes my plans for an existing idea, hence my not wanting to make a firm decision beforehand.  The second reason I've not made a firm choice is that I haven't had the time to get out and browse the local hardware and craft stores to see what is currently available that might be useful and what is not currently available that I won't be able to use.  I would like to try using Builders/Insulation foam, commonly used for building dollshouses in the US, but so far no one in Australia even seems to know what it is, let alone keeps some in stock.

Now for some of the ideas I'm considering . . . .

I'll start with the largest, most ambitious idea.  Ever see the houses built by Gerry Welsh of Manorcraft?  If not, you can see samples of his work on his web site here.  I've wanted to have a house like his since I first came accross a picture of one and am working on a plan for a tudor-ish house four stories tall inspired by his various creations.  It will house an inn with tavern and guest rooms and also have space for a small shop and an open market area.  I am having a little trouble figuring out how to layout and access the rooms on the top two floors, but I'm pretty certain that the bottom two floors will work.  I just have to figure out what to build it out of.  Last year when I bought the Magical Mystery Tower kit (for the Magician's Lookout) I didn't use the MDF board that came with the kit  to use as a base and garden area for the tower.  This board is 56cm long by 32cm wide and a good size to use as a base for this house.

Next, there is the "Pyramid Tomb".  The plan for this one is to make a pyramid out four trigangles of some type of board and a square base, then decorate the inside to look like an Egyptian tomb, either as it was shortly after the burial was placed in it or as it is being examined by archeologists centuries later.

Heather's lovely "Wizard's Lair" which you can find on here blog here gave me the idea of doing a similar tower that is essentially a series of roomboxes one ontop of the other, each fractionally smaller than the last.  The advantages of this are that it can be made to be floor standing (hence I won't need to find a shelf for it) and it can be made as a series of roomboxes and when one box is complete, I can leave the tower and do something different before coming back to the tower if I want to.  I would also like to try Heather's method of making plaster panels for the walls (thanks again for the instructions Heather!), but the middle of a Tasmanian winter is probably not the best time to try it, plus I still haven't figured out how to prevent a cat from landing in the middle of the wet plaster.  The tower itself could be the home of a sorceress, i have a couple of different ideas for the contents of  a Sorceress' Tower.

Even though I'm not making the garden for Highcroft, I still have the plans for the garden in my head and could make the garden as a separate project.  It would be something of an enchanted garden with faeries hiding under leaves (etc), surrounded by stone walls with a gate and a fountain flowing into a pond or stream.

By stripping out old houses and by just collecting things that might be useful oneday, I have a growing collection of furniture, most of it reasonably modern, by which I mean Victorian.  So perhaps I should do something Victorian to use some of this.

I still want to do an Art Deco room.  In all the houses/rooms I've done, I have never made a bathroom.  Occasionally, there will be a bathing area, like the tub in Highcroft's bedroom, but never a dedicated bathroom.  Lately I've been wondering what would happen if I combined the desire to do an art deco room with the desire to do a bathroom.  An art deco bathroom?

And there are plenty more possiblities!