Witch Shop - Week Seven

Yikes!  Another new follower to welcome!  Hello and welcome to Agata of http://idolcidiagata.blogspot.com/  When I first took a look at the photos on her blog (its written in Italian, so reading it was out without waiting to get it translated) I thought "Wow, that is some impressive miniature food!" but when I looked at the photos more closely I realised Agata makes 1:1 scale food.  Real food that really looks incredibly good.


At the start of the week I decided that yes, there was room for fireplaces in the two upstairs rooms of the shop.  One of the things that had made me heasitant to add a fireplace in the reading room was the opening roof above the fireplace.  How could I make a chimney that looked good both when the roof was closed and open?  I solved the problem by creating the impression of a chimney without bothering with an actual chimney.  This was done with a sheet of paperclay the width of the fireplace unit and the height of the wall, angled at the top to match the angle of the roof.  I used my herringbone brick impress mould to create the impression of bricks in the clay and when dry, painted them to look like bricks and glued the sheet to the wall.  The fireplace itself was made from corrugated cardboard.  It has a high hearth and two openings in the front, one for a store of firewood and one for the fire itself.  The design was based on my hazy recollection of a Tudor fireplace I think I saw in a dollshouse magazine once.  It is finished off with more clay, another impress mould and brick coloured paints.  Because the fireplace juts out from the wall but the "chimney" doesn't, there is a nice wide ledge ontop of the fireplace to display some heatproof witchy items.   The afternoon tea spread for the withes reading group will have to go on the little table to the side of the fireplace or on the coffee table in the middle of the group of chairs.  I do have an old tea trolley in my box of miscellaneous furniture, but there is no where for it to go.  What ever gave me the idea the rooms in this kit were big and spacious?  I could do with them being at least half as big again!



In the Bedsit I made a simple rectangular fireplace that covers about two thirds of the back wall of the room.  It was made out of thick corrugated cardboard which was then coated with some polyfilla and painted white to resemble rough plasterwork.  The hearth was covered in a thin layer of paperclay on which I used my herringbone brick impress mould.  The back of the fireplace is prebought MDF brickboard. Both this and hearth were painted first in mortar grey, then dry brushed successive layers of brick tones of reds and browns before the lot was covered in "soot" (black paint).  A thin strip of balsa wood accross the top of the opening creates the look of a lintel while some bits of black wire bent into hooks and stuck up the chimney make pot hangers (or do I mean cauldron hangers?).  Now Hetty has somewhere to cook her meals and can keep warm in winter.  There's just one problem in this room though, I can't fit a table in it.  So Hetty can cook over a fire, but doesn't have anywhere to prepare the meal before it goes in the pot, nor anywhere to sit down and eat.  The only solution I hve for this is to make a folding table attached to the wall that takes up no space when not in use, the only problem no one will be able to get in or out of the room when it is in use.  It may not matter anyway as I have just bought a shiny brass bed for the room that I hope will fit.  There is a good chance that when it arrives I will have to completely rethink the room to fit it in.  So I won't be making any changes in this room for a couple of weeks until the bed arrives and I have the chance to see how it looks.