Drawing to a Close

 The people in the shop have been rearranged.  Agatha got bored upstairs and came down to the shop to try on some of the new hats and was quite taken by a witchy green one while Isis and the two younger witches have swapped places. 

 Some new items in the shop are the fantasy birds which sit on perches suspended from the ceiling.  The birds are polymer clay adorned with real feathers.  I think that the shop needs a large rug in the centre of the floor, but other than that, I think this space is pretty much complete now; for one thing there is no where to put anything else.  I was going to make some hanging dried herb bunches to hang from the ceiling, but I think it is busy enough up there already.

Upstairs in the Reading Room, Hector has taken a seat and put a collar and lead on his pet monster (made by Nickycc) who waits miserably under his chair for it to be time to go home.

The last untouched space in the building was the little nook under the external stairs.  After considering and dismissing a range of uses for this space, I eventually settled on one of the simplest solutions.  I used a swinging garden seat that was hanging about, dressed a child witch, found a book for her to read and sat her in the shelter of the stairs.  More wacky wisteria around the frame of the doorway softened the finish and made it look more like a whimsical garden seat than an old seat shoved someplace out of the way.

Although I don't think I remembered to get any photos of them, all the doors now have fake hinges on them.  The hinges are made from leadlighting outliner in the same was as Starcaster's hinges were done.

I set myself the target of this Thursday to have the shop finished.  I think I'll more or less make it.  As you can see in the patch at the bottom left of the below photo, I have some painting to do on the front pavement.  The clay bricks/pavers were a little thick in one spot where the front of the shop opened, so I had to sand them down to stop the paint being scraped off.  I've recovered the sanded area in basic grey, but still need to put a wash or two of lighter grey over to match it back up with the rest of the pavers.  There are a few more little re-touches that need doing, an owl in flight that needs hanging in the garden, but basically, I think the shop is more or less done.