Lair Work

It's been another busy week in the Dragon Wizard's Lair with the furniture from last week finished off and a few new additions added.

The daybed was finished off with a red brocade seat cushion which was then almost totally hidden from view by the addition of the Dragon Wizard's new companion.  I was planning ahead and made the doll I knew I would want to accompany the DW at the same time as I made the ladies for Pennicotts.  All she needed now was dressing, wiggin and her make up putting on.  Much like the DW, she is dressed in an outfit of chiffon and brocade and hand wigged.

Once she was dressed and wigged she was glued into position on the daybed and her gown was pinned into position to drape nicely.  It was then sprayed with starch and allowed to dry.  When the pins were removed this was the result:

A few pieces of jewllery finished her off nicely.  The companion is meant to be glamourous, yet still leave DW to be the star of the show.  Aside from forgetting to put shoes on her before glueing her feet onto the daybed, I think she turned out pretty well.  My current plan is to put a pair of slippers under the daybed so it looks like she kicked them off before putting her feet up.

I made the daybed and the Companion to sit along the right side wall, but as soon as I tried the finished bed/doll in position I realised that she looked better the other way around, so I swapped the daybed with the console table moving the daybed to the left wall.

This arrangement means that the large cabinet has to sit at an angle to fit in.  I showed you the start of the cabinet last week.  This week it has been finished off by adding "paintings" (images printed off the computer) to all the cupboard doors and drawer fronts.  These were glued in place and then surrounded by "copper" fixings made from copper toned faux leadlighting outliner.  The door/drawer knobs are all blobs of the outliner too.  The open sections at the top were filled in with paper scrolls and a metal bead to resemble small pot or inkwell.  A small gold dragon statue sits ontop.

The console table (now on the right side of the Lair) has been topped off with a bonsai tree.  The bonsai was made from pieces of wire twisted together to form a trunk and flared apart to create spread roots and branches.  I only had green wire and so had to paint it brown.  The paint doesn't stick well to the wire so you can still see some patches of green that will need to be touched up.  Lichen moss was glued onto the branches to create the foliage.  I found a shallow bowl (or maybe it was a deep plate?) in my stash and glued a couple of small polished pebbles into it.  The bonsai was glued atop one of the rocks with it's roots spread over it.  Some autumnally toned fake railway foliage was glued around the rocks in the base to finish it off.

 I'm not sure I like the right side with the console table there, so maybe I'll end up moving the daybed and Companion back over there . . . . . . . Perhaps.

 Anyway, here's how the overall Lair looks with the current arrangement:

  What do you think?  Should the console table and daybed/Companion switch places?  The Lair is now nearly complete, there is just one more major item yet to be made and added: a dragon.  (Well, he is a dragon wizard after all).  The dragon will be a long snakelike oriental type and (if I am good enough) will wrap around the dragon wizard as though answering a magical summons. Yep, I've saved the hardest thing for last.

Starying away from miniautes, a couple of months back I showed you a section of the cross stitch I had been working on.  Well after many years of work, it is finally finished and here it is:

Nope, sorry, that's Ginny.  Here's the cross stitch:

Ginny again . . . . .  Finally, I moved the cross stich to somewhere the cat didn't want to be and managed to get a photo:

The design is called "The Japanese Garden" by Anchor's Maia range.  It's 30cm x 40cm or 12" x 16".  I started this about six years ago, so now you know that I don't finish everything as quickly as I do dollshouses.  The fact that this design has an oriental flavour and I am currently working on an oriental-ish dollshouse is just a coinsidence.