Pumpkin Cottage

My Christmas present to myself this (well, last) year was Pumpkin Cottage, a kit by Petite Properties. It's a 48th (1/4") scale cottage, the first in their Storybook Cottage range.  I fell in love with this kit the first time I saw it and my bank balance cringes at the thought of more fairy tale style cottages to be released in the future.

In larger scales I tend to build then decorate.  In 48th scale, this is generally impractical due to the tiny space left to work in after assembly, so the inside was decorated before the kit was assembled.  The walls are painted in a pretty pale lavender with plum purple used on the wooden trims and accents.

Lavender and plum may not be traditional colour choices for the rustic cottage, but then I've never really done rustic terribly well and besides, this is a fairy tale sort of cottage so story book colour schemes should apply.  What I should have done differently is paint the front door solid plum - as it is the plum bars make it look like prison cell door.

The ground floor and fireplace and chimney are faux stone made using my trusted old pollyfiller technique.  This step was done first before the rest of the kit was assembled.  I glued the various parts of the chimney and fireplace both internal and external into position first so that I could then 'stone' the chimney in one piece, avoiding the ugly join seams in the stone that would have occurred otherwise.

 The stonework was painted dark grey over which successively lighter shades were dry brushed to give a stone-y look.  The upstairs floor is made of printed floorboards from an internet printable site.

Outside, the house was painted a pale petal pink with the beams in a darker plum pink.  OK, so at the moment it looks like the sugarplum fairy should live there, but I did have a plan in choosing pink.  I want to create a garden full of greenery around the outside of the cottage and pink looks good against green.  At least that's the theory.

For the roof I wasn't sure whether to go for grey slate tile or brown thatch.  As you can see the thatch won.  I decided that a grey roof would blend too well with the grey chimney.  The thatch is some cheap fur fabric painted a teddy brown.  I know the colour isn't quite right for thatching, but this brown works better with the pink walls that anything closer to 'real' thatch colour.

 Inside, I've started working on the furniture which is a mix of Petite Properties kits and handmade balsa pieces.  I just need to figure out what to do along the downstairs left end wall . . . .

So, who do you think will be living here?