Four Projects

 As scary as it may sound, there are now only five weeks left until Christmas.  Normally, I intend to create a Christmas themed scene, but am busy working on other things in the lead up to Christmas and it gets put off for another year.  Not this time around though!  I was lucky enough to find a nicely sized gift box in a local store and have started transforming it into a Christmas-y vignette using (almost) only items I already have on hand.  The wall is papered with gold and brown scrapbooking paper and the floor in green carpet.  The fretwork at the front is a room divider I bought forever ago but never used.  The fireplace came out of my box of miscellanious furniture and was repainted from mahogany to marble while the fire box within is made out of balsa wood, lace and a polymer clay lions head.  Dan is sitting on an armchair made of balsa and covered in red velveteen with a matching footstool (again made of balsa).

Here's how the tree was made:

Step One: carve a cone shape out of oasis foam.

Step Two: cut pine roping into sections about half an inch long and press into the oasis cone.

 If you're a little short on roping, don't go all the way around the tree, just do the front part where it will show.

Step Four: Use the plastic reel from an empty roll of sticky tape (or similar) to make a base by covering it in fabric and press it into the bottom of the tree.

The next step is to decorate the tree, but you'll have to wait until next week to see how I do that!

I had intended to make this scene with items I already had on hand, but decided to lash out and electrify it.  I already have some spare fireplace bulbs so I've ordered a string of lights for the tree and a lamp to go next to the chair.  I figure to hide the elcetrical connections in a big present under the tree.

Coming back to ongoing projects, my bedroom roombox window has been installed.  The window is made of strips of balsa wood glued onto a backdrop that was a free cut out in an old Dolls House and Miniature Scene magazine.  The curtains made last week frame the window.

 I'm still re-arranging all the furniture in here.  This is how it looks at the moment.  This arrangement makes room for a fireplace on the back wall and a chaise by the window.  I'm still not sure I'm entirely happy with it so by next week you might find it's been totally rearranged again.

Tilli's house hasn't been ignored either.  All the rooms now have rugs on the floor.  These were made by printing rug designs on something called "canvas paper".  It's paper that has the look and feel of fabric canvas and is designed to make printed images look like they were painted on canvas.  It's perfect for rugs as it has a woven texture and always lies flat on the floor without curling up.

Both bedrooms have had their fire surrounds installed.  A fan shaped jewllery finding was used to create a fire screen for each room.  I haven't fixed the curtains in Till's bedroom, still building up the courage to tackle that problem.

 Downstairs in the kitchen/dining/lounge room, new furniture has been added.  There are two small coffee tables, one at the end of the couch and one between the two armchairs.  A third large coffee table fills the floor infront of the fireplace.  All the tables are balsa wood tops with plastic chess men for legs.  A set of shelves by the fire was made with pieces of "Tiny Turnings" and yet more balsa.

 To help put the size of Tilli's house in perspective, here's how it looks when Dan pays a visit.

 And when he actually makes it inside:

And now for a surprise.

Last month I dressed a doll to enter in the fantasy dressing competition run by DHMS magazine.  Now that the deadline for competition entries has past, I can finally show you what I created.

I call him the "Dragon Wizard" because of his Chinese influence.  I think he turned out absolutely perfectly even if he comes dead last in the competition.

Now I just have one problem . . . . what do I do with him now?  He's been standing ontop of the CD player in my ipod dock for the past month, dangerously close to where I slosh paint and glue around and sooner or later he'll get splashed.  I need to find someplace suitable (and safe!!) for him.

Whew!  That's it for this post but come back soon as I want to get your opinion about which of two very different projects I should start to work on next!

Curtain Call

This week involved making four sets of curtains with two very different results.  The curtains for the roombox bedroom are quite possibly my best curtains yet.  They are made of damask with silk dupion tails and swag.  The total height of the curtains is about 20cm.  The next step is to make a window for them to frame, then they can be hung on the wall.

 At the same time as making the curtains, I dressed the bed for the room in more of the silk and some pink brocade.  The bed covers are fairly basic with no fancy flounces or frills because I didn't want them to detract from the bed itself.  I am thinking however that I need to add a canopy over the bed of some kind.

Now to move on to curtains of the less sucessful kind.  The curtains for Tilli's bed and bathroom were made from a light green linen and are . . . pretty horrid to be kind to them.  It's not the scale (24th instead of 12th) that is the problem, its the way I did the windows.  The windows and roof line are all angles with no where to really hang curtains from making it really awkward to get the curtains to hang and look right.  Add to that the fact that I either didn't starch them enough or weren't left to dry long enough as all their pleats unpleated themselves while I was struggling to get them in the right spots.

Fortunately Tilli's bed was much more cooperative.  It's fairly basic, just a bed sized slice of foam for the mattress while the headboard is the one that came with the foam house kit.  The base of the mattress was covered with a ruffled trim to create a valance while the bed cover is a lilac cotton covered with a white and silver lace.

The bathroom curtains are just as bad as those in the bedroom.  They're also too long and hang down behind the toliet.  As you can see I'm replacing the so called bath tub that came with this 1/24th scale bathroom set with a larger built in tub.  If you recall the original tub was a tad on the small size.  The frame is balsa wood and foam while the tub itself is airdry clay.  When the clay it dry it'll be trimmed around the top and painted to match the sink and loo.

 Downstairs in the lounge is another set of curtains that rest somewhere between the green and the pink ones in terms of success.  They are a pre-crinkled fabric with a piece of fancy trim used as a pelmet.  Not horrible but not fabulous either.

At the kitchen end of the ground floor, the kitchen has been installed.  The cabinets are simple box shapes covered in thin cream card.  Extra rectangles of card ontop of the fronts make the cupboard doors.  Dashes of gold leadlighting outliner give the impression of hinges while the handles are pieces of gold wire positioned on blobs of outliner.  The countertops are balsa wood.  The oven is balsa wood with wooden bead feet painted silver.  I still need to add a hood over the hotplates. 

You may be wondering where Tilli does her washing up and keeps her refridgerated foods.  Unfortunately, the answer is that she doesn't.  There just isn't room to include a sink and a fridge in this house.  Infact there are lots of details that there just isn't room for which isn't surprising when you consider the house was intended to be a cheap toy.  Next time I do a 1/24th scale house I'll design it from scratch and allow space for everything!

House of Firsts, Room of Seconds

I'm flying along with Tilli's house.  All three floors are assembled and decorated and the exterior cladding is in place.  There are a lot of "firsts" for me with this house; it's my first 1/24th scale house, the first house I've cladded with weatherboards, the first house I've adapted to include dormer windows and believe it or not the first house I've done with a proper bathroom.

The weatherboard cladding is made of thin balsa wood cut in strips about 1cm wide and glued onto the walls so that each strip slightly overlaps the one below it.  In the middle of each side wall is a chimney.  The chimneys are made of solid blocks of balsa wood with cavities carved out to create recessed fireplaces in the rooms.  The thick, solid wood helps to keep the thin foam walls straight and sag free.  The wood was covered in pollyfilla into which a random stone pattern was made with a toothpick and painted stoney grey.

 At the moment, the front of the house does look a little odd, a little unbalanced.  This is because I decided the positions of the windows based on how the furniture was arranged on the inside rather than how it looked outside.  Hopefully once I add a porch/balcony onto the front and make windows and doors to fill the holes it will look better.  The roof has been adapted to include three dormer windows, two in the bedroom and one in the bathroom.

 Inside the house is progressing well too.  Each level was wallpapered before the house was assembled.

 In Tilli's bedroom on the top floor I used a floral fabric as the "wallpaper".  The floor is made of more balsa wood.  A sheet was cut to the size of the floor and then I used a ball pointed stylus to press lines into the balsa to give the impression of separate planks.  Dots drawn with a lead pencil give the impression of nails holding the boards down.

The bathroom next to the bedroom is papered in the same fabric with white wooden panelling on the lower walls.  I bought a "1/24th scale" bathroom suite to go in here.  As you can see in the above photo, it's basic, but adequate although the sink could stand to be a fraction higher so Tilli doesn't have to bend to wash her hands.

The bath tub is a different matter however . . . .

Tilli may be able to clean her feet in that, but to take a bath there's no chance.  I'll have to use some clay to make a built-in bath along the back wall, one Tilli can actually get all of her in at once.

 For the middle floor I bought some sets of Avon furniture that was going cheaply on ebay.  It's a fraction small for 1/24 scale, but then so are the rooms it's going in.  the study is papered with some striped wallpaper that came free with a DHMS magazine years ago while the bedroom walls are covered in more fabric.  The floor in both rooms is covered in a buff carpet.

Between now and Christmas I want to finish Tilli's house and one or two other small projects and organise myself to start my next "big" project over the Christmas break.  The first of those other small projects is a roombox bedroom to display the very lovely, very pricey bedroom furniture I bought for Preston House, but didn't use.  Would you believe that at the moment no one seems to make a room box in kit form?  The exception here is the Dollshouse Emporium, but theirs is very small and very over-priced.  I had to buy a ready built room box which isn't ideal for two reasons, first the postage cost of a built box will always be higher than a flat packed room and second, the built box will be more likely to be damaged in the post than the flat packed. 

Still, at least now I have a roombox and have started working on it.  It's been patched up where it got banged about in the mail and given a coat of sealer.  I pulled out the fancy chinoserie style wallpaper that I also bought for Preston House and then decided not to use and instantly decided it looked wrong with the furniture - too fussy.  So out came every other paper I have and eventually I settled on a grey-green scrapbooking paper with a pale medallion pattern.  I've always envisioned pink sheets/covers on this bed so the question now is, what colour flooring to use . . . . ?

Buff Carpet. . . . . ?

Cream Carpet . . . . . ?

My favourite, Green Carpet . . . . . ?

Or wooden floorboards, maybe with a fancy rug?

 Hmmm . . . . . What to choose?  I like the green carpet the best, but is it too "butch" for what is otherwise a very feminine room?

The Magic Teapot

Take a look at what I just received in the mail!  I was lucky enough to win this set comprised of fireplace, dining table, dining chairs, sofa and armchairs on ebay from Linda of Linda's Miniature Musings.  They look quite big in the photo, but they are only 1/24th (or half) scale and they are tiny.  I've been thinking over the past few months that once the Castle and the Shop are finished perhaps I should try and do something in 1/24th scale.  If I was going to do this, I'd need to start with a reference for comparason to ensure I got things the right size and not only will this set do this, it also furnishes most of a room, or even the downstairs of a house.  Linda was gracious enough to include a few extra items in the box, the plant, saucepans, milk, butter and coffee you can see in the photo.  Thank you Linda.  If I am going to make use of these, I have to do something fairly modern, but the sofa is very Victorian looking. . . . . Well, at the rate I'm going it will be a long time before the Castle and the Shop are finished, so I'll have lots of time to come up with a brilliant idea for my 24th scale scene.  So for now they go into storage while I mull over the possiblities and get on with the projects I already have underway.

The work in progress

Have you seen pictures of "floating" teapots or potion bottles that pour liquid into cups or bowls with nothing but the "liquid" flowing out of them to hold them up?  Needless to say from the first time I saw a picture of such a thing I wanted one but never happened upon one for the right price, so I decided to try making my own.  Initially, I thought to use the pre-bought teapot I already had in the Reading Room, but discovered the spout didn't have a hole in it, which rather put a crimp in my plans.  Instead, I copied the teapot in polymer clay and made also made a cup and saucer.  As poor as my scuplting skills are, I thought that this would be the easy part and making it float would be harder.  Turns out making the teapot was the hard part.

The finished Teapot

To make the pot float, I cut a piece of heavy gauge wire a little over an inch long and carefully poked one end into the spout of the teapot until it felt firmly wedged.  The other end of the wire went into the cup and saucer and the wire was carfully bent so that the teapot sat at a nice angle when the cup was placed on a flat surface.  To keep it in position, I cut a scrap piece of balsa wood to support the base of the teapot.  I then carefully covered the wire in some "tea" coloured clay and put a little extra clay in the bottom of the cup.  Finally, right before I put the lot into the oven, I coated the pouring tea with liquid Fimo in the hopes it would give it a more liquid look and not have time to slide off the tea into the cup before it was baked into place.  This final step didn't quite work as all the liquid Fimo ended up in the teacup rather than on the tea and now it looks like there is coloured tea being poured into the cup that turns clear once it gets there.  It's also almost overflowing the cup.  So the moral of the story is either tint the liquid Fimo or skip it all together and put some gloss on later to get a liquid like shine.  Once baked I painted the teapot and cup and the bottom of the saucer was then glued onto a table and when dry, the support was removed from under the teapot.  The result was a floating magic teapot.  I was really surprised how easy it was to do this and for a first attempt I'm really pleased with the result.

Harry the Snake

While I had the polymer clay out, I made a few more little items for the shop and castle.  Harry the snake hangs from the ceiling beams.  Is he for sale or is he the shops "guard dog"?  I haven't quite decided yet.  You might also spot some small potion bottles hanging from the beams and a clawed "hand" emerging from the centre draw of the hat display stand.  The shop has also aquired a set of scales to weigh items sold by weight and a couple more small cauldrons.  For the castle kitchen there are four utencils and a pile of "wooden" spoons.  A silver bowl and small brazier are my as yet unfinished attempt to make to make a comfit maker like this one: Tudor Comfit Maker on ebay

The rest of the week's acomplishments were small bits and pieces.  The cupboard in the castle's centre/sitting room was repainted to a faux wood look and now looks much better.  I also made a floor standing candlearbrum for the room, the first form of lighting the castle has.  Outside the witches shop I cleaned up the garden area and made a start on it by laying some "turf" and adding a faux window next to the door on the back wall.  It looks pretty rough right now, but once it has a vine climbing around it and flowers in the window box it should blend in better.

The Pyramid - Week Three

The main feature added to the Pyramid this week was the sarcophogus (coffin).  This was made from polymer clay and painted in gold, blue and red after baking.  The clay was wrapped around a roughly sarcophogus shaped lump of alfoil to reduce the amount of clay (and baking) required.  As you can probably tell from the photos, sculpting things from clay is not a strong point of mine.  The head dress is clearly uneven and the arms are suited to a sumo wrestler oh, and he has no chin.  Either this guy was the ugliest Pharaoh ever or he should have fired his craftsmen.  As the tomb is in 1/24th scale, the sarcophogus is just over three inches in length.  It rests on a dias of balsa wood painted white. 

Also on the dias are some of my other efforts with polymer clay; some small "offering jars" which would be filled with oils, spices and other afterlife necessities.  At the foot of the sarcophogus are five golden canopic jars.  Technically, these would be more likely to be something like alabaster rather than gold, but it was easier to paint them gold than to try and paint them to look like alabaster.  In the back corners of the tomb are two "oil lamps".  These are very simple polymer clay bowls set on a tripod of toothpicks.  The final piece I made from polymer clay is the somewhat goofy looking black cobra on the floor to the right of the sarcophogus.

I was going to add a lot more to the Pyramid by way of grave goods; golden thrones, chariots, chests of jewels, etc.  Once I saw it with the sarcophogus in place, I reconsidered this.  Adding too much stuff is going to make it look messy and detract from the wall decoration.  I asked the question in the DHE forums and the concensus of opinion seemed to be the same as mine; the tomb just needs a few more trinkets scattered about, but nothing large.  Now I just need to figure out what those trinkets will be and how to make them. . . .