Witch Shop - Week Five

I'll lead this week with another reminder about my giveaway. It's been open for over a month now and it closes on the 31st May . . . And I have four entries. Four. It's really quite embarrassing. Other bloggers start giveaways and in under an hour they have more than four entries, in fact some can have close to forty. I know I can't produce the amazingly jaw-dropping fabulous prizes other bloggers can but please, please take pity on me and enter anyway. All you have to do is leave a comment suggesting a name for my Witch Shop and it doesn't even have to be a good name. Please. Oh, please. . . . .

Now I've finished crawling, i'd better get on to the Witch Shop. Most of the progress for this week was in the large room upstairs. This room is destined to house the shop's book section, so it really needed some bookshelves. These were made from balsa wood to fit in the right side back corner of the room. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out, but I think they could use some fancy trim along the top to finish them off. Between these shelves and the castle's library, I have a lot of books to make in the near future. Could a hand made book be among the mystery items in the giveaway prize?

After the shelves were in position, the room started to look more like a room than just an empty box, but it was the addition of rails around the stair well that really transformed the room. The rail is just pre bought spindles and posts with a balsa wood handrail, but the effect on the room was amazing. There is one problem with the position of this staircase however. When I decided to put it there way back when I assumed the door from the external steps would be hinged on the side of the back wall. As it turns out, it is hinged from the other side. Thus to enter the room through this door you have to open the door about halfway (which is when it hits the railing and can't open any more), shuffle into the small triangle of room open to you, climb over the stair rail and close the door while balancing precariously and hoping there's no one downstairs positioned to see up your skirt, then clambour back over to the right side of the rail. I'm thinking there should be a big pot plant or something in this corner to make it clear that the door fell out of use after the internal staircase was added.

The main floor area in this room will be occupied by a variety of eccentricly miss-matched chairs where the witches book club meets. On the left hand wall there is currently a sideboard where there will be a range of cakes and other treats for the witches to snack on durring their meetings. On the other hand, this is the only place in the room there could be a fireplace. I really want a fireplace in this room, but is it more important than delicatable, sugary treats? And the chimney would be a real b****r to try and make and instal as the roof over this wall opens and is angled. What to do? What to do?

I borrowed the bed from the castle to play around with the layout of the bedsit next door to the reading room. After trying the bed in various positions I decided that the room worked best with the bed in the least likely place; along the front wall. Because the door opens back toward the reading room rather than into the bedsit, there is just enough room to get in and out around the foot of the bed. This arrangement leaves plenty of space in the room for other furniture and a maximum of wall space which can be used to add a fireplace either on the back wall or either of the side walls. Finally, don't forget that there is a separate post each week for the castle so be sure and go back to take a look for it and it you haven't already done so, Please enter my giveaway!

Castle Starcaster - Week Sixteen

This week I decided it was time to start work on the last untouched area of the castle, the garden on the roof over the library.  Before I could do this however, I had to add my system for attaching the front panels to the castle.  The castle kit comes with some quite large hinges intended to allow all three front pieces to open independantly.  I decided very early on that these hinges were not going to be used in my castle; there is simply no way to make them discreet and unnoticable.  If the people who designed the kit at DHE had thought to cut rebates for the hinges, at least you could have wallpapered over the top of them.  They didn't and the hinges supplied aren't suitable to trying to rebate them anyway.  So I decided to hang the hinges and the front panels as well, just in a different way.  Accross the top of the front egde of all three sections of the castle I glued a 0.5cm high strip of hardwood.  To the inside of the three front panels I glued another square strip of wood onto which a taller, thinner strip was glued and nailed so that the two pieces of wood formed and inverted L shape.  This L shape on the front panels hooks over the strips of wood on top of the main building to hold the fronts in position.  The front panels now hang on these L shaped hooks when in place and simply lift off out the way when the castle is opened up.

As I said, I needed to do this before the garden so I knew how much space the system took up and didn't make a mess of the garden trying to add it sometime after doing the garden.  Once I has this organised, I pulled out some terracotta coloured air drying clay and started to roll out a flat sheet.  When the sheet was both thin and wide enough, I positioned it in the garden, trimmed it to the right shape then glued it down.  A small, square cutter was used to make the impression of tiles in the wet clay.  If you recall, this is exactly the same as the method used for the black tiles on the ground floor way back when.  I took the excess clay and made a slightly irregular fountain which is the centre piece of the garden.  This was achieved by my normal method of working with clay; keep messing about until you get something close to what you want.

Once the clay tiles were dry, I gave them a couple of washes with some watered down brown acrylic to improve the colour and give them some character and them sealed them with a matte sealer.  The fountain, as well as a pre-bought bench seat, birdbath and pedestal were all painted grey to match the rest of the castle stone.  Some decorative purple stones were used to line the bottom of the fountain.  In the photos you can see a white fluid around the stones.  This is the watered down glue that I poured ontop of the stones to hold them in place and it will dry clear.  I need to buy some water to use in the fountain, both for the bottom pool and to have cascading down the centre pillar.  If anyone can suggest a good brand/product to use, I'd be very interested.

The hedges and topiary cones are made from oasis foam.  The foam was cut to shape using a pallette knife as I found this worked better than a proper sharp knife.  The foam was then painted with some watered down PVA glue and then sprinkled with model railway "grass" (This consists of fine spongy particles much like flower soft, but finer and green).  I had mixed two different shades of green to give the hedges some interest and variation.  The hedges will need another coat of this "grass" now that the first has had a chance to dry.  Some fish tank gravel covers the ground in the corners behind the hedges.

Inside the castle I finished off the ladder to the upper roof by installing the rope system that holds it up on the ceiling when not in use.  The rope is tied around the far side of the bottom rung of the ladder, threads through a ring on the ceiling, another on the wall before being tied off around a fancy gold knob.  The system is very simple and works quite well.

With the exception of one or two minor touches, the castle's construction and decoration phaze is now complete and it's now time for furniture, people and accessories.

Castle Starcaster - Week Fifteen

I started the week back in the bedroom dressing the bed. I took the less is more approach here and topped off the foam mattress with a simple bedspread and pillow in a deep blue cotton printed with a floral pattern. I then made a few other improvements to the bedroom; I added a heavier coat of white to the walls so they no longer look so badly painted. I cut a round "cow skin" rug for in front of the fireplace, recovered the chair in fabric to match the bed and played about with tapestries for the walls by temporallily hanging them with blu-tac. There's still something missing in this room, but so far nothing I've tried has looked right.

After giving up on playing about with the bedroom, I moved my attention up a level to the top floor. There I made and installed the ladder that provides access to the roof above the top floor. The ladder pivots so that when not in use it can be raised to the ceiling out of the way and then lowered when someone needs to get up to the roof. The ladder itself is finished, but the pulley system to raise and lower it is yet to be done. When lowered, the ladder sits at a forty-five degree angle to the floor. Most ladders rise more steeply than this, but this ladder needed to be clear of the railing arround the top of the spiral staricase (the addition of which is another of this week's acheivements).

And that is about all for the Castle this week. I'm thinking that next I should make a start on the final "room" of the castle, the roof garden. This will occupy the roof above the library and be accessed via the door in the side wall of the top floor room. The garden will be fairly simple, a clay tile path, some low box hedge, a few flowers and maybe a pond or fountain of some kind.

C. Starcaster Week 14 & W. Shop Week 3

Normally I'm adding separate posts for the Castle and the Witch shop. Those of you who haven't noticed this need to be on the look out for two posts (one for each project) each week. This week is an exception however as remarkably little progress has been made on either. It simply wasn't a good week for finding time for miniatures.

For the Castle I made and installed the spiral staircase connecting the Centre room to the Top room. As always, the stairs are made from balsa wood. I cut fifteen fan shaped pieces for the stair treads, 15 squashed U shapes for the rise and a 1cm diameter balsa dowel for the centre post. Once all the pieces were cut and stained they were glued in place. Sewing pins held everything in position while the glue dried. Once dry, the stairs were glued in place under the hole in the floor of the Top floor. As you can see in the photo the steps aren't perfect. Firstly you have to walk around under the back of the steps to get to the first step, then you have to duck to avoid hitting your head on the ceiling as you climb.

Next up I tried to add a rail to the steps. Big Mistake. The idea was pretty simple; Silver chain was threaded through flat round metallic beads. The beads were then pressed down over the top of the spindles with about an inch of chain left between spindles. The spindles were then glued to the steps. Except: despite being stained the same colour, the spindles came out a totally different colour. The beads popped off the top of the four spindles at the top of the stairs and in trying to get them back in place, the spindles fell off the stairs and being at the top it is incredibly awkward to try and get them back in place. At the moment they are still dangling off the stairs. I think I'm going to remove the rail entirely, the stairs may be more dangerous to climb, but they definately look better.



My only other piece of progress for the week was making a bed. I had originally envisioned a half tester bed for the castle, but when I put the tiled border around the upper walls of the bedroom I decided that any furniture taller than the bottom of the tiles would look wrong, ruling a tester bed out. Instead I have made a simple yet (I think) effective bed from some newel posts, two gothic window fretwork panels and some more balsa wood. I'm very pleased with the bed and think it will look fabulous once it's dressed. That is of course only if I don't do anything stupid.

If I did only a little to the castle, I did almost nothing with the Witch Shop this week. After painting the roof last week, this week I opened up the top and touched up the white ceilings where the brown tile colours had seeped through. Downstairs in the shop I made and installed a cover for the underneath of the stair return which you can just see at the top of the photo. I think I have the furniture arrangement figured out for this room. Next to the door on the right of the photo are some shelves which will eventually be mounted on the wall with a rack for the shops range of broomsticks beneath. The dresser on the right side of the back wall will be modified and repainted to become a hat display stand. The white cabinet beside this will contain either potion bottles or jewellery or something else sparkley. On the left wall I have positioned the chest of drawers I bought for this project at the miniature fair back in March, but I'm thinking I might replace this with another cabinet of some kind. I've found it is impossible to arrange the shop so that these drawers will be highly visible and as they are possibly the most expensive single piece of furniture I've ever bought, I want them to be obvious and prominent. The clear boxes in the centre of the floor will (hopefully) be adapted into freestanding display cases.

Castle Starcaster - Week Five

Welcome to the newest follower, Sussexpaula! There's no blog listed for Paula, but if you have one and would like the link posted here, just let me know Paula. Thanks for following. Over the past few posts have you received the impression that work on the outside of the castle has been driving me a little nuts? If not, perhaps this photo of what I've done to the inside will convince you. All those steps are a little crazy, right? Well, the Entry Hall has doors all over the place, kitchen door on the right, large open arch on the left, front door on the front (well, naturally) and a door to the rear as well. All that traffic from all directions meant it had to be a walk-through room rather than a proper room like a sitting room with lots of furniture, so to make it more interesting than just a big empty space I raised the floor heights of the two adjoining rooms and had fun creating curved steps with polystyrene foam. Eventually, the foam will be covered with clay tiles or maybe stone. Modeling the steps is a new friend of mine called Arthur. He's another Heidi Ott but with a different face to most. He's not as handsome as the others, but has more character. And by the way, the urm . . . toga he's wearing is just temporary, a scrap of fabric artfully tied about him. I'll get him some proper clothes . . . eventually, but at least for now he doesn't have to face the world in the raw. (Um, back on is a different story however.) Mostly this week was spent on painting the remaining bits for the outside; the windows and crenellations. The original plan was to paint these in a lighter shade than the main body of the castle, but a test of a lighter shade and a darker shade proved the the darker looked better with the stone of the walls. Each of the forty-two pieces of crenellation and window was given two coats of dark grey and then "washed" with watered down light grey which was mostly sponged off to give the grey a bit of variation and interest. Then at long last I got some much needed shelf and bench space back by attaching most of the crenellations to the top of the castle, along with the bay window and front door surround. The windows won't be glued in place until the inside of the fronts are finished and until I decide whether to go with the basic "glass" that comes with the kit for the window panes or with something more . . . unique. Even with the unglazed windows just sitting in place, the castle has suddenly started to look like I'm winning the battle to finish the outside. And to Cyndy, winner of my giveaway prize, you now have less than two weeks to go before I hold a new draw for the prize, so please get in contact with me soon!

DD Inn & Drawing Room - Week Five

My goal of the week was to get the first floor on the DD Inn. The first step in this process was to cut a piece of foamboard to act as the actual floor. The underside of this was given a coat of polyfilla and painted off white to resemble render. Once dry, this was glued in place over the ground level structure. Some "beams" of balsa wood were glued to the underside of the floor so it would look like there was actually something holding it up and on the top side, floorboards were added. The floorboards are popsicle sticks (from a craft shop, not used) with the rounded ends cut off. These were cut, glued in place and then given a coat of stain to match the rest of the woodwork.

Next came the hard part . . . figuring out where to position the walls and supporting posts. Looking at the space I could see straight away there wasn't room to put the tavern and a kitchen on this level, so the kitchen is going to be imaginary, accessed though a false door in the back wall. The next change of plan came when I realised that if I put a balcony with railing all along the front, having the front open would be incredibly difficult. After much debating of the alternatives on how to achieve the right 'look' while still being able to get into the Inn, I came up with a compromise. A section approximately five inches long from the stairs up from ground level accross the front will have a balcony, the front wall behind the balcony not opening. The front wall will then step forward to the front edge of the floor and open for access. With this decided, I marked out where to position the wooden posts and drilled down into the floor and up into the posts and used toothpicks as dowels inserted in the holes to secure the posts to the floor. The posts were all then connected at the top by more balsa wood beams. Next I cut sections of foamboard to fill the space between the posts for the walls. The exterior of the walls were given a pollyfilla rendered look while the inside was painted with a woodgrain effect to act as a base for the wood panelling look I'll be adding later.

The next problem was the stairs up to the second floor. The original design I had in mind for them would have had them emerging in the middle of the second floor bedroom instrad of in the hallway were they were meant to be. After considering several alternatives and calculating where they would emerge on the next level, I settled for the layout you see in the photos, an "L" shaped stair with the main section pointed to the right side of the building. At the moment the stairs look like they're floating, but there will be posts and a railing that will make it look more secure added sometime in the future.

While waiting for various bits of the Inn to dry, I worked on some bits and pieces for the Drawing Room. I made a firescreen for the fireplace our of some pieces of wooden trim and a picture cut out of a cross stitch catalogue. Somehow, this construction ended up being too tall for the fireplace. Now I'm not sure whether to leave it as it is or to try cutting it down a little. The oriental cabinet that was going to be basically black has become much more colourful. I printed out a chinoserie image I collected some time ago the appropriate size and wrapped the cabinet in it. It still needs the doors (which don't open) marking out properly and hinges and handles adding. The finished result is definately going to be over the top, but then so is the gold piano. I've finally ordered a mirror for over the mantle that should fit in the empty space over the fireplace. I've also added the pair of Dresden figures I bought at the Honart Miniature Fair back in July and a couple of vases. Now the room only needs a rug, a couple of suitable chairs and some lights. Oh, and some clothes on the lady doll might be a good idea too. And maybe a table. Trim around the top of the panelling. Okay, so there's still a lot to do in here and I'm not having much luck getting it done. I can't find a rug that's about 6"x9" oval and the right colours and pattern and I've not gotten very far trying to figure out what lights should be in a Regency era room.

Dancing Dragon Inn - Week Three

With most of the week's focus on the Regency Drawing Room, I'm really surprised how much I got done on the Inn as well. I started by finishing the route to the first floor by making the stairs up from the boardwalk. Now the stairs and walk only need handrails adding.

Most of the work this week was on the shop section. I made a door and two windows to fill in the holes in the walls. The door and shuttered window are both made of balsa wood and open and close by pivoting on pins inserted through the frames. The rounded window at the front is made from a frame of balsa wood around which a piece of acetate sheet has been secured. Before glueing and pinning the acetate in place I used some faux leadlighting outliner to create a pattern of leaded panes. At some point I may add some clear faux leadlighting paint to the window to make the glass look a little imperfect. This window isn't quite finished yet as it still needs some more wooden trim around the top and bottom of the curves. The corners of the shop have been trimed with balsa wood to resemble wooden posts and more wood has been added along the top of the bricks to neaten up the join between brick and wall. Some more bits of decorative trim (like those all ready above the curved window) on the walls will pretty much finish off the exterior of the shop.

Before starting work on the next floor I still need to add some decorative brackets to the posts, finish off the area around the stream, add a railing to the steps and finish off the front edge of the base. Fairy Meadow Miniatures recently sent out an email newsletter in which they mentioned having new stock from Dollshouse Emporium, so I went over to their site to take a look. Amongst the other items listed I spotted one item I just had to have. It's Dexter the Digging Dog Isn't it fortunate I'm working on a project with some muddy ground? I've ordered Dexter and plan to have him digging by the stream. They also have an item called "Soggy Moggy in a Bucket" that made it into the order as well, I can imagine the poor pussy landed in the bucket after falling off a rail or other high perch with another more fortunate cat still up there looking down at his bedraggled buddy! I haven't decided yet exactly where the bucket and perch will be, but will try and work it into the Inn at some point.

On The Up - Stairs for all Occasions

If you're tired of the same old boring staircases that come in miniature scales, try visiting the following links for some inspiration. Included are stairs in just about every style imaginable and even afew that are impossible to imagine! Stair Parts Carved Custom Stairs and Trim Michael Burke Construction Inlaid Marquetry Stairs Nine Creative Staircases Bristol Joinery - Staircase Gallery Staircase Creative Designs