Here's the Door...

Come on in!. 

I am doing the door the lazy way.  No muss. No fuss. No bother.

I grabbed two pieces of molding.  Some glue.  Some scissors. 

The first thing I did was cut three pieces of the wider molding the width of the door.

Then with the chair rail, I cut four.  They were jus a hair longer than the width between the wider molding.

The pieces will be sanded or shaved to fit.

 I have passed this tip on before, but I will keep doing it, because someone may have missed it.

When working with strip wood, I always use dots of glue, rather than glue all along the piece.  This keeps the piece straight and it doesn't warp.  Someone showed me this 30 years ago and I will never go back to using a long line of glue on any strip wood.

Here, you can see that I used clothespins for clamps.  These work especially well with rounded pieces like chair molding.  No crushing.

After all of this dries and I have sanded and trimmed, I will turn the whole thing over and start again for the inside finish.

I put Tessie and Zar in charge of watching the glue dry.  They couldn't wait to see how it looked on the front of the Weaver's Workshop.

They have it propped up in front of the door hole.

While they were holding the door up, I went and made banana bread.  It just came out of the oven and the whole house smells good.

The worst part of making banana bread is waiting ten minutes for it to cool, so it will come out of the pan. 

I am going to go watch it cool now.  As soon as it is touchable, it is out of the pan and cut.

See you tomorrow!

Note to Self....See More Movies!

Yup.  I'm in the zone again..... I have to at least make it look good enough for company.  Wish me luck.

As I cleaned, I found supplies all over the place and thought that it might be interesting for those of you that haven't seen me use some of them before.

First of all, the reason to see more movies... I don't know about the theaters where you are, but the ones around here have these heavy duty trays to carry drinks an other things into the theater.

Walter is used to me carrying strange things out of restaurants and other places, so he wasn't surprised when I started taking these home with me.

They are heavier than the old egg cartons.  Great for rocks, stones and bricks and look at all of that area!

Next, if you crochet, or even if you don't...Pick up bags of thread at thrift shops and if you use the thread fine.  Some of it is good for wicker, when waxed.  If you don't, save the interior tubes.  Great for making draped tables.  Go here for instructions.  http://caseymini.blogspot.com/2008/04/tabled-for-today.html

I first learned to do these on juice cans, but the crochet cores are much easier and they come in various sizes.  Even the tatting thread cores are small enough for quarter scale.

This one is not in scale at least height wise, but the bottom half of this doll has one in it, covered with batting.  She can be used as a pincushion.

I have also made tables with one that fits over another that have secret compartments.  That is on the blog somewhere too.  Have fun searching...I think that "table" should get you there...

I look for and save old handkerchiefs.  The lady with Tessie is in a dress made from one handkerchief.  All I did was cut three pieces from an embroidered one and made a curve at the top of the sleeves and turned them under.  I glued the main tube to her body and the sleeves over the arms.  All of the embroidery was on the handkerhcief.  All I added was a couple of bows in the back and the piece of lace around the skirt.

Tessie's dress is also made from one.  I used the edge as the hem of the skirt and sleeves and added lace.  There are more detailed instructions somewhere on the blog....Use the search, if you are interested.

Here are a few last hints.  The fuchsia plant is made from envelopes.  I save the colored greeting card ones.  I also use them for book covers with an added cover photo from book ads.

The chair has legs made from Mesquite tree thorns.  They make great cone legs for Mid Century Mod.  The thorns, cut shorter, also make great high heels for shoes. And the upholstery is an old tee shirt.  The chair really looks a lot better when it is on it's feet... The knit fabric is great for MSM. It stretches in all directions for fitting around curves.

The cup in Tessie's hand is the top off of a tacky glue bottle.

The strange bottle is a marble with fimo added to the top.

The purse and the little round box are from tampon tubes.  One of the greatest things ever invented for making minis!  I also make bolster pillows and anything else that needs to be that size and tubular.

The moral to the story?  Never throw anything away! You never know when it will come in handy.

See you tomorrow.

The Witches Are Coming!

 I am sure that the centerpiece will have their approval. 

See?  The cacti are flourishing in the dish garden.  I don't think that the guy leaning against the cactus is doing to well though.

Notice, I put it on a turntable....Witches all want the front view.  This way there will not be a lot of fighting over whom has the best view...

I won't be getting much mini-ing done today.  When I was out this morning, I found a couple of things at Walmart.

Have I mentioned that one of my weaknesses is new notebooks/paper? 

For some reason a lot of companies are coming out with five squares to the inch graph paper.  I decided to see how it would work for drawing plans for minis.  The Graph Composition book was only 1.17.  It might be interesting to see if it is usable.  Just a different way of dividing the inch.

The little composition books came three in a package.  They are college ruled(1/4") lines.

They will be handy to carry in my bag for when I want to design something on the go.  They were 1.27 for all three.  Your choice of cover style.

 I had a bit of difficulty photographing this, but here's the tip of the day...

If you have 1/4" lined paper, you can make your own graph paper in a pinch.

Simply take one of the pages out and lay it sideways under the sheet that you want to draw on...

There you have it.  Do it yourself graph paper!

It shows up a lot better in real life than it does on here.  If you have difficulty seeing it, you can always darken the lines on the bottom paper with a black fine line pen.

Anyway, I will be back to the Mystery Box and friends tomorrow.

See you then.