Lots of Catching Up

A lot has happened in the last two months, and this blog post is long overdue.  The most exciting thing to happen on the miniatures front was this:

Anne Smith's article about Mom and I appeared in the September issue of Miniature Collector!  We met Anne at the Philadelphia show last November. She tracked us down after the show and proposed the article.

The title of the article, "Two is Company and More," is a play on our business name, Two's Company Miniatures.  



The other big event was Mom's graduation. For the past three summers, she's been in an intense master's program to become a principal/school administrator.  This was my graduation gift to her. 

I used a man's slipper pattern kit (designed by Bobbie Schoonmaker) to get the basic slipper shape. Since Mom already had a finished pair of the kit slippers, she asked me to make a pair with foxes instead.  I charted the fox heads, then added hounds to the side.  Since I had Mom approve the design and colors, the slippers weren't really a surprise, but I did manage to surprise her that they were finished!

Last of all, I've started a new project. It's an offshoot of my little french shop project.  I'm trying to create a very different feel despite using similar techniques.

I'll post more about this project next time: this is just a sneak peek!

A New Roombox... in 1/144th Scale!

 About five years ago, I came across these fantastic 1/144th scale kits from Davis Wooten.  They produced only two of these room box kits - the Pilgrim Kitchen (shown in this post), and a more formal paneled room called the Salem Dining room. I loved these kits so much that I bought several of each design. Unfortunately, I had a bit of warping trouble with the first one I attempted to put together, which put me off from working on the kits. While straightening up the other day, I found the kits again. 

 This is  the room box that had the warping issues. I now stick the pieces flat to my worktable with extra strong double sided tape, and weight them down as the paint dries.  I think these room boxes are some of the best laser cut kits I've seen. The design of the kit is a bit unusual: the walls and floors are made of two thinner pieces  of wood which need to be glued together, so that the wood grain is vertical inside the box and horizontal outside. In addition to making the box stronger, the double-wall construction creates realistic depth for the window and door recesses, and makes it really easy to paint! The only issue I had was with the fireplace, which showed a few gaps no matter what I did.  Every other piece fit like a glove.

This second time around, I decided to paint the walls a soft grey-blue. I furnished the room box from a combination of sources. The brick red cupboard and green settle were both cast resin pieces from Nell Corkin, and the benches are similar to one she had us build at the Guild School. The basket of firewood and ax were both model railroad pieces. I built the table, quilt stand (under the left window), and shutters from scratch.

Light was a major consideration for this roombox. The kit comes with a beamed ceiling, which looked great but made the room very difficult to see.   I considered using the ceiling, and adding lights to the fireplace and "outdoors" to brighten the room. I thought about adding the beams without the ceiling, or replacing the solid white ceiling with a piece of clear glass. In the end I decided that the beams just weren't going to work for this room box.

I also decided to set the kitchen room box in a larger case, so that I could have a view out the windows. I used a bit of vellum paper for the top of the box.  The frosted finish hides the "outdoors" but lets plenty of light in. 

I added lots of little details to this room. The windows have real glass, courtesy of a microscope cover slip. I even added a few painted flourishes to the red cupboard. I'm particularly pleased at how realistic the  bowl of "wildflowers" look. I  used floral foam for those, broken into tiny, tiny pieces. The finished arrangement is only 1/32" tall. 

I still have a few finishing details to fiddle with, but the room is nearly done. I'm already eyeing the other kits, so stay tuned!

A Stitch in Time...

 Inspired by her favorite miniature samplers made by Caren Garfen, Mom recently picked up some linen at the fabric shop. Though there were a couple different options, the one Mom eventually purchased had a nice even weave. Unfortunately, it only came in a bright white that has been surprisingly resistant to coffee "ageing.". While Mom was working on a more elaborate sampler, I snagged a bit of fabric to make a simple band sampler.

True to form, I just started stitching without a plan. The rows went quickly, since the patterns were simple and repetitive. Some rows were all half cross stitch, but for most I used a combination of stitches.

Above, you  can see the little sampler I did on the left. It has 45 stitches per inch.The "Charity" sampler is needlepoint, from this etsy shop, which Mom gave me for Christmas last year. The bottom sampler is by Caren Garfen, and has the tiniest stitches of the three.

I only really charted the last row.Mom requested I add the date of her cottage, and my initials. The rest of the designs were doodles in case I ran out of ideas!

Details... The Little Shop part 5

 I've not had a lot of time recently to work on the shop, but I've managed to squeeze in a few little projects. The shop is really starting to look realistic, especially considering it's mostly made of foam core covered in cardboard!

I've added a couple dandelions out front.  I hand cut the leaves and calyx from painted coffee filter paper. The yellow flowers are simply mounds of glue covered in flocking. For the dandelions gone to seed, I used a clear bead covered in a fine layer of white flocking.

I made a second dandelion half hidden behind the boot scraper.  This one had a bit of wanderlust. I'd actually glued the plant down in another spot, and had to "dig" it back up when I realized it was nearly in the walkway.

I was considering adding some litter to the sidewalk. I went so far as to make cigarette butts, but I ultimately decided against them. I went to college with a lot of smokers, though I'm not one myself. This tattered old flyer is the only bit of litter that made it onto the shop.

I did add a few more washes of "dirt" to the sidewalk. I was pretty pleased with the sidewalk stones, but they were starting to look too clean and new amidst the rest of the scene.

I also finished the iron fence on the left side of the scene. I had a bit of a happy accident with the fence.  The iron paint dripped and formed rust stains on the stones. 

Last of all, did you spot the new addition to the rose bush? This little nest was an experiment that turned out even better than I'd hoped! Most of the miniature nests I've seen looked really fake.  A few weeks ago, I cut a handful of dead winter grass and spread it out over the radiator. Once it had dried out really well, I crumbled it up, and mixed in a drop of tacky glue. The grass and glue mixture formed a quick-drying clay, which was easily sculpted into a nest.

My French Shop Project, Part Four

Mom and I did get the chance to go to the dollhouse shop over last weekend. Unfortunately, they were all sold out of the iron railing I  needed. Luckily, the shop assistant remembered that they'd recently used the same railings on a customer's dollhouse. She scrounged around in the scrap bin, and managed to find quite a few good-sized lengths of railing for me. After patching the pieces together, I had more than enough for my shop.

I only used the top half of the fencing for the shop roof. I first sprayed the railings with flat black paint, to prime them. Then, I used the special iron  paint, which comes with a rusting solution to create a realistic iron finish. Unfortunately, I think the paint is getting old, since I couldn't get much rust to form. After reapplying the solution several times with little effect, I finally resorted to my watercolor pencils.

 

The iron fencing to the side of the door still needs to be painted. This was one of the trickiest parts of the whole project. Since the shop is front-opening, I needed to make the railing removable. I forgot to take a photo of it, but the fence is held in place with straight pins inserted into holes in the base.

I also managed to find a piece of plastic large enough to cover the window.  The "lead" munions are made of thin strips of plastic, which I painted black, then drybrushed with silver paint. Now that the window is in place, I'll probably adjust the shelf spacing.

I glued one of the pigeons over the door. Normally, I prefer to use sticky wax rather than glue to hold this type of thing in place, but I didn't want to chance it falling off.  

 

 

I'm still adding leaves to the rose bush. It's starting to look nice and full, but it still has a way to go.  Since adding the fencing to the roof, I'm rethinking my plans to cover it with climbing roses. I was worried that the plain iron would be too stark, but seeing it together I don't think it needs the vines. I'd still love to add some rose vines eventually, but I'm in no hurry.

 

 

 

 

The shop is getting close to being finished, but I'm really milking the finishing details.  The big elements are pretty much all in place, but I still have lots of ideas for little details, from buttercups to butterflies.

You can see the shop's progress in parts one, two, and three.

A Canopy for the Nursery

I haven't had a chance to work on the shop for a while.  If all goes well, Mom and I will be making a trip to our local-ish dollhouse shop this weekend, where I'm hoping to find the iron railing. In the mean time, I thought I'd share a project I worked on a few months ago. I've had this Bespaq crib for years in an undressed state. I finally decided it was time to do something about its bare canopy.

 The nursery is a long, dark room at the back of my house. It was originally meant to be the bathroom.  My uncle, who built my dollhouse, covered the walls with plastic tile. I guess he really wanted it to stand up to a lot of play, since we literally had to melt the plastic off when the house was refurbished. 

I raided Mom's doll-making supplies for sheer white batiste for the canopy top, and found some vintage embroidered pieces in my own stash to make the curtains. I still need to make a frill to go around the wooden canopy top. 

There's barely room for the nursemaid! I love how kind she looks. For more details about the nursery, you can read about the curtains here, the bookcase here, and the cheap metal spoon I reworked here.

My New Little Shop Project, Part 2

 

At first glance, it probably doesn’t look like I’ve made much progress on my little shop since the last time I posted about. But in reality, I’ve had to redo almost everything. The only thing that was perfectly fine was the front wall of the shop. Fortunately, that front wall was the only piece I'd put a lot of time into. In the last post, I mentioned that the structure was warping. Since the back and sides weren't going to be very visible, I figured I'd just slap a layer of paperclay bricks over the whole thing and call it a day. I didn't think about what a effect the damp clay would have on foamcore...

 Here's a photo of the paperclay bricks that caused the warping. I used a textured sheet of plastic (sold as a fondant mold for cake decorating) to make the brick pattern. This is one of the quickest ways I know to get miniature bricks.Though the grout lines are far too big, the bricks themselves are pretty close to 1/12th scale, and can look pretty good in certain situations.  I use a crumpled piece of tin foil to texture the bricks. 

The warping turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The paperclay was a quick solution so I could get on with the fun part, but it didn't look as realistic as I'd wanted. I like this second version of the stones so much better!

 

The second time around, I decided to go with a technique I'd never tried before: egg carton stones. 

So much more realistic! In the photo above, you can see the new sidewalk made of cardboard egg cartons on top, and the old paper clay sidewalk below. I used another fondant mold that was supposed to look like cobblestones, which was a definite mistake. Aside from the whole warping issue, the mold just wasn't deep enough to make realistic stones.

 Here's a closeup of the new egg carton stones. I followed Casey's tutorials here, then added a little model railroad dirt between the cracks. I still have to do the sides and back walls (using sandpaper bricks for a change of texture) but I couldn't resist making a tiny weed.

 I've been hording a few Clive Brooker  mossy pots for years, but I may use one on this project. I've already filled it with dirt, (painted styrofoam) but have yet to plant it. I have quite a few irises left over from the music room, which might work, but I'm holding off until the big decisions are all made.

Another big change I made was shifting the shop over on the base. In the first version, (above) the shop was centered, with an awkward little strip of sidewalk on each side. But while playing around with various props, it became clear that there just wasn't enough space for all the things I wanted outside my shop. Moving the shop to the left side of the base gave me a lot more room to play without making the overall size any larger.

I made a few (relatively insignificant) mistakes in putting together version two of the shop. The first was that I mis-measured the depth of the shop, resulting in a narrow gap between the stones of the sidewalk and the shop. I could have easily filled this in with a few more stones, but decided it would be easier and more interesting to fill the space with dirt and weeds.

 The second mistake was painting the interior of the shop the wrong color. I was sure I'd painted the inside using Folk Art's baby blue (on the right above). Instead, it seems I'd used their Dove Grey (left).

The Baby Blue turned eye-searing when it was covering the full wall.  I've never repainted anything so quickly in my life!

 

 Getting to this point was exciting, since it meant I could take a break from the big, structural stuff to work on some fun details.

 

I made the lantern out of card stock painted with the special oxidizing copper paint I wrote about here. I made it five-sided, just to make it a bit more interesting. The "old glass" is mica. I bought some on eBay two years ago and have used up almost all of it on lanterns and similar projects. The hook for the lantern is just a cheap metal wedding ring (the same type as I used to make this umbrella stand,) with a back plate of card stock, scrap wood, and jewelry findings.

 

 I liked the copper lantern so much that I decided to make a copper awning over my door. The top is a piece of strip wood, covered in card stock to hide the wood grain. The scallops hanging down were Mom's idea.

 Here's a picture of the top. You can really see all the various colors of the oxidized copper here.

 One more picture of the entrance.

I added a boot scraper near the door. It's made of card stock and fancy toothpicks, painted with another faux finish paint set to look like iron. For some reason I had a really hard time getting the rusting solution to work, though it's worked perfectly when I've used the paint before.

I added a bit more dirt to the door itself, especially around the handle and the bottom of the door. I'm trying to find a good balance between realistically old and worn,but not neglected. The watercolor pencils I'm using are great, because they can easily be washed off if a section gets too dark.

 Here's a side view showing just how shallow the shop is.  I'm completely out of narrow strip wood, so I haven't been able to cover the white foam yet, and then all the brickwork needs to be done.

 The shop also still needs its roof, and a piece of glass for the front window.

 The sign is just temporary and is held in place with a bit of sticky wax. I'm planning to paint a more elaborate one eventually. In fact, I'm thinking about making several signs for the shop, so that I can rotate a few different collections through the window display. I'm not quite sure whether this idea  counts as restraint restraint  or indulgence.

 

The front of the shop will remain a removable panel so that I can change the window displays. 

 This sophisticated system of strip wood holds the front in place :-) The slight flexibility is actually an advantage here, because it makes it very easy to get the front in and out.

 

Hope you've enjoyed seeing how this little project is coming along!