The Tudor / Medieval / Jacobean / Queen Anne Dollhouse Project

Chandeliers, including my first Ray Storey!

2012-02-14T21:05:00.001-04:00

Got some trim work done to tidy up the joins between the tops of the walls and the first floor ceiling -- some cove moulding in the Blue and White room makes things much tidier! I also hung (temporarily, because I don't have the ceiling rose for this room yet) the pretty silver Heidi Ott chandelier I bought in England last year. I'm going to make silver sconces for this room, too.

I was thrilled that my Ray Storey light arrived yesterday! (That's fast service). It's so beautiful and well-made, I'm just delighted with it. I installed it in its home in the Library and I think it looks great. Thank you so much, Ray!

I moved the WAMH to my lower and more convenient worktable so I can make a start on the roofs. I played around with a cardboard roof for the Kitchen wing -- my original plan was to have this as a fixed roof, with no access to the attic. I do hate to give up any amount of usable space, though, and I think I'll do a roof with a removable front panel, so I can put a servant's bedroom up there :) Once I get that all worked out, I can start playing with both wall and roof finishes!

Ceiling of first floor on, next up, the roof!

2012-02-12T15:42:00.000-04:00

I finished the final floor on the first floor -- in the Blue and White Room. Now, it's time to add the piece of plywood that's the ceiling of that floor (the floor of the attic)!

I've been reviewing the instructions in Derek Rowbottom's Making Georgian Dolls Houses and have decided to make a few changes to his design. Instead of adding four hinged openings across this main section of the building, I'm going to reduce it to just two. This will let me change Rowbottom's arrangement of windows to more closely resemble actual William and Mary era homes.

This is a line drawing of a country house circa 1700 -- hipped roof, symmetrical windows. I really like it. Below it is a photo of the actual house.

This one shows a similar house in Kent -- I like the small hipped dormers in the hipped roof, so that's what I'm going to do with my dolls' house:)

I just got my shipment from Richard Stacey!

2012-02-11T11:23:00.004-04:00

Look what was in the mail yesterday! I'm so excited! It's my first shipment of Versi-Slips and tiles from Richard Stacey! (It's very easy to order from them -- Richard's son, Andrew, now sells the whole line through their eBay shop, miniaturebrickbargains.

I've decided to go with these products partly because they're reasonable in price and very well made and partly because I don't want the William and Mary House to be too heavy when it's done. Real brick and slate must make for VERY heavy models!

I will do some extra faux finishing on some of these, especially the slates, to keep them from looking too pristine, but I'm very pleased with them. I've just ordered some modelling dust (for the stone work) so I'll be able to make a start on the exterior quite soon!

I'm going out right now to buy the plywood for the final floor and for the roof. So exciting!

New mini lights!

2012-02-08T11:56:00.000-04:00

Hi, all! I've been busy working hard on some miniatures projects, but wanted to stop by and share a photo or two!

I've been making miniature light fixtures for a while now, and while I'm playing with ideas for the sconces for the Blue and White room, I started exploring some other styles. These aren't right for the period of the WAMH, but I'm having a lot of fun!

More soon!

Ruth's Cottage

2012-02-05T14:27:00.001-04:00

On Thursday, at Knitwits, 14 year old Ruth worked on her 1/12 scale cottage. We had cut the base (1/2 inch plywood) to size and she had cut out the three walls from 1" thick foam late last year. On Thursday she cut windows in the foam, scored the wooden base for floorboards, stained the base and painted the downstairs walls. Then she glued the walls to the base and to each other. Here's how it looks:

This foam and plywood construction is excellent -- I'm using it for my William and Mary era house, but it's just perfect for younger miniaturists, because they can do so much of the cutting (under supervision) with Olfa cutters/craft knives. It's also very inexpensive -- one large sheet of foam costs less than $20, and you can get many little cottages out of it!

The cottage will have ground floor and an attic. Ruth is looking forward to making miniature rag rugs for it!

More lights

2012-02-02T11:30:00.000-04:00

Ever notice how sometimes you're just in the mood for one part of working on miniatures but not another? I'm in lighting mood, clearly :) I added the sconces (above and below) to the Withdrawing Room yesterday evening. With foam walls it's certainly easy -- I just jabbed a hole with a bamboo skewer and we were just about done!

I'm going to make silver sconces for the Chinese Blue and White Room (below), to match the most adorable silver 6 armed chandelier I bought in England last year. But I wanted this room to have some kind of light, so I installed a fire. Again, I just had to make a hole with a skewer :)

And as I was reviewing the contents of the rooms, I realize that this desk/bookcase that I had japanned would work perfectly in the new Library! It really pops, doesn't it? I'm going to make tons of really, really small books tonight so I can fill up the very narrow shelves, but I think this is where it's going to live. I'm going to get Ray Storey to make me a little black chandelier for this room, because I long to own something by him!

Lighting, front and back :)

2012-02-01T10:27:00.002-04:00

I know I've mentioned before how much I love miniature lights. For me, they're one of the best parts of building a dolls house. Here's how the WAMH looks this grey, overcast morning!

Do you notice how rarely we show each other the "bad" side of our projects? The side with all the working gubbins? I would LOVE to see the backsides of people's dolls houses -- how do you hide the electrics? What do you do with all the wires?

Until about 10 minutes ago, this is what my power strip looked like :) Yes, it's balanced on a paint can!

Because I'm not going to finish the backside of this house (it will never be seen, as it's a front opening one), I don't HAVE to hide wires (except from the windows), so I glued on my power strip and taped the wires more neatly to the house, mostly to keep my cats from playing with them. (They've learned they can get quite a reaction from me by even making a gesture towards them!)

Seriously, I'd love to see your electrical stuff!

Library almost done

2012-01-31T10:53:00.000-04:00

This is now the Library (even though it's only got one bookshelf at the moment :)) This may be my new favourite room! I glued everything together, yesterday, all the components of the staircase. It was a little fiddly getting the bookcase and the bits of wood around it aligned, but it all worked out in the end. Then I framed it in, stained it all, and let it dry.

The floor is made from a sheet of premade wooden flooring, which I cut to fit the room. It was DEAD easy! I'm glad I left the left-hand wall unglued -- it's much easier to measure and cut the sheet of wood if you've got one wall that's moveable. I didn't bother backing the wood (beyond the backing it came on, which is a bit like heavy waxed paper), and I didn't glue it down, in case I have to get to the light fixture for the hallway below. It took the stain brilliantly. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

I grabbed a handful of books from the Castle library to try them out here -- even though some are quite fine and others are just my bodged up leather covered ones, the overall effect is really pleasing. Ever wish you could curl up in one of your miniature rooms? I had that feeling yesterday night :)

Mind you, someone needs to dust that chair :)

I just need to finish the panelling and cut and frame a window, and the Library is DONE!

First floor staircase zooming along ...

2012-01-30T13:39:00.000-04:00

I was so busy building the staircase yesterday that I didn't have time to post :) Here's what it looks like this afternoon:

Here's what I got done:

I built the first flight of stairs and the landing. I made some basic mistakes, but it's all come out okay :)

Then I built the second flight, the longer one. Fortunately I have access to all kinds of gash lumber down in my husband's workshop, so I had lots of triangular section dimensional wood.

Then there were many steps I don't show :) this time I am building the staircase in, before I've done the floor. We'll see how it goes. I added the side pieces to the stair units, and glued the upper stairs in place along the wall. I made the little bookcase this morning, as a replacement for a truly awful bookcase I made in haste yesterday! It was a little too tall and a little too wide and the pitch of the shelves was rather small. This is better! It will be framed into the wall, so it's recessed into the stairwell behind it. I think it'll look lovely!

I still haven't decided what to do with the hallway floor. I could do a wood floor, or I'd love to get some more Mar-like floor tiles and do another tiled floor here, but in warmer colours than the iconic black and white. I love this octagonal pattern which is also typical of the period, and I like colour M6.

What do you think?

Finished bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and last bedroom wall

2012-01-28T13:42:00.001-04:00

Here's the finished bust of Sir Isaac Newton, which will go in David's study.

And I did the last wall of the bedroom -- I left a bit of paper at the back end which I will trim and glue in place when I glue in this wall -- it will cover the join, I hope! :) I do love this wallpaper, by Itsy Bitsy Minis!

I have to buy or make quite a bit of baseboard now ...

On to the upstairs hallway!

Panelled wall

2012-01-27T14:19:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was Knitwits, and Ruth (called "Evangelista" on this blog before) did some very neat panelling in the Blue and White Room's last wall.

Her work is so careful and precise! I will add some panels on the back wall, and then turn my attention to the hallway, next door.

And I've been making good progress on the big carpet: the part I thought would be hardest, the slanting design in the centre, is actually the bit that goes fastest!

William and Mary House, first floor being glued

2012-01-25T14:46:00.000-04:00

Here's the first floor of the WAHM with the rear and side walls glued into place. I want to make a big push on this house and get tons done over the next two months, so this was the first step! It's been sitting in pieces for just over a year, so I'm really glad to get going ...

I have the interior walls cut to size -- I need to cut out the doorways and finish them appropriately for each room. Then I have to construct another staircase unit, and do the removable floors.

More, soon!

A few simple little books

2012-01-23T13:22:00.000-04:00

Last night I made a few simple miniature books as shelf filler for Daydreamer's new reading nook.

These are easy, non-opening books, suitable for a background role in a mini scene. Some of them have covers of thin leather, and others have covers made from heavy paper samples. I either cut a scrap of balsa, or glue a few layers of card together to make the insides of the books, colour three edges with a gold pen and then wrap and glue the covers on. A few details with a gold pen, and they're ready to go.

Bust of Sir Isaac Newton

2012-01-22T18:57:00.001-04:00

I'm making a few little gifts for my husband, David, for his birthday which is in two weeks. I'm planning a study/laboratory in the attic of the WAMH, which will be full of scientific instruments and so forth circa 1700.

One of the things I want in there is a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, which I picked up in England in May. It's a 35 mm tall, solid, heavy white metal piece, sold unfinished, by Phoenix Miniatures:

I want to finish it to look like warm marble, like this 1710 bas relief of the great mathematician:

This is with two thin coats of off white artist's acrylic paint -- thin because I don't want to destroy all the detail in this piece. This photograph of the statue has turned out too yellow because I took it at night, but the colour is actually pretty close to my reference photo.

I'll have a look at it again in the morning light, add another coat, if necessary, maybe do a gentle wash of a darker colour into the detail, and add a tiny amount of subtle veining on the base and back, where there are larger areas of "uncarved marble".

I'm back -- so sorry for the immensely long silence!

2012-01-21T12:50:00.000-04:00

Hello, all!

I've been feeling so guilty about this blog, and my neglect of it. It's been a busy, wonderful, stressful year, and many things have conspired to take my attention away from my miniatures hobby. But I'm back now, working on some more projects, and will try to keep posting!

Here's what I'm working on right now -- a biggish carpet for the William and Mary dolls house!

It's on 27 count linen, so it's not too small for these dark evenings we've been having :) It's based on the Armenian Gendje Carpet in Meik and Ian McNaughton's Making miniature oriental rugs & carpets.

More soon -- I'm getting ready for another big push on the WAMH, to get the second floor totally done and get on to the attic!

I hope you're all well, and I look forward to catching up with my mini friends :)

York to Staithes ...

2011-05-09T18:00:00.001-03:00

Hello! David and I are in the Royal George in Staithes at the end of a lovely day. Bless them, they have wireless internet here! I've got a pint of cider and I'm just going to post a bit about the topic dearest to all our hearts, MINIS!

The Miniature Scene on Fossgate in York

I had an AMAZING time at The Miniature Scene in York on Saturday! For everyone who told me what a wonderful shop it was, I just have to agree :)

We parked near the Black Swan in York, leaving Mum comfortably ensconced with a pint while David walked up to Monk Bar Model Shop and I walked across to Fossgate.

Friendly, knowledgeable people and a really marvellous array of minis, it was a dream come true!

Here are some photos from the inside of the shop:

I love the little vignettes they have set up all over the shop!

Gorgeous Jacobean chairs and table

Dolls by The Giddy Kipper -- sorry for the glare, but they're all in a glass case!

Wonderful assortment of food and pewter.

I really love the bowed windows on the front of this house :)

Great witch! Look at the size of that cauldron :)

Great Dr Frankenstein

I love houses from the humble ....

To the very grand!

And this church is really lovely ...

As soon as I get a chance I'll take some photos of the pieces I bought here and in Chesterfield!

First day -- Chesterfield

2011-05-07T04:44:00.000-03:00

Just a quick note before we leave Chesterfield and head for York.

We had an uncomfortably cramped flight via Thomas Cook yesterday, and were blessedly happy to get to Gatwick and get off the damned plane. No problems picking up our car, connecting with the lovely fellow who brought Mum's oxygen concentrator to the car rental place and then we were on our way to Chesterfield. This time we split up the driving rather than David driving the whole thing, which was much smarter! We stopped at a break station where we ALL drank incredibly strong coffee, (even I, who almost never drinks coffee) which helped wake us up!

We were in Chesterfield around noon, at the Olde House Pub and Hotel, where the wonderful proprietors let us into our rooms early -- this is a great place to stay, very welcoming! Several pints later, we felt pretty much refreshed :)

David and I left Mum to rest, and, after a shower, we headed into the town. First stop, Dolls House Gallery, where I picked up so many lovely little things, including a really stunning chandelier for the WAM House -- photos tomorrow, I hope!


Victorian magic lantern at Chesterfield Museum -- wouldn't this look wonderful in miniature?

We also visited the charming Chesterfield Museum (where we saw two of George Stephenson's glass tubes for training straight cucumbers :)) , a local model railway model shop and finally visited the grounds of Tapton House, George Stephenson's home, overlooking Chesterfield.

Peace garden at Tapton House

Walking in the brilliant afternoon sunlight through the grounds of the house, I felt so happy to be in England. What always strikes me on arriving in England in the spring and summer is how incredibly green the country is. There was no better place to appreciate this than Tapton House Park yesterday :)

England trip starts!

2011-05-05T16:56:00.000-03:00

We're waiting in Halifax Airport for our flight to England! I'll never get over being able to get on the internet in public places, it seems so improbably futuristic, somehow :)

As always happens, I got most of the things done I needed to, and the ones I didn't get done will turn out not to have been so essential after all, I guess. I have some very light reading and some chocolate and a book of Sudoku puzzles and am looking forward to the flight!

The building in the photo above is our first stop, the Olde House Pub outside Chesterfield, where we'll spend tomorrow night. It's the same place we broke our journey from Gatwick to Staithes last year, and we're comfortable there.

So the next time I write, we should be in Chesterfield!

England trip, oh my goodness!

2011-05-03T20:55:00.001-03:00

Staithes, North Yorkshire, UK

You know how time seems to run more quickly when you're trying to get things done before you go away?

I'm in that stage right now :) It's compounded by the very strange election we just had in Canada (a far-right party was just given a Parliamentary majority by only on 40% of the voters, our left-of-centre party had its best showing ever, forming the Official Opposition, we elected our first Green MP, and the "natural" governing party was reduced to third place. Strange times, indeed). Add in the fact that I have two big productions coming up for my opera companies -- Madama Butterfly in June (for which I'm singing Suzuki) and Tales of Hoffmann in July/August (for which I'm stage director) -- and my stress level is pretty high.

I'm a little overwhelmed, to tell the truth!

So I'm writing press releases, and packing, and having production meetings and rehearsing and all the while I'm thinking, "Just a few more days, and (d.v.) we'll be in England and sitting at a pub and reading about someone else's political woes!"

We're going back to North Yorkshire to stay in Staithes again, this time with my Mum. I've got only two dolls house shops to visit this trip, and I'll see them both in the first two days :) But we're going to have a lovely time and see David's marvellous family again, and I will be VERY glad!

Mini books by Eva

2011-04-29T13:12:00.000-03:00

As a proud Canadian royalist, I was up this morning watching clips of the Royal wedding online -- I found it surprisingly moving and very, very beautiful. Loved the spring-green trees in the Abbey!

Here's a photo of the whole Kitchen wing this morning:

And here are some tiny books Eva worked on yesterday, from several of the book kits I have lying around. She is amazing with small things -- the smaller the better as far as she's concerned :) I gave her a kit for a 1:144 scale dolls house and she did a great job on it -- now she'll make furniture for it!

The ones in the back are from the Dutch shop Silly Sisters -- their book kit which makes over 60 attractive, non opening books. These have been great for the kids.

The one in the front, with the pages (Eva did such a lovely, precise job on this one, which is very fiddly) is from the first kit of antique books by Paper Minis -- they have lots of lovely things for sale, including stamp albums!

I'm alive! And Knitwits worked on the Castle today ...

2011-04-28T22:40:00.000-03:00

Hello!

First of all, sorry I've been MIA for most of this year so far. It's been a good time in my life, but I'm just very, very busy in other areas. I haven't had a moment to do minis for ages and ages.

But today, at Knitwits, Evangelista insisted that we get out the Castle kitchen and do a little work, and I was so happy!

Evangelista scumbled the walls of the upper floor of the Kitchen wing with paint so we can go ahead and put in the shutters for the servants rooms.

Tiddles took everything out of the Kitchen, cleaned up and rearranged everything so it looks lovely and tidy. We also made a list of food we want to make for the Kitchen. Tiddles took these photos :)

By the way, David, my Mum and I are leaving for England in a week! We're staying for two weeks in Staithes and I've got planned dolls house shop visits to Chesterfield and York. I'll be blogging up a storm ...

Okay, I'm off to catch up with everyone else's work :)

Scale Miniature-Themed Collection at Artfire

2011-03-07T00:22:00.000-04:00

I'm so sorry I've been missing in action for the past month -- between doing Thing-a-day for February and the time I've spent doing auditions for my summer opera workshop, I've just had my mind elsewhere :(

Here's a Collection I've just curated at the online selling venue Artfire.com, featuring some of the many wonderful miniature makers who have studios there:

Scale it down

Curated By: dangerousmezzo

ArtFire.com

Handmade Gifts

17th century terrestrial globe for William and Mary House

2011-02-03T14:21:00.001-04:00

I'm thinking ahead to the time I work on the study / library / workspace in the WAHM. I really wanted the scientific gentleman of the house to have a nice terrestrial globe (among his other instruments) and decided to refinish a store-bought one to look more 17th century.

STARTING POINT

Here's the 3 inch (7.5 cm) globe and stand I bought -- it's by Euro Minis and it's dirt cheap :) Typical faux-mahogany stand, and a pretty garish globe, but the basics are usable.

INSPIRATION!

Here's my inspiration -- two 17th century globes and a Mercator projection circa 1665. One thing I love about miniatures (particularly working with a specific historical period) is how much I learn as I go along. At the time of this Mercator map they knew where western Australia was, something I didn't know. So recreating the inspirational globes led me to this process:

1. Take the globe apart (this was surprisingly easy, besides it's fun sort of wrecking stuff :)).

2. Paint the wood of the base a combination of burnt and raw umber to mimic walnut. Paint the legs black to mimic ebony. Give it two coats of satin varnish.

3. Paint the globe's support brass/bronze.

4. Repaint the globe itself, which took a while :) I painted the whole globe a dirty parchment colour, then roughed in the continents using the Mercator projection as a guide with a darker colour. Then I did a more detailed outline of the continents with a black pen, and finally cleaned up the sea/land meeting points and sketched in some "lettering".

5. Reassemble the globe, with axis straight up and down (as in reference images of globes). Since I had to break the original wooden stick that held the globe in place in its support, I used a length of brass wire as a replacement and I added a little flat brass spacer and bead just for detail.

And here's the finished piece!

Marble fireplace in WAHM Bedroom, and Thing-a-day!

2011-02-02T23:02:00.000-04:00

I enjoyed marbling the Blue and White Room's fireplace so much, that I had to do something to the very white and plain fireplace in the bedroom! I used some cream and yellow ochre and white, and then drew in the veins with grey.

I'm participating in this year's Thing-A-Day Project, which challenges its participants to create one thing every day through the month of February. So far I've just been doing jewellery projects, but I know some of the things I'll do will be minis, and I'll post them here. If you want to follow along, you can see all my TAD projects at my artists' blog, Dangerous Mezzo, or you can see the work of hundreds of participants at the main Thing-A-Day website :)

Okay, this isn't a miniature post, either :)

2011-01-29T13:13:00.000-04:00

I've been doing other things besides minis lately, so this isn't a mini post either, sorry!

I went to the store on Thursday to buy stuff to make baklava with the Knitwits (it went brilliantly and now home made baklava is my most favourite dessert ever :) and the store had tulips on sale. It was fate.

The funny thing is that I've never really liked tulips all that much, but since researching the 17th century, I have come to love them because of the amazing vases designed just for them. I also planted some wild and wonderful frilly ones in my front garden that delighted me for weeks this last spring, so I've had a change of heart towards tulips and I'm very happy. It seems beastly to dislike a flower, somehow.

And here's a photo of the entire Welsh dresser that David made for me a couple of years ago for my blue and white ware and pewter. He designed it extra tall just to fit into this little space we had in our dining room area:

Not a miniature at all -- but a really pretty vase!

2011-01-26T18:30:00.001-04:00

I've finally got myself a 1:1 tulipiere or five fingered vase of my very own! Isn't it pretty? I saw it on eBay a few weeks ago, agonized over it, and finally broke down and made an offer which the seller accepted. (My grandmother always had a saying, "If you like a thing, you like it so much better". I don't know what the hell she meant, except that if a material object calls to you, and you can afford it, you might as well give in and get it :) It now has a proud place on my Welsh dresser!

I just had to share this with the only group of people I know who might begin to understand why I'm so excited about this damned thing :)

Thanks for letting me burble at you! Next post will really be about minis, I promise.

TIny tulips from Thailand!

2011-01-20T11:52:00.001-04:00

I received a tiny package of spring in the mail from Thailand, yesterday. Look at these little lovelies!

Aren't they perfect? They're clay tulips (made, I think, from Luna clay) in blue and white containers from new eBay seller happymemyshop, who sometimes has 1:12 scale flowers for sale. They are so much prettier than they were in their photo, and they are superbly made and finished. Hey, it's a circa 1700 room with blue and white Chinese export pottery, there HAVE to be tulips in there, somewhere :) And until I get my act together and make some, I figured I should pick these up when I saw them.

Miniature crewel work kits

2011-01-19T12:38:00.002-04:00

I love crewel embroidery, mostly because I associate it with the Jacobean period. Of course, crewel work was popular all through the 17th and early 18th centuries, as well, and had a revival in the 19th century along with other "Olde English" handicrafts. (It also had a revival in the 1970s when it was, apparently, used mostly to produce orange owls ... :)) I'm longing to learn how to do it in 1:1 scale, but I'm intrigued with 1:12 scale crewel work, too.

There's a single 1:12 crewel work firescreen in Sue Heaser's book Embroidery Projects, which I look forward to trying. And I've just heard that miniaturist Cookie Ziemba has come out with a series of darling miniature crewel kits which are for sale on her blog, Cookie's World of Historic Dolls Houses and Miniatures!

I find it interesting that there are so many handicrafts I've been interested in trying, and that it's taken getting into miniatures to make me actually explore them :)

Petit point pole screen

2011-01-18T14:30:00.001-04:00

(How alliterative :)

Here's the 17th century Ming Dynasty dais cloth that was the inspiration for this piece of needlepoint. Isn't it beautiful? I love the fact that the dragons are so stylized that they become almost abstract.

I finished the stitching last night and made up the screen today!

Here's the stitching all done. (This is on 40 ct gauze. I used a method of mounting the gauze for stitching recommended by one of the members of the Yahoo Petitpointers group -- gluing and then taping the gauze to a mountboard frame. Worked like a charm, and stayed taut the whole time).

And here it is ready to be mounted on the screen.

I wanted to be able to hide the ends of the gauze and glue the piece in place, without risking glue seeping into my petit point. I cut a square of laminated paper (from a postcard, actually) and used that as a backing, gluing the edges of the gauze around it.

And here's the petit point chart for your own use -- this would make a nice cushion as it is, or a larger firescreen if done on 32 count canvas.

Ming Dynasty Petit Point for a Pole Screen

Petit point in progress for a pole screen

2011-01-16T13:32:00.003-04:00

Over the last couple of days I've been working on a little project for the Blue and White Room -- a pole screen. I've got a McQueenie Miniatures kit I picked up from eBay, and I've designed a piece to fit -- it's 51 stitches square on 40 count silk gauze, and I based it on a Ming dynasty dais cloth, so it's the right period :)

It's actually coming along really quickly, even though I have to count like the dickens when I stitch it (this is the second time I've started it -- the first time I made a basic mistake in counting and tried to rearrange things around my mistake and then I chose a colour for the central motif that was far too close to the background. It was really ghastly!)

And here's the McQueenie kit -- I love their kits, even though the mahogany they use is not period for projects before about 1730. I'll do my usual -- stain it oak to tone down the red and see how that goes :) They're all well constructed and go together easily.

It's a really pretty screen design.

You can buy McQueenie kits either directly from their website or from Minimum World.

(There's a wonderful article on the history of fire guards or pole screens in The Antiquarian.)

Marbeling tutorial

2011-01-13T13:54:00.001-04:00

After looking at the photos and hearing your comments, I decided to do a faux marble finish on the Blue and White room's fireplace mantelpiece.

And I took pictures :)

1. Reference photo When you're doing any kind of faux finish (and that includes many things we do in the miniature world, from making mini food out of polymer clay to faking bricks on the inside of a fireplace), it's best to have a reference photo, or several.

Here's mine, which you may have seen in an early post -- it's from Chatsworth House:

I like the idea of a grey marble mantel to cut some of the "prettiness" of the gold wall colour.

2. Base colour Most marbles begin with a pale base colour, either white or cream. This one certainly could have, but I decided to start with a deep base colour, namely the tester pot of Amherst Gray last seen as the stone coloured test wall behind the blue and white plates. It's just about perfect! I painted both the hearth and mantle with two coats. (NB: This is a plaster mantel. At a couple of small points (including one of the caryatid's noses) I moved too quickly with my water-based paints and sort of "melted" tiny bits of the plaster! Probably best to let things dry thoroughly between coats, instead of going at it like a mad thing all in one gasp, the way I did :)

3. Two colours of glaze. In order to create this look, the paints you put on top of the base coat need three properties: they need to be somewhat transparent, they need to be "smooshable" i.e. moveable, and they need to have a longish open time, i.e. they can't dry too quickly. This is especially important because I'm using ordinary artist's acrylic paints -- they dry quickly and hard.

There are many products for acrylic paints which make a great base for a glaze -- I used a matte medium. Any acrylic medium that extends the drying time will work beautifully.

Working very quickly, paint on diagonal wiggly lines of the two colours (I used raw umber and the wall colour, a pale gold). I painted the raw umber first, and you can see in the photo below it's drying already -- not good! (You can also see that all this detail is going to be a pain in the arse to marbellize :))

This one is better, on the top of the mantle :) Smooshier, wetter.

Now take a small piece of cotton cloth or a bit of sponge, and smoosh the two colours gently together. You'll still see some of the base coat, and you should still be able to make out the two coloured glazes. Refer to your reference photo.

3. Veining. Once you've got the glazes to your liking, it's time to add veining, one of the most characteristic features of marble. Most marbles have white veins, some marbles are veined in black. My example has white veining, but also areas of a burnt sienna sort of warm red colour. I perhaps should have put that in as a glaze, but I'll do it with a small brush at this point, instead :) Use a very, very fine brush.

In general, veining follows the lines of the coloured glazes, with little side trips :)

4. Final details and varnish. Go back over your piece, referring to the photo. Look at it from a distance and close up. Does it please you? You can always use your base paint to tone things down or to "erase" areas that aren't pleasing and start again :)

Generally the rule of thumb for miniatures is "don't make large things glossy", because too-glossy woodwork or furniture disturbs the illusion of scale. If anything, we generally use Dull-Kote or other means to try to keep surface finishes from being too reflective. Marble is an exception -- it's not marble unless it has a suggestion of surface polish. I used a satin varnish for the fireplace.

And here it is, in the room, this morning!

Now I'm eyeing all those other white fireplaces in the house .... Look out! It's a Marble Attack!

First wall in the Blue and White Room

2011-01-12T10:17:00.000-04:00

I find it really helpful to photograph things in process -- for some reason I can be more dispassionate looking at a photo rather than at the scene itself. (The macro setting is amazing, isn't it -- I keep finding all sorts of infelicities when I examine things close up :)) Looking at this first wall, I think I want framing over the mantle, too. Looks a little bare. Should I "marble" the fireplace or leave it be, I wonder?

The colour, Stuart Gold, looks paler than I thought it would -- it's certainly a little too pale for the period. But I think it's pretty, so here's another place where historical accuracy will take a back seat to "but I like it!" :)

I've got a McQueenie's fireplace screen kit, so I'm busy designing a Chinese-themed blue/white/gold petit point pattern for it!

And I still need to go down to the workshop and cut those walls!

Bellpull finished

2011-01-11T16:03:00.001-04:00

Here's the finished bellpull, photographed against the Stuart Gold of the wall I'm working on.

Now I need to go down to the workshop and cut the two inside walls for the first floor, so that I can start assembling things.

Hope you're all having great mini days!

Sampler and frame

2011-01-10T13:28:00.002-04:00

This morning I made a little frame for the sampler from some moulding I had lying around. I know from real life art that a frame always makes a piece look about one third better than it does without a frame! I'm going to stain the frame oak to go with other pieces in Mum's roombox. (Edited to add photo of stained frame, below).

The sampler I just fabric-glued to a piece of card, let it dry, and then trimmed it to fit the frame. Very easy to do.

I've decided to go with the gold/yellow for the Blue and White Room -- thanks to everyone for chiming in! The colour is called "Stuart Gold" by Benjamin Moore, so I need to do my panelling first and then get painting!

Sampler on 40 ct silk gauze

2011-01-09T21:53:00.000-04:00

On Friday the piece of 40 ct silk gauze I ordered from eBay arrived, and yesterday, with a certain amount of trepidation, I started stitching a tiny sampler, destined for my Mum's Edwardian roombox.

This is my first piece on 40 ct, and it shows :) I made a basic mistake, and I picked out a couple of places, but this particular sampler project goes really quickly because you don't stitch the background -- I'll mount it on a piece of off-white card before I frame it. Mistakes aside, working on gauze is truly addictive!

The chart is from Sue Heaser's book Embroidery Projects, by the way. The finished piece is about an inch wide and an inch and a third long. (Because it's for my mum, I signed it with my maiden initials, NH :)

Choosing colours for the Blue and White Room

2011-01-08T16:58:00.000-04:00

I got some little pots of historical paint colours, having checked out which wall colours were possible circa 1700. Stone colour was popular, as was a dark blue and a yellowish ochre, so I grabbed some examples of those and painted some swatches so I could look at some blue and white plates against the colours.

I like this dark blue, but it's a bit predictable with the blue and white.

I like this stone grey, too, but it's a little dull for this particular room. I want this room to be quite pretty :)

Okay, now we're talking! Elga sent me some photos of her own delft-ware against a yellow wall. You can't beat blue, white and yellow, can you? I think this is very pretty.

Here's some plates against the red wallpaper:

And here's the same plates against an earth-toned paper:

What do you think?

Bellpull stitiching done

2011-01-06T23:45:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I finished the stitching on the bellpull -- I'm in the process of hemming it and adding the pewter top and a tassel on the bottom!

I've learned that one should never carry a dark coloured thread from one area of the canvas to another, because it WILL show up behind a light background :) Good lesson to learn!

And I learned how much I love stitching on silk gauze. I'd like to thank the Petitpointers and my other friends in the mini world for your encouragement to give this a try!

What skills have you learned in the mini world that you never thought you'd have?

My Mum's Edwardian Roombox -- post Christmas photos

2011-01-05T16:23:00.001-04:00

Last Mother's Day David and I built an Edwardian-era 1:12 scale roombox for my Mum, and we've been filling it with goodies ever since :)

Tuesday is usually the day I spend with my Mum, hanging out with her, shopping with her, helping her with things. Well, we had a great time yesterday, and I got a chance to take some photos of how she's arranged her roombox to incorporate her mini Christmas presents.

I think she's arranged things really nicely :) I love you, Mum!

Links for petit point sites and resources

2011-01-04T12:54:00.005-04:00

Bobbie Schoonmaker's Afshar rug on 40 ct silk gauze

Needlepoint is the general term for embroidery worked on a counted canvas or fabric using tent stitch (continental stitch) and basketweave stitch. Gros point is the larger scale stuff, worked on size 16 ct canvas and above (16 ct to 8 ct per inch). What we use in the miniaturist's world is petit point. Definitions for petit point vary, but the current consensus seems to be that petit point is small scale needlepoint, especially on silk gauze, smaller than 18 ct (22 ct, 32 ct, 40 ct, 48 ct up to 100 ct!)

START HERE :)

Petitpointers group on Yahoo: the best, most active group of people doing petitpoint on the Internet. Most of the members are working on silk gauze, in the 40 ct range and smaller, but they're VERY welcoming of all people, including beginners, and there's no pressure to do anything but have a good time at whatever level you're working at. Very inspirational, and a very supportive group of people.

ABOUT PETIT POINT

The Needlepoint community at About.com

Miniature Needlework Society

SHOPS SELLING SCALE PETIT POINT KITS, CHARTS AND SUPPLIES

Micro Stitchery -- IGMA Fellow Bobbie Schoonmaker's charts and kits available here, most of them on 40 ct silk gauze.

Miniature Home -- IGMA member Melissa Boling's charts and kits here, most on 40 and 48 ct.

Janet Granger -- Beautiful charts and kits, mostly at the larger end of the petit point definition (18 - 32 ct, some on silk gauze). She also sells some supplies. Great starting place for beginners!

Mini Stitches -- Annelle Ferguson's site, with silk gauze kits (mostly gorgeous samplers) available

Stitches in Miniature -- some very pretty carpet designs on 22 ct canvas.

Magic Miniatures -- historical works of art charted for petit point -- some very high count charts (70 ct) and many more at 40 ct. Charts only, some can be downloaded, which is convenient. A wide variety of subjects.

Felicity Price -- Patterns and kits on 22 ct canvas. Some really lovely designs -- I have her book, too :)

Cookie Ziemba -- gorgeous kits for miniature crewel work (okay, it's not petit point, but it's beautiful :))

Janet Granger Willow pattern bellpull in progress

2011-01-04T12:24:00.000-04:00

Months ago I ordered two kits from dolls' house needlepoint artist Janet Granger: a cushion kit on 18 ct canvas and a blue and white bellpull on 32 ct silk gauze.

That bellpull kit has sat in my workroom for months, waiting for me to get up the courage to try stitching on silk. Well, I started it a few nights ago, thanks to the encouraging effect of hanging out with the Petitpointers group on Yahoo and looking at their amazing work on silk gauze.

It's inspiring, I tell you!

So here I am, a couple of days later, with the design all stitched and a new obsession -- stitching very small things on gauze. This is about half an inch wide, by the way.

This looks very messy -- I'm sure I'll get better at it -- and I totally botched the whole "find the centre of both the gauze and the chart and match them together" thing, because I was running out of room at the bottom of the piece and had to excise about 5 stitches from the pattern :) You can see how close it's getting at the bottom!

But it's a very pretty pattern and surprisingly easy to do. Actually, I found it easier to stitch on 32 ct gauze than on 32 ct evenweave fabric or canvas -- because the warp and woof threads of the gauze are so fine, the spaces are bigger, and easier to see. And it's VERY satisfying because the whole thing is so dainty.

Close up of the top of the pattern.

I'm starting a resource list for petit point links and shops, largely to organize my own collection of links, but also in case it's of use to other people.

Finished carpet in the bedroom and start on Blue and White Room

2011-01-02T21:09:00.000-04:00

Here's the finished carpet in the bedroom, with its edges hemmed :) I've always loved oriental carpets and can't afford the real thing, so I think I'll start a collection of needlepoint ones in miniature!

Here's the start of work on the fireplace wall in the Blue and White Room. I'm still hemming and hawing over the wallpaper. This pattern is based on a scrap of early 18th century wallpaper which I laser printed. I can do it in other colourways, too -- but I chose red because I didn't want my blue and white china to disappear against its background. I want to mount blue and white plates in an arrangement above the fireplace, comme ça:

Okay, it's not period, but it's yummy :) Photo from Better Homes and Gardens found at http://bijoukaleidoscope.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html

The wainscotting will be painted a coordinating colour to whatever I choose for the wallpaper.

What do you think? There's the dark red, or I could do a dark blue, which might still give me enough contrast with the china, or I could go sort of goldy-ochre-orange which would be complementary to blue. Or maybe I should do high panelling and paint it in an ochre or red? Decisions!

Anatolian Transylvanian carpet done!

2010-12-31T16:07:00.000-04:00

I finished the carpet for the WAM bedroom two days ago, and it's just waiting for me to finish off the edges :) I'm so glad to have it done, and I'm really happy with it.

I've been working on the Blue and White Room -- I've got the fireplace wall almost done, but no pictures yet.

And I've chosen my next needlework project: I want to make a cushion for this beautiful chair by John Ottewill, so I've made a little paper pattern and now I need to design and stitch the thing :)

I wish you all a very good New Year's Eve, and a Happy New Year!

William Morris-inspired footstool needlepoint chart

2010-12-26T12:41:00.000-04:00

Happy Boxing Day (which is what we call the day after Christmas)!

I hope for those of you who celebrate Christmas that you're having a wonderful holiday season!

In my Mum's stocking yesterday were a number of dolls house miniatures for her Edwardian roombox. One of them was this little mahogany footstool (made from a McQueenie's Miniatures kit), which I covered with a piece of original needlepoint.

I wanted to use Janet Granger's Tree of Life needlepoint footstool kit, but forgot to order it in time, so I made this pattern up, based on a William Morris design.

I ran out of time to stitch the extra ecru background to properly cover the stool, so I tea-dyed the white fabric around the edge so it wouldn't be so noticeable :)

This was stitched on 32 count canvas, but would look even better on 40 ct silk gauze, I think. Still, it's the smallest scale bit of needlepoint I've produced to date, and I was very glad to give it to my Mum :)

As a belated Christmas present, here's the chart for this. As always, please feel free to make it for your own use or to give as a gift, just not for commercial use (without asking me first) :)

Download the .pdf file for the William Morris-inspired footstool needlepoint chart

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve Eve

2010-12-23T20:19:00.001-04:00

We had a last day of shopping and running around today, and tonight everything is quiet, except the wind outside! I don't think we're going to have a white Christmas here in Nova Scotia -- the lovely snow from a week ago is all gone :(

I've got some last minute baking to do tomorrow, some last minute sewing and some present wrapping, and then I'll sing with the choir at our 10 pm Christmas Eve Eucharist. Then we'll be all set for Christmas!

On Christmas Day my Mum will come over about 1 pm and we'll open our presents. One of the nice things about a strictly adult Christmas is that everyone involved gets to sleep in! Our current tradition is to focus on the small sorts of gifts that fit in Christmas stockings, rather than give large or expensive presents to each other.

I'm just cooking a small dinner, just for my Mum, my husband David and me. We're going to break with the traditional turkey, so I've got a lovely roast beef which I'll prepare with Yorkshire Pudding, roast potatoes, green beans, carrots and gravy. We've got a Christmas pudding for pudding for my English husband and my mum, and I'll have something yummy, maybe whip up some meringues. Or I'll just eat part of the Terry's Chocolate Orange I hope is in my stocking!

Then we'll lie about, feeling stuffed and happy, and snuggle the cats ...

Will our Christmas pud look like this? I doubt it!

But for now, I need to get back to my mini-stitching which I hope to share with you tomorrow. I'm needlepointing a cover for a little footstool for my Mum's Edwardian Roombox, as part of her Christmas stocking gifts, which will include a lot of minis for her room! I like the design, which I made myself, but I managed to lose one version of it, so I've been stitching like a mad thing for the last day, trying to redo it!

I hope all your seasonal preparations are going well :)

It's snowing!

2010-12-17T12:08:00.000-04:00

Photo of St John's Anglican Church, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. copyright AndreHugosPlace

After weeks and weeks of rain or fine days, we finally have some snow today! It's falling very prettily here in rural Nova Scotia in Canada, where we've been spared the harsh weather hitting many other parts of the Northern Hemisphere (including, bizarrely, the UK).

Okay, there's not quite enough snow to equal that in the photo of St John's above, but we're getting there :)

St John's is the church I go to. Isn't it beautiful? It's in a style called "carpenter Gothic" because the shipbuilders of Lunenburg didn't have stone, they had wood and mad woodworking skills :) It's the second oldest Anglican church in Canada. It actually burned down in 2001, a year before David and I moved here from Toronto -- and the parish rebuilt it exactly as it was (but with improved systems). For the first few years I was in Lunenburg we worshipped in the Parish Hall as we watched the church rise, literally, from the ashes.

I'm singing with the choir this Christmas, and our service of Lessons and Carols is on Sunday morning, one of my favourite services of the year.

Anyway, I hope you're all well, whichever Hemisphere you're in, and whatever the weather's doing!

Nina

WAM Bedroom, dressed, and a carpet in progress

2010-12-15T11:44:00.001-04:00

I was trying out some furniture in the WAM bedroom and took a picture :) This is not the bed that will be used here, but it's the right size and mass (and I put a scrap of the burgundy velvet I'm going to use for the hangings over it). The room is pretty small, for all this large furniture, but that'll be okay, I guess! You can see the two (as yet unfinished) wig stands I bought in England earlier this year, one of which I hope will eventually hold a miniature perruke for the man of the house!

My mini making is taking place mostly in the evenings when I work on my needlepoint. Here's the carpet I'm making for this room (the colours look redder in this photo than they actually are, I think):

The chart is from Meik and Ian McNaughton's book "Making Miniature Oriental Rugs and Carpets", with major changes in the colours :) It's on 22 ct canvas. Since joining the Petitpointers over at Yahoo, I've decided to man up, and start working on silk gauze, and I have just the project to get me started -- that Willow pattern bellpull kit I bought earlier this year from Janet Granger!

WAM Bedroom -- second wall

2010-12-12T08:27:00.000-04:00

Here's the second wall of the bedroom next to the fireplace wall -- easy peasy lemon squeezy because I decided not to have a window in the back of the house at this point :) (Things will get "difficult difficult lemon difficult" later on, though -- I have another set of stairs to build!)

I love this wallpaper.

You can see my first tulipieres in the photo!

I don't know who made them, but I saw them on eBay and snapped them up in seconds :)

This is a double gourd-shaped tulipiere (can anyone tell I've been obsessing about these things?)

This heart shaped-one is crying out for some decoration, so I'm going to get out my blue ceramic pen and have a go :)

Blue and White Room inspiration!

2010-12-11T04:58:00.001-04:00

As I work my way towards the Blue and White Room on the first floor of the William and Mary House, I'm collecting some inspirational photos.

Last year David and my Mum and I visited Chatsworth in Derbyshire, where there is a spectacular collection of 17th century Chinese and Dutch pottery, including some stunning tulipieres or specialized tulip vases.

We didn't manage to take a picture of this particular scene, but I've borrowed this photo from the lovely blog austenonly.com:

I love the arrangement of the blue and white tulip vases in front of the fireplace, and I'm totally stealing this for the WAM House!

I've got a couple of smallish tulipieres that just arrived -- I'll post photos of them when I get a chance -- and I'm going to try my hand at making a couple of large pyramidal ones from polymer clay. Should be a challenge :)

Then I'm going to have to learn to make tulips! Fortunately there's a great tutorial on making 1:12 scale tulips at about.com: Making Mini Tulips by Lesley Shepherd, Canadian miniaturist, garden designer and kit maker.

Bokhara patterned cushion -- 1:12 scale needlepoint chart

2010-12-08T10:27:00.000-04:00

Before I got into this cosetta nostra, this tiny thing of ours, I had always wanted to do needlepoint and never had, mostly because I didn't have a needlepointing mother or grandmother to teach me. My grandma taught me to roast a chicken and make incredible oatmeal cookies and my mum taught me how to operate a Bunsen burner and make bread, but my life was void of needlepoint.

One of the reasons I wanted to do needlepoint was because one of my favourite characters (Georgie Pillson) in one of my favourite series of books (the Lucia and Mapp novels by E.F. Benson) is always working on some frustrating bit of petit point and I loved Georgie so I wanted to be just like him :)

Getting into the dolls' house hobby was a great excuse for learning the basics of needlepoint, especially since we were starting with a castle which clearly needed tapestries!

I taught myself from diagrams and YouTube videos, although I've never seen a diagram that really makes sense of basketweave stitch! I had to puzzle over that one quite a bit before I got the hang of it. (Basketweave stitch is great for covering large areas of background without pulling the needlepoint out of shape).

I was learning needlepoint with the Knitwits, of course, but most of the Knitwit girls started with a big advantage: their mother. She's an extraordinarily talented needlewoman, whose work is practically perfect, front or back. The girls definitely take after her :)

My own work isn't flawless, it certainly isn't the same on the back as it is on the front, and it's not going to win any prizes anywhere, but I now find it incredibly enjoyable, relaxing and satisfying to stitch pieces in 1:1 scale as well as 1:12 scale, and I do get better with practice!

If you've never done needlepoint but would like to try, a small project like a cushion is one of the very best ways to get started. It's very, very easy, and something like 22 ct canvas (that's 22 stitches per inch) is small enough to get some detail in your work, but not so small it will drive you crazy with the tiny stitches!

You only need to master one stitch to start: the continental stitch or tent stitch. When you've got that, go and work out the basketweave stitch and you're all set!

(Maybe we should have a needlepoint tutorial? I know there are a lot of stitchers out there, and I'd love it if some of us put our heads together and came up with a really simple way of explaining the craft to others. If you know of good links to resources or videos for beginnings, maybe you could suggest them in the comments, below?)

With that in mind, here's an early Christmas present for those of you who do petit point in 1:12 scale, or who would like to try!

I've always loved Bokhara patterned rugs and cushions, and in the course of stitching some for the dolls' house came up with this one of my own.

This stitches up very quickly on 22 ct canvas and only uses five colours of cotton floss. As always, you can vary the colours, although these warm tones are very traditional.

Here's a link to a jpg file of the whole chart.

Please make as many as you like for yourself or for gifts, but not for commercial purposes without asking me first :)

Bedroom wallpaper and fireplace started

2010-12-07T12:38:00.001-04:00

What a busy time of year it is! I've had hardly any time for mini-making and I miss it terribly. At least we've had good weather, which I know many of my friends here from the UK, Europe and other parts of North America have NOT had -- it's amazing to me to talk to my husband's cousins in North Yorkshire about the huge amounts of snow they've had, when we have no snow at all here in my part of Canada!

I've finally started decorating the first floor, beginning with the bedroom.

The paper is by Itsy Bitsy Mini and the fireplace surround is "The Classic" by Dovetails.

More soon, I hope!

1:12 scale blue and white china -- an addiction

2010-11-17T22:02:00.001-04:00

I love blue and white china! I love the look of it, and it's perfect for the period of my William and Mary dolls' house because Chinese export pottery and Delftware became quite a craze beginning in the late 17th century.

Here are some artists making blue and white china pieces in dollhouse scale -- some of these are the highest end imaginable and others are more affordable for collectors at my price point. They're all beautiful and inspiring!

Pictured at the top of this post is a miniature tulipiere or tulip vase from the Dutch queen of exquisite 1:12 scale Delftware, Henny Staring. Below is a sultan's head vase, also from her Delftware collections. There are no prices listed on her website, but I found a few pieces for sale in resellers' shops and the price tags are eye-watering :) Never mind, a girl can dream!

UK makers Stokesay Ware do several lines of blue and white pieces, including full dinner and tea sets as well as bowls, vases and other special items (see dresser, below). I've started collecting their pieces with a few blue and white plates and look forward to expanding my collection to vases. I can testify that these pieces are strictly to scale -- they are very thin and perfect in every way. Stokesay Ware will even do a special-order Blue Willow pattern tea set with handle-less teacups -- perfect for that early Georgian setting!

Avon Miniatures is based in Devon and sells a number of blue and white porcelain pieces that would be lovely in a collection. They do their own version of Blue Willow plus a number of blue and white collector's plates (shown below). The website is a little out-dated, and could use some better photos, but I look forward to ordering from them soon!

I can't wait to order some pieces from Sally Meekins, another UK artisan with quite a few blue and white pieces on offer. Above is a magnificent large pyramidal tulipiere by Meekins, and below is a charming pair of blue and white cats! She has quite a few very unusual articles on her site ...

I'm sure there must be some makers I'm missing -- if I've left out a favourite of yours, please do comment and let me know! I certainly don't want to miss any 1:12 scale blue and white china :)

Another gorgeous turned bowl from Thomas Saunders

2010-11-14T13:48:00.000-04:00

I've been stupidly sick the last couple of days -- it's just a cold or something, but it's making me extra draggy -- so nothing really new to post, but I wanted to share this piece which arrived last week.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the work of Ontario artisan Thomas Saunders, who turns both wood and stone into extraordinary scale pieces of art. I have a few pieces by him, but when I saw this stunning soapstone and tiger wood fruit bowl in his new Artfire shop, I had to have it!

Tom's shop is Turnings in Miniature, and he's an artist in every sense of the word. He also blogs under the same name.

Here's the bowl, filled with gorgeous polymer clay fruit by Kiva :) Thank you so much, Tom, I love it and Kiva, I'm so glad to finally have a fruit bowl worthy of your talent!

Working on first floor of William and Mary House

2010-11-09T12:15:00.001-04:00

Well, the foam walls are going up (temporarily, at least) and I've cut some chimney pieces :) I've sketched in the roof over the kitchen wing, and the whole thing is looking more and more like a house!

I decided to make the kitchen roof from cardboard since it's not going to open and close. I did make a mistake in measuring (as you can see from the back edge of the roof!) but I'll cover that up and make good when I put the tiles on, at least that's my plan :)

I'm going to experiment with my surface finishes on this wall. I've primed it the grey of the brick grout, but I think I'll paint it again, in a lighter grey. This one seems a bit dark. My plan is to make my own brick facing (from artists board or sandpaper) and make quoins from egg cartons for the corners.

I'm not going to finish the back wall to any degree -- just give a coat of whatever grey I use for the grout colour. This is NOT going to be a perfect house from every angle!

I went down to David's workshop this morning and cut two chimney breasts and one hearth. Here's the little fireplace and the wooden hearth (which I'll faux finish as stone) in what will be the bedroom. I've decided not to have a window in this room, because I'll need all the back wall for the large bed :) This room will be half panelled and then papered above in Itsy Bitsy Mini's Distressed Damask in burgundy, and I have a gorgeous, very fine burgundy stretch velvet that reads as scale better than most 1:1 velvets. I'll use that for the bed.

Here's the stunning fireplace surround for the Blue and White room. It comes with its own hearth, so I had to make a shallow chimney breast -- shallow enough that both breast and surround can fit on the hearth. The breast is actually twice as thick as shown here, but I couldn't get it to balance while I was taking the picture :)

The floors will all be removeable -- because of the ceiling wiring on the lower floor, I need to be able to remove these floors in case something goes wrong with the light fixtures (as something is sure to :) I splashed out on premade oak floors which I'll stain Mission Oak to match the ground floors.

Small Time -- miniature clocks and more

2010-11-08T22:37:00.001-04:00

I just stumbled upon this marvellous site: Small Time, UK maker of miniature clocks and other delights! There are so many stunning pieces on this site, many of which are perfect for the Georgian period.

Look at this 1:12 scale 18th century room box -- look at the moulding! Stunning detail, perfect scale and very inspirational. It's later than the periods I'm really working in, but I admire the beauty and execution of this piece.

And look at this tiny sterling silver pocketwatch!

New vendor -- JS Miniatures, maker of Georgian fireplace surrounds

2010-11-07T20:13:00.000-04:00

Isn't this lovely? It's a Georgian fireplace surround with faux marble insert from a new supplier, JS Miniatures, in the UK. The proprietor, Jennifer, also writes one of the blogs I follow, A Georgian Dolls House Blog.

These surrounds are available either in kit form, (with wooden structure and one of four colours of faux marble) or ready-made. I really like them -- it's a nice, clean design, and the marble adds a lovely detail!

JS Miniatures Website
A Georgian Dolls' House Blog

Winners of the Giveaway!

2010-11-05T12:42:00.000-03:00

(This is Edmund, head male cat at our home. He has nothing to do with the draw, but I love this photo :)

Well, we've picked the winners of the 250 follower giveaway.

The winner of the Blue and White set is DAISY!

The winner of the Witchy set is MINI-ME!

The winner of the Jardinere set is KIKKA!

Thank you to all the participants so much for your support and interest :) Would the winners please email me with their postal addresses? My email address is mco [at] ns.sympatico.ca

Love to you all,

Nina

250 follower giveaway!

2010-11-01T23:50:00.001-03:00

Finally, it's time for our giveaway, a small token of our appreciation for all our followers and friends online!

As usual, there's a choice of three packages. This time around the themes are:

1. Blue and White

This will include the screen that Evangelista made, covered with Itsy Bitsy Minis' Jacobean Blue pattern wallpaper. There are also three necklaces, a white tray tiled with delft tiles, two tea cups and two tassels.

2. Witchy

This includes tassels, a little black stool upholstered with fabric printed with a bat, an open book showing a map of the heavens, three necklaces and the little bat needlework cushion.

3. Jardinière

This giveaway has a white chair upholstered in a faded green and pink toile, two rose-themed needlepoint cushions, two topiaries and three little necklaces in greens and pinks.

********

To enter, please be a follower of this blog and leave a comment on this post, letting me know which package draw you'd like to be entered in. I'll have the kids do the drawing on Thursday afternoon (Nova Scotia time) during Knitwits :)

Hallowe'en theme project -- Bat Cushion

2010-10-31T17:18:00.003-03:00

Happy Hallowe'en to all the witch, wizard and spooky aficionados out there! As a Hallowe'en gift for my fellow miniaturists, here's a little bat cushion I designed and the pattern for it.

This is quite a dainty cushion, stitched in stem stitch on 22 canvas. If you want to make it bigger, or want to stitch it on a smaller canvas, then you could add an expanded border :)

Here's the pattern chart:

As always, this is my own design, and I'm thrilled for you to make as many as you like for yourself or for gifts. (Just a note -- the little sample in the top photo doesn't have the contrasting grey sections shown in the pattern because I didn't have any grey floss :))

Hello! I'm back!

2010-10-30T12:21:00.000-03:00

Oh my dears. I'm so sorry! I'd like to thank everyone who wrote me, asking how things were -- all is well. David's health is good and I've just been really busy with my one woman show which closed last weekend, quite successfully.

Just a quick update about a few of the things I've been working on, then I'll put up a post tomorrow (I hope) for the giveaways.

I've been embroidering up a storm over the last few months. Here are some of the things I've completed or almost completed:

The dragon rug just needs to be finished off -- the stitching is done, Hallelujah! I've been working on it since before the England trip, in fact it was my travel project :) The rest are all cushions, most of them patterns from Felicity Price's book Needlepoint 1 12 scale projects. The one in the middle of the bottom row is from a Janet Granger kit -- it's the cushion pattern Yvonne. A really lovely design, fiddly to stitch but worth it.

Eva and I have been working on House of Miniatures kits at Knitwits. I love these kits, at least the ones that are not upholstered. I've had NO joy with settees, sofas or wing chairs :( They just don't work for me, but the straight-up wooden ones are fabulous. I buy them as cheaply as I can on eBay -- just search for "house miniature kit".

I just finished this dower chest, and found it really easy to complete. It's going to live in David's workshop in the attic of the William and Mary house. I love everything about this little piece -- from the chest top to the drawer to the turned legs.

Eva just completed this lovely Queen Anne side table on Thursday. She worked very carefully at it, and did a lovely job. Such a useful table!

And I made up this tavern table kit a few weeks ago. If you get a chance to pick up one of these (they come in two sizes, this one, a smallish sqaure one, and a larger rectangular one), and it works with your project, do pick it up. It's a very easy kit and I love the results! Perfect for a tea table, games table or in a pub or kitchen.

More tomorrow, my darlings, and I'll scurry around and try to get caught up on all your blogs!

Love,

Nina

Witchy giveaway items -- preview!

2010-10-04T13:11:00.000-03:00

Here are some items for the second part of our giveaway: pieces for a stylish witch or wizard :) (We're going to have the actual draw post later this week, where you will be able to leave comments to be entered in the three draws).

Among the items for the draw are a little stool that I reupholstered in a bat-print.

I also made two little tassels in halloween colours, plus an open book with a black snakeskin cover which features a map of the heavens. The kids made three classy necklaces, too, and I made a plain tray for them.

More to come!

Some items for our giveaway

2010-10-03T22:48:00.000-03:00

For the last few weeks the kids and I have been working on our giveaway presents, our celebration of reaching over 250 followers. There will be three prizes, and today I wanted to share some items from the first group: Blue and White.

Among the other goodies we'll have for you is this screen, painted by Evangelista and then decorated with some of the leftover wallpaper from the WAMH dining room -- Jacobean by Itsy Bitsy Minis. She did a really nice job on this!

I made this little tray and decorated it with the same paint finish that Evangelista used, and then I added some delft tile paper I'd picked up from Netherlands shop Silly Sisters online. I think the tea cups are very pretty :)

More to come tomorrow!

A roast by Kiva, whitewood furniture and topiaries

2010-09-28T12:27:00.000-03:00

Just wanted to show you a couple of things I got in the mail yesterday. First is this amazing roast beef by Kiva Atkinson, one of the greatest polymer clay miniature food artists in the world.

I've long wanted a piece by Kiva, and my number one wish was for a beef roast. In person it's even more eerily perfect than in photos. Another thing I adore about this piece is that it would work in a miniature scene in almost any period. Thank you so much, Kiva -- I'll treasure it! Kiva's blog is Kiva's Miniatures and you can find her work for sale in her eBay shop, user name jklr4.

I've gone back and forth on what sort of display piece to use in the Blue and White Room in the William and Mary House, and finally I decided to buy this Queen Anne dresser from Minimum World in the UK.

It's unfinished (if you're searching for it on UK sites, it's called whitewood) furniture, and I'll stain it and maybe do a little surface decoration of some sort. I'll certainly replace the handles. I love the details on this piece: the legs are quite elegant, the scalloping at the top and especially the bottom is lovely, and the little finials at the bottom are an unexpectedly charming touch. I've ordered lots of whitewood pieces from Minimum World and they arrive promptly, well-packaged, and MW's shipping costs to North America are very reasonable.

Finally, here's one of the projects the Knitwits and I made last Thursday to be part of our upcoming giveaway: topiary trees! I'm so happy with how these have turned out :) More soon!

A belated welcome to all our new followers!

2010-09-27T13:16:00.000-03:00

I am so far behind, my dears, in welcoming all the wonderful people who are reading our blog.We're at 255 followers, and I haven't even done my 200th giveaway yet! Well, we've got some very special things that we're making for you right now, and will post about them soon :)

The kids and I really appreciate your interest, comments and kindness to us.

Welcome to:

Janny Warmaar from the Netherlands works in an elegant shabby style and blogs at Art of Mini.

Kim who blogs at My Fairytale Cottage.

Marleen is a Dutch blogger who blogs at Marleen's Miniaturen.

Esther Diaz is a Spanish blogger who blogs at Mi mundo de miniatura.

KCDesigns is from Germany and blogs at Meine Miniaturen in 1:144.

Francesca (Chipironini) is a doll and miniature maker from Spain who blogs at Petitissim.

Eu... is a Portuguese blogger who blogs at Tenho um blog, e depois?

Catherine blogs in French at Le monde créatif de Catherine.

And also to Natalia, Livia, AnythingMiniature, HazelC, Bob for whom I couldn't find a website.

John Ottewill table

2010-09-22T20:00:00.000-03:00

Hello!

We're back from Moncton, and David's procedure went swimmingly. He's so relieved, now that it's over, that he's practically skipping around the house! Happiness abounds ...

Here's a couple of photos of the John Ottewill William and Mary table David gave me for my birthday.

Isn't it gorgeous? The compass rose marquetry on the top is perfect, and I love the curved stretchers and the tiny drawer. It's the most exquisite piece in the house!

And here's a shot I took tonight through the parlour door:

That's Sir Isaac Newton to the right of the chimney breast :)

Birthday presents, lights and paintings

2010-09-19T15:04:00.001-03:00

Oh dear, I've been such a bad blogger!

We had a great trip to Toronto, and when we got back there was such a lot to do, and I just didn't get around to updating the site.

And I sat down to take some photos this afternoon, and my camera batteries ran out after two photos! So I don't have much to show, I'm afraid, of the work I've been doing on the WAMH.

Here's the hallway. I bought quite a few picture frames while I was in Toronto, and managed to get a few things framed up for the house. I also bought a wall sconce, which you can see next to the closet door on the staircase -- it's a lion's face with two candles, and was pretty darned shiny. I dulled the finish a bit with raw umber acrylic paint and it looks more authentic now.

Here's a better shot of the wall sconce. Above it you can see the portrait of Oliver Cromwell I framed: he's one of David's heroes, so I knew he'd have to make an appearance in the house, somewhere :)

You can also see the amazing carved chair, which is one of three birthday presents David bought for me at The Little Dollhouse Company in Toronto! This is a hand carved Tudor chair by Canadian craftsman John Ottewill, and it's exquisite. I was stunned, totally overwhelmed. David also got me a William and Mary inlaid table, also by John Ottewill and a library staircase. I am a VERY lucky woman, but also a very frustrated woman because I can't show you the table and stairs yet because of my thrice damned camera ... :)

I've been cutting out foam for the first floor, and trying to make decisions about wallpaper and other things before I get started on the construction.

I'm leaving for a couple of days to go to Moncton with David for his brachytherapy (for prostate cancer -- the prognosis looks pretty good) -- we'll both feel a lot more relaxed when this is done.

I hope all your projects (both 1:12 and 1:1) are going swimmingly!

Some miniature makers on ArtFire

2010-09-09T10:00:00.000-03:00

I apologize for the long silence! David and I are in Toronto visiting some people, so our minds are on the 1:1 world, mostly :) However, we made a little trip to the Little Dollhouse Company, and I know that David bought me some 1:12 birthday presents, so more to come! (I'm so excited!)

I was browsing on ArtFire (a craft sales venue like Etsy but with better customer service for the sellers :) and just wanted to share a few of the craftspeople selling miniatures there.

TheTwelfthDimension

The Twelfth Dimension is an artisan from the United States who makes a variety of items in 1:12 scale, most notably vintage-looking toys and games and household items. Many of them are kits. Such cute things! Look at that giraffe pulltoy kit, for example :) Or this bakelite-looking radio:

Marottesud

This French artisan makes 1:12 scale books, mostly children's picture books. Very cute looking!

Fairy Furnishings

Fairy Furnishings makes and sells 1:12 scale rustic furniture suitable for fairies, of course, but also, perhaps, for a very nature-oriented witch :) I love the little bench, below:

Evening lights in the WAHM

2010-09-03T00:40:00.000-03:00

Here are some photos David took for me of the lights on the ground floor of the William and Mary house at night:

Dining Room

Hallway

Parlour

Kitchen -- there are no lights here yet, but we didn't want it to feel left out!

It's been insanely hot the last few days here in Nova Scotia -- it's just impossible to get up the energy to do anything :) The KnitWits and I actually spent our afternoon in a saltwater pool, courtesy of Fred, and it was sheer heaven.

And now there's a hurricane heading for us - his name is Earl. We'll batten down the hatches tomorrow -- anyone out there on the Eastern seaboard of North America, I wish you well!

Time to go and lie in front of our air conditioner :)

Dolls' house lighting with round wire - Part One - power strips and transformers

2010-09-01T13:05:00.002-03:00

Everyone who wants to know more about lighting, check out this Greenleaf article on Lighting your Dollhouse. It really is very helpful! I just wanted to give that link before I launched into my own (certainly less useful) explanation, However, I know that sometimes hearing the same stuff described in a slightly different way helps me make connections, so I'll give it a shot in the hope that it's helpful for someone else :)

I'm only going to deal with round wire because it was recommended to me at the beginning as the easiest, most durable and simplest to trouble shoot of the two wiring systems, so it's all I know. It's also best for front opening dolls houses. The other commercially available system is tape wiring. (It's possible to use a hybrid of both methods, but I'm going to stick with what I know!) (Small World Builders has a great tutorial on choosing a lighting system).

1. For any project, you need to buy a 12 volt power strip / socket board and a 12 volt transformer that will connect with and convert whatever AC power source is used in your country.

Power strip: The power strips are all pretty much alike, and they attach to the transformer with the sort of connectors shown in the first photo below. They have sockets into which you plug your lights, and a fuse to help protect everything.

A typical power strip showing the connectors you'll screw to the transformer, plus a spare fuse.

My powerstrip for the WAHM

Transformers: If you buy the transformer from eBay, make sure the transformer you buy has the right kind of plug for outlets in your country. A North American transformer won't do you much good if you live in the UK, for example. A dolls house company in your country should be able to help you get the right one.

This is the big 40W transformer for the WAHM. You can see the connectors from the
power board screwed into place at the end of it.

The 12 V transformers come in various wattages, which determine how many 12 V bulbs they can power. (NB: The following list is simplified, because the bi-pin bulbs generally draw less current than the screw in ones, but this is a good, conservative rule of thumb):

A 5 Watt transformer will power up to 10 bulbs.
A 10 W transformer will power up to 16 bulbs.
A 20 W transformer will power up to 33 bulbs.
A 40 W transformer will power up to 64 bulbs.

Remember -- that's bulbs, not light fixtures! So if you're hanging chandeliers, remember to count the bulbs!

I bought a pretty large transformer (40W) for the WAMH, because I'm using a lot of chandeliers, and want to have lots of power for them. I've already got 16 bulbs on the ground floor, and I'm just getting started!

(For much more detail about transformers, what they do and how to choose one, see the About.com article on transformers).

More on lighting to come!

Some suggestions about bi-pin bulbs

2010-08-31T12:42:00.000-03:00

I hung three chandeliers yesterday, in a fit of electrical activity :) Sometimes doing wiring is really frustrating, but the 12v gods were with me for some reason (in spite of a very big stupid thing I did).

For anyone who is confused about 12v dolls' house lighting (I certainly was) I thought I'd just give a little breakdown of the kinds of lights I've encountered myself.

I bought three chandeliers for the ground floor -- two four armed ones and one large six armed one. The large one uses lovely slender little bulb/candle units that screw in. The smaller ones use bi-pin bulbs. I have another kind as well in the house -- the wall sconces in the dining room use screw-in bulbs.

1:12 scale lights that use the screw in bulbs seem to be cheaper and less in scale (especially for fixtures mimicking candle light) than the others because the bulb is quite large and very bright, if you're not using a dimmer. The bi-pin bulbs and the bulb/candle units are usually more expensive but worth the cost because the light is generally softer and the flame looks more in proportion.

The screw in ones, whether the bigger bulbs or the daintier bulb/candle combinations, are pretty easy to work out.

But when I bought my first fixtures with bi-pin bulbs (the Tudor floor lamp and Tudor chandelier) I was a little nervous about installing the bulbs. How short should I cut the wires? Should I cut them at all? The whole thing looked very fragile to me.

So I took a few photos while setting up my bi-pin chandeliers just in case anyone else feels a little diffident or nervous about bi-pin bulbs :)

The chandelier is in the photo above. Here's a bi-pin bulb, with a correctly trimmed wire:

Man, they're small! They made me nervous because they are so small, look so fragile and the wires have to go into very teeny tiny holes :)

Hold the bulb, gently and slightly separate the wires and line them up with the holes in the fixture:

Gently press the bulb in. If the wires are not too long, straight and lined up with the holes, it will go in very, very easily. That's it!

Usually when you buy a fixture with bi-pin bulbs, the bulbs are packaged in a little bag taped to the wire. These bulbs already have their wires trimmed to length. If you're replacing a burned out bulb, then the bulbs in replacement packages need their wires trimmed before you can install them. I had temporarily misplaced one of the packets of bulbs that came with my chandeliers (lord knows where it is), so I was glad to have a couple of spare packages of bi-pin bulbs at hand!

With any kind of electrical thing -- fuses and bulbs especially -- always buy lots of spares :) You won't regret it!

The end of the wire is stuck down in these replacement packages. You can either cut the bulb unit out or pull gently (on the wire, not the bulb) until the wire releases. Then trim the wire to about 1 cm long (a little over 1/4") If you've left it too long, then you'll notice the bulb won't go all the way in. I confess I don't know what happens if you trim the wires too SHORT (and how short is too short for the bulb to work) -- I should be scientific and experiment with that!

And here's the chandelier in place, showing one of the few downsides to bi-pin bulbs -- they will bend! See how some of the flames look as if a strong breeze is blowing from the right? :) Before you photograph your lovely light fixtures, do make sure that all your bi-pin bulbs are upright!

I'm busy taking some better photos of the light fixtures (most of the ones I took yesterday are rubbish), so more tomorrow, I hope!

Final stages and first floor glued!

2010-08-30T13:17:00.002-03:00

Woo hoo! I'm so excited!

I finished up the last things I absolutely needed to get done before gluing on the first floor.

1. Ceiling roses/decorations. I added a large ceiling rose to the hall and a combination anaglypta/small rose to the parlour. To keep the holes lined up, I used a wire which worked very well:

2. A frieze around the top of the wallpaper in the Parlour, to hide the fact that the wallpaper doesn't go all the way to the ceiling :) I used a section of the anaglypta -- it's not perfect (more Regency than George I :), but it does finish things off and it was cheap and easy!

(I'm amused by the way the light comes through the wall in the Parlour :) Once there are bricks on the outside of the foam, of course, things will be a little less glowing :))

3. Finally, I glued on a beam on the kitchen end wall to support the first floor at that side:

And so, this morning, I glued on the first floor!

With the ceiling on, now I can finish some of the downstairs trim, like the "crown moulding" in the dining room. I used a small 1:1 moulding with an embossed egg and dart pattern. Here it is, unfinished, being fitted to size, with mitred corners:

And here it is stained, and glued into place: (the only place it's not glued to the ceiling is the front of the chimney piece, because the whole chimney piece is removeable so I can fix any lighting problems that may develop).

Now I can install all the lighting fixtures and wire them up!

Hall window

2010-08-29T17:06:00.000-03:00

Just a few things I want to clean up before I put the roof on the main floor, and the hall window is one of them.

I cut out pieces of rather wide tongue depressor sticks to make a lining for the window cut out in the foam, and I stained them.

I glued them into place inside the window opening.

Then I constructed a simple frame out of odd bits of wood -- these overlapped the edge of the window so that they would stop the "glass" from moving forward.

I trimmed the foam so it was neater, then cut a piece of acrylic to fit the window hole and made panes using 1/16" self-adhesive model striping and then fitted it into the hole.

And it's done!

I've also been working on what I'm using for crown moulding, and I'll show that in a later post. I also MUST do my 200 follower giveaway, or it'll be 250 lovely followers and I will be consumed by guilt :)

Front door of WAMH

2010-08-26T17:00:00.001-03:00

I'm a long way off from being able to install the front door, but I picked up a ready-made unit a month ago from an eBay auction for a very good price, and it's been calling to me ever since, "make me pretty ... make me pretty ..." :) (It's the Windsor model front door by Dijon, in case you're curious).

I did the faux stone using a base coat of a neutral grey (neither warm nor cool) and then added scumbled layers of lighter, darker and warmer greys.

The hardware I chose was brass, made by Sussex Crafts. I really love the detail on their work.

It's very "Number 10, Downing Street", isn't it? :)

And here it is in front of the Hall -- roughly where it will be once the house is completed and I've made up and attached the front panels (heavens knows how long it will be before that point is reached!)

First celing decoration and light fixture

2010-08-26T10:55:00.002-03:00

I bought a roll of anaglypta wallpaper border from Home Depot (most North Americans know anaglypta as dimensioned wallpaper) to use for ceiling decorations, as the raised designs mimic decorative plaster work quite well. I cut out the central motif and gave it a go this morning in the dining room.

Last night I painted the "ceiling" side of the plywood flat white. With the ceiling on in the correct position this morning, I drilled holes in the centres of each of the four rooms.

I made a hole in the centre of my ceiling decoration. I then flipped the plywood over so the white side was up and aligned the hole in the decoration with the hole in the dining room part of the ceiling, trying to keep the whole thing square to the sides of the plywood (and trying to remember which part of the upside down ceiling was the dining room!)

When I flipped the plywood over and had a look at the dining room from below, I realized my mistake! I had estimated the centre of the room by the distance between the two walls -- I should have used the right hand wall and the edge of the chimney breast!

It may be centred in the room, but it isn't centred over the table, and that would drive me nuts!

So I peeled it off (I'm glad I checked right away, while the glue was still wet!) drilled a new hole and moved the whole gubbins over about an inch :),.

Then I just had to see what one of the chandeliers looks like, so I just stuck it up temporarily:

First floor cut to size

2010-08-25T13:41:00.001-03:00

At this point, it starts looking more and more like a proper house:

I cut a piece of 1/4 inch plywood to size (about 15 7/8" deep and 47 1/2" long), and cut out the stairwell. It's not glued on yet, of course (I still have a lot of finishing to do) but it gives the general idea.

The rooms look so different closed in! Here's the kitchen:

I have a slight problem with the first floor -- the grain of the plywood runs the opposite way (widthwise) to the ground floor (lenthwise), which means that I'll either have to:

score the first floor floorboards with the grain as usual, and have them running parallel to the ground floor's beams (visible in the kitchen)
score the first floor floorboards with the grain, and change the beams in the kitchen to run lengthwise. This will make the floorboards in the dining room and parlour look a little odd :)
try to score the first floor floorboards against the grain
use commercially-made scale floorboards

Hmm. What do you think would be least noticeable?

And what should I do for light fixtures in the kitchen? If I'm going to have a ceiling fixture I need to plan for it, because the space above the kitchen is going to be totally closed in. Maybe one of Ray Storey's Tudor lanterns?

Ground floor of WAMH glued!

2010-08-23T16:49:00.000-03:00

It's all glued up now -- lots still to do on these rooms, but the structure is done! I added the wall between the dining room and hallway, glued and taped it in place and let it set. Then I glued the stairway unit in place (after doing some last minute patching on the tile floor -- needed to add a couple of tiles because my initial pattern was not perfect). Then I glued the final interior wall in place and taped everything snug.

Here's the dining room as it stands today:

Here's the hallway. I love the clock here (it's the House of Miniatures William and Mary clock kit that Eva put together beautifully), and I am still in love with the Masters Miniatures Charles II side chair. I think it's one of the most pleasing miniature things I own :)

And here's the Parlour:

Here's a close up of the fireplace and overmantle: I had to use a couple of coats of white paint on the overmantle until it was white enough to match the plaster fireplace :) It was sort of ivory to begin with ...

Now it all starts over again, but this time for the first floor!

Ground Floor of WAMH going together!

2010-08-22T14:12:00.001-03:00

I've been busy the last couple of days :)

I did some more work on the back wall of the ground floor. Here it is, out of context, and in front of the castle kitchen. Man, is my workroom messy!

Here's a view of the rooms before any gluing has happened -- my last "dry fit" run.

Here's a better view of the hallway. The panelling isn't finished, but I'll do that when it's all glued up, because I have to fit some baseboards in situ (because of the thickness of the tile floor, I need to deal with that extra depth.) I love this room -- it's the hallway I've always dreamed of having. Before I glue the stairs into position, I need to paint the wall inside the closet black, or something.

And here's a better view of the parlour. The wallpaper still looks lumpy because it hasn't really dried totally in this picture (although I'll admit, there ARE some lumps!) Again, I'll finish the panelling in situ.

Yesterday evening, I started gluing the ground floor together, which was so exciting!

I glued the left end wall on first, holding it in place until the glue caught -- then taping it down. Then I glued the back piece on. This was more difficult because it's 4 feet long, and I had to use a lot of tape and weights and so forth to keep it in contact with the base and left wall until it set. Then I glued the right hand end on. The foam glues really nicely to the plywood, and everything is pretty solid. There's some wiggle in the foam, of course, but every wall and piece I add from now on will make the structure more rigid.

I knew I'd have a few gaps to fill once I'd glued things together -- in the kitchen because there's a dent at the end of the back wall there, and in other rooms because my panelling isn't exactly precise :)

Here's the fix in the kitchen, where I'm going to have exposed beams anyway. It's a little piece of 1/4" square balsa, painted first, that covers the gap in that back corner nicely.

I glued the first interior wall in place, between the kitchen and the dining room. In the dining room, there's a gap at the back corner of the panelling. I glued another bit of 1/4" square balsa -- I do need to touch this up (or put a screen in front of it :) since I did it in the dark and it's not great! (When will I EVER learn -- don't do stuff in the dark!)

And here's the right hand end of the ground floor. I cut the window hole in the hallway's back wall before gluing. The other windows I've used so far have been standard Houseworks ready-built ones -- this one I have to build myself -- yikes! We'll see how it goes ... :)

After a couple of months of messing about with this structure, knocking over walls and so forth, it's very satisfying to touch it and have it stay in place! I've got lots of patching and bodging up to do, but this is a really happy day for me and the William and Mary House!

Love to you all,

Nina

Kitchen fireplace

2010-08-21T13:25:00.000-03:00

I finally made the brick lining for the kitchen fireplace! It's going to be largely concealed behind ovens and grates and things, but it's done. The hearth is just a piece of peel and stick floor tile which I'll paint to look more rustic, but it's covering up some ugly stuff right now, so I thought I'd just leave it in place for the photo :)

I need to dash out to my local model shop and pick up some more thin balsa strips to finish the panelling in the parlour, then I think I can glue the whole bottom floor together! Woo hoo!

Parlour fireplace, panelling and wallpaper

2010-08-20T16:56:00.000-03:00

The girls and I did some good work on the WAMH yesterday! This is just a quick post to show you what Fred worked on.

She painted the wood panelling a dark grey-blue (it's Montpelier by Benjamin Moore) then glued on the scenic wallpaper. She did a great job!

This pattern is SC-Clasico by Les Chinoiseries, a Spanish company which makes and sells the most divine wallpapers and fabrics. I cut the border pieces off (I may use them in the blue and white room) and I really like the way it looks with the greyed blue of the panelling.

The panelling isn't done, of course -- I've just got the chair rail on, but I'm going to do mitred rectangles of moulding in the centre of each panel. Tiddles worked on the panelling in the hallway, and I've done some work on the wall opposite the one above, but my pictures were lousy :)

Talk to you soon!

Nina

William and Mary House August update

2010-08-18T13:34:00.000-03:00

Here's where the WAMH stands as of this afternoon:

Kitchen: Nothing really changed here, except I added the door handle to the back door. Still have to make brick lining for fireplace.

Dining Room: I added the 1648 painting of a sailboat, and you can see that I have the chandelier all ready to hang :) I finished the right hand wall, which you can't see very clearly in this photo. None of the walls has been glued into place yet.

Hallway: The left hand wall is mostly done -- high panelling with the wall painted white above it. I made the floor while I was invigilating a student's exam -- it took every bit of 2 hours to complete! I'm thrilled with how it worked out, though, and can recommend Traditional Elegance Tiles's Marlike floor tiles to everyone.

Parlour: This will be the parlour's fireplace. This room will be half panelled and have scenic wallpaper above the panelling. This is one of two lovely fireplaces I bought from The Miniature Fireplace Company (part of Dovetails). The other, the Classic, is for the bedroom. Highly recommended.

Fireplace for Blue and White Room: I adore this piece! Look at the detail on it. It's truly exquisite and came with the hearth (I bought it through an eBay auction which included the hearth). It's by Plastercraft Interiors in the UK -- their eBay shop is periodmouldings. I recommend them highly, too.

So much to do! I've cut the wall that will go between the Hall and the Parlour -- now I have to finish it on each side. I have to cut out the window holes in the back wall, and make the window for the Hall. Then everything can be glued in place and the ceiling put on!

Back again!

2010-08-16T15:10:00.000-03:00

Hello, everyone!

I've missed you all so much, and I've missed having time and energy for miniatures. My workshop is finished -- we had the cast party last night and I'm just recovering from it :) It was an incredibly affirming experience for all of us, cast, faculty and crew, and I'm just bowled over by the response we've had. I couldn't be happier (or more tired) today! (Here's a photo from the opera I directed ...)

Natalie Donnelly and Joshua May in the opera Susannah

So I'm going to sleep today, and I hope to be back to working on my much-neglected miniatures, and visiting all your sites and getting my giveaway organized tomorrow!

Can't wait to get caught up :)

Nina

Quick update -- stairs, floor tiles and Masters Miniatures!

2010-07-26T08:51:00.000-03:00

Hello! I miss you all so much -- as always happens, the opera workshop has taken over my life :) I had a day off yesterday that I was LONGING to fill with miniature making, and I was just so tired that every time I thought about doing something other than sleeping, I couldn't summon the energy.

But I got a number of packages last week, and I thought I'd share the contents of two of them.

First of all, here's the staircase unit for the hall:

I still have some touch up work to do, but that's basically it. I used a real door for the closet, which made things easier :)

In front of it you can see the gorgeous faux marble tiles I bought from Graham at Traditional Elegance Tiles. They're called "Marlike", and they look absolutely perfect, and they're perfectly made, which will be a bonus :) I ordered four packs of the diagonal tiles, which include half tiles which will make the whole installation much easier. Once I get the walls in, and the stair unit installed, then I can cut a piece of cardboard for the floor and install the tiles on that.

And I got a package from Masters Miniatures which exceeded my expectations (and I was pretty damned excited about them, anyway)! Look at these beauties:

Here's a Charles II hall chair. I may already have mentioned that I've got a bit of a furniture fetish for barley twist legs :) I think it's very important when doing a period space, even when it's as relaxed in attitude as this one, to have a few pieces that are really iconic of the time. This is such a classic chair, that I couldn't resist!

This is a fire screen, and it's SO charming! It's actually adjustable up and down, too :)

And, finally, here's a tiny wooden flute. I've been looking for period-looking instruments for some time, and Masters makes all sorts of lovely pieces. It's just perfect. I would feel confident ordering anything from them -- this is first class work and, if you check out the site, it's very, very reasonable for handcrafted pieces of such quality.

Okay, I must drive to Halifax now to direct some opera, but I'll surface when I can!

(If you want to see the sort of thing I'm up to, you can visit the Halifax Summer Opera Workshop site.)

Wallpaper and panelling for the WAHM dining room

2010-07-18T14:01:00.001-03:00

This is what the dining room in the William and Mary House looks like this morning :) I worked SO hard yesterday on panelling and wallpapering and so forth (and I have the gluey, stain smeared fingers to prove it :) and I've taken some photos to show the steps I went through.

I started by cutting a chimney breast for the fireplace and wrapping it in wallpaper. I had stained the plywood to wainscot height (about 3"), thinking that I could build the panels right onto the plywood for the two side walls and onto basswood for the back, foam wall. It looked like crap -- big, ugly plywood grain, so I decided to use basswood for all three walls. I was lazy, and didn't want to cut the 4" wide basswood strips I had, so I decided to have slightly higher wainscotting than is usual :)

For the back wall I cut a length of basswood sheet to fit, roughly centred the window and cut a little slot in the sheet for the window and glued the window to the sheet. Then I put in the chair rail, rather roughly coping it around the sill. I used some 1/4" moulding I found at my local building supply store (so it's cheap) for the chair rail, and I'm pleased with the way it looks. Here's its profile:

The above photo shows the basswood sheet covering the plywood and the chair rail going on by the door and along the side of the fireplace mantle (to tie the fireplace in with the panelling). The green tape, by the way, is covering the gawd-awful gouge where I made a bish of cutting out the door hole with my new Trio, hem hem).

Now the wallpaper can be stuck on! Look, ugly green tape disappears!

The back panelling isn't stuck on yet, of course, because it will be more tidy to wallpaper that wall first and then stick on the panelling. But I've added a very simple baseboard (about 1" wide and very thin -- just pine offcuts) and very simple uprights (stir sticks, actually :). My Easy Cutter is getting a work out!

They tell you to stain your woodwork first for a reason :) I had to be really, really tidy around the wallpaper on the left side because I did the panelling first and then stained it.

I cut out the hole for the window and then test fitted the rear panelling -- all seems well.

I then applied the wallpaper to below the line of the panelling and glued it on, cutting out the window. Do not use Quick Grip glue on polystyrene, by the way -- it eats it :) PVA is fine. There was some bubbling of the wallpaper that worried me at first, but it dried nice and flat.

Still needs some touch ups, but it's pretty close. I was on some bizarre high from getting all this done, so I decided to so some wiring, which of course has to be done before everything is glued in place if it's on an interior wall.

I drilled holes through the chimney breast for the two sconces and the fire. The wires will run up the back of the chimney breast (which will be stuck on with Museum Putty and along a channel at the top of the wall to the back and the plug board.

Here's the fireplace with sconces, fire, a large Raphael over the mantle and some blue and white pieces. This fireplace came with a barewood hearth -- I cut some faux stone sticky tile to fit rather than marbling it myself with paint.

And here's the window area. While my hands were covered with Mission Oak stain, I decided to stain this little sideboard as it was going to live here anyway (I decided on the window placement so that it would clear the sideboard, actually).

I also did some work on the stairway, but I'll share that later because I'm going to be posting fairly infrequently over the next three weeks.

Welcome to our new followers!

2010-07-18T00:31:00.002-03:00

Sorry, I still don't have my 200 follower giveaway organized (and it may be a little time before I get around to it), but I didn't want to delay welcoming our latest followers :)

Welcome to:

Maria who lives in Rotterdam and blogs at Diary of a Miniaturist.

La Belle Brigante, another Dutch miniaturist, who has a great blog at La Belle Brocante and has a tremendously cute cat named Ootje :)

Miniature doll maker Silke Janas-Schlösser is from Germany. She has many blogs, but the main one seems to be Silke's Miniatures, and she has a shop at Etsy.

Kiki blogs at Living in Food Harmony, among other interesting places :) Her photography is gorgeous!

Christina is an Indonesian miniaturist and she blogs at Miniature Wonderland.

José lives in Spain and is building an amazing miniature castle -- he blogs at Mi Prrimera Casita.

Mercedes from New Zealand is one of the best-known miniature bloggers out there (I've tried rewording that so it doesn't sound as if she's 6 inches tall :). Her blog, Liberty Biberty, is full of shabby chic inspiration and the adventures of the Nylon family. If you haven't checked it out, go visit!

Looking Glass Miniatures have several sites, including their principal blog, and other sites for their miniature apothecary blog and Hobbit dollhouse blog! They also have an Etsy store!

Zsuzsanna Paláné Horváth is a Hungarian miniaturist who blogs at Dreams In Miniature.

Minnie Kitchen is a miniature food artist from the U.S.A. who blogs at Minnie Kitchen and has an Etsy shop.

Kabrina Dawn lives in Arizona and blogs at Kabrina's Miniatures.

There are also Shelly, Nadia Navaez, fmagico, and , whose websites I can't seem to find. You're most welcome, and if you do have a website, blog or shop, please leave the URL in the comments so we can all find you!

Holiday Swap, Dremel Trio and Stokesay!

2010-07-17T11:40:00.001-03:00

Hello! Sorry I've been neglectful, but I'm deep in preparations for the Halifax Summer Opera Workshop which I run and stage direct for. We start up on Monday and there's loads to do!

First of all, the WONDERFUL minis from Paky arrived for the the Holiday Swap!

Look at these! They're all handmade and so beautiful, so sweet! The beach bag is full of everything I'd need - a towel, a newspaper, and look at that little shell charm ... I love the little thongs, and the perfect bikini, too! And there's even refreshments :) Paky, thank you SO much for all your beautiful work -- I'm honoured to have received it and will treasure it always :)

Next, my Dremel Trio arrived. After Casey blogged about it, I had to have one of my own :)

It's a plunge or turn saw, plus a router plus a sander, and I love it! I've got a lot of doors and windows to cut out of plywood for this house, and I knew I'd appreciate a tool like this one :) On my first trial run, I can say that it works really well. Like any turn saw, it cuts with a spinning bit, not a blade (this is how you can just plunge it into the plywood and start cutting windows, say, without drilling holes first). This means that it pulls to the left, all the time -- once you get used to that, it's pretty easy. I found running it on a high speed but cutting really slowly increased my control of it.

My first order from Stokesay Ware arrived yesteday, and I'm dumbfounded by the perfection of these miniature plates. They're SO thin, it's incredible. And the detail ... everything is perfectly in scale, and you know how hard that is to find in dishes. Thank you so much, Catherine, for ordering your own and inspiring me to start my own Stokesay collection :)

My first wallpaper order arrived, from Itsy Bitsy Mini in the US. I ordered three sheets each of three pattens and I love them all! I've got more wallpaper on order from various suppliers, and now I'm desperately trying to make up my mind which room gets which pattern!

I think I'm going to use this Jacobean blue and white pattern for the dining room. It will be half panelled with a wainscot so the wallpaper will just be on the upper half of the room, but here's an idea:

WAHM staircase, day one

2010-07-14T18:26:00.001-03:00

I'm grappling with the staircase for the entrance hall of the William and Mary House right now. Once I work out the ground floor one, the first floor one will go more smoothly, I hope!

I'm building the whole thing from scratch, because I've spent so much money on this in other places that I have to save money where I can :) David has a workshop full of pine scraps and some cool tools, so he cut the strips of triangular wood on his table saw, and I chopped them to length on the chop saw.

This will be a bit of a tutorial on one of the many ways of building a staircase. This is what you need in 1/12 scale to get started building a standard set of stairs that would be 30" wide in 1:1 scale:

Several feet of 3/4" triangular section wood moulding: either buy it from a lumber yard, cut it yourself or buy balsa or basswood already cut
A thin piece of basswood or pine (or even cardboard) 2.5" wide and as long as you need to go from floor to above the ceiling. This is the base of your staircase.
Lengths of thinnish strip wood as wide as your triangular moulding + base is thick.

Cut the triangular wood stock into 2.5" inch lengths (or whatever you want the width of your staircase to be).

Glue them, pointy side up, to your base. When it's dry you can add trim to the sides to conceal the construction, like so:

I'm making a staircase that will take up the whole back of the entrance hall. it's going to have three steps up, then a landing, then stairs all the way up the back wall of the hall to the first floor. The whole will be enclosed and panelled.

Here's the next step for me -- visualizing the construction (none of the side walls are permanent yet -- it's just to give me a sense of the space I have to work with.)

I cut a trial landing out of thin plywood -- it's resting on top of a table in the back right hand corner. I made a small set of steps to get to the landing and then the longer one runs right up. The whole area under the stairs will be enclosed, possibly with built in shelves and cupboards and so forth. I think it's going to work!

I'm going to build this unit so that it's totally self-supporting and separate. That means that I will just stick it in place when the rest of the decoration of the hall is done, which I think will be easier than trying to decorate around it. I've ordered my spindles, and I'm going to try to carve my own newel posts and handrail. We'll see how it goes - I may be ordering those, as well!

WAMH kitchen fireplace and doors!

2010-07-13T10:57:00.001-03:00

Well, I made good use of the time I had yesterday, and got a lot of work done on the kitchen, namely the plastering (but not the painting) and the kitchen fireplace mantle.

I cut out the opening in the foam, and backed it with a bit of cardboard. The mantle itself is made from carved balsa wood, stained Mission Oak. I just need to make a couple of brackets and attach them under the mantle shelf (and touch up the stain) and the surround is done. Then I need to line the interior with brick and add a hearth. But I'm quite pleased!

I also plastered the two foam walls of the kitchen, using PolyFilla mixed with white glue (because I wasn't at all sure that PolyFilla on its own would stick to the polystyrene). Incredibly messy and strangely satisfying, and it worked just fine -- now I need to paint them so they're not so stark white :)

And I got a lovely package full of doors yesterday -- five interior doors and the big front door for the house! I've never made a proper house before (the Castle is really just a series of giant room boxes) so I've never had real doors, and it's quite exciting :)

Update on WAMH

2010-07-11T18:47:00.001-03:00

I haven't had much time for the William and Mary House today, because I've been trying to finish off my swap gifts for Caterina's Holiday Swap :)

But after messing with the tiles yesterday, I'm now at this point:

That's not the real kitchen fireplace, of course, it's the dining room fireplace, just put in these photos as a visual placeholder to help me visualize proportions better.

And here it is in its true home in the dining room. You really have to use your imagination for this one :) Imagine panelling and scenic wallpaper in here ... I really like Kris's settee here, too -- I may have to get her to make me a different one for the parlour! This is an old-fashioned dining table for 1697-1710, but I'm imagining that the owners of the house are a tad eccentric!

Painting kitchen floor tiles - day two

2010-07-10T11:39:00.001-03:00

I've found photographing my projects to be immensely helpful when trying to recreate something in real life. I think we've all had the experience of thinking something looked fine, then taking a photo of it (especially a macro photo or a shot from "doll's eye" perspective), and realizing that we've screwed something up :)

This is very true as I continue my journey with the kitchen floor!

First of all, this is my inspiration photo. I love the fact that the tile colours are so varied, yet all clearly belong together. They're grounded, somehow.

And here's where things are this morning, after working over the floor with the original pigments, adding ultramarine blue and ochre.

I can see that I'm getting there, for sure. It's not dreadful, but it all needs to be tied together. I need to stipple the tiles with a darker colour, especially the paler tiles. I need to put in a nice dark wash for the grout (that will be easier now that it's all sealed -- I can wipe the wash off the face of the tiles, leaving the pigment in the grout lines. I also don't have to be afraid of using more and richer colour. I think I'll do one more pass with some deeper terracotta colours and then try to create the grout look.

If anyone has some ideas, please shout out!

Painting kitchen floor tiles

2010-07-09T13:59:00.001-03:00

NB: I'm laughing right now, because looking at the photos I took of the process of painting the floor clearly reveals that a cat or cats used the kitchen floor for a napping place sometime over the last day or so :) I didn't actually notice the incredible amount of cat hair until I was putting an acrylic glaze on the floor!

Here are the tiles before I started painting -- dry, not shrunk at all, but cracked in places.

I don't think I've ever painted clay before, certainly not as an adult. What I should have realized was that it's incredibly absorbent, of course.

I did a watery wash of raw umber, first, to bring out the grouting.

The paler places are where the tiles have dried right out. Fortunately a little of the raw umber was left where I wanted it.

I then did what I'd normally do: start putting on thin washes of colour (palette at the moment raw umber, burnt sienna and black) on individual tiles. The thin washes didn't work terribly well, because the water dried leaving very little impression of the pigment. I decided to seal the tiles before going any further (which I would do right at the beginning, in the future.

I used what I had on hand - acrylic gloss medium really watered down (to take away some of the gloss). Seems to work fine. Any clear acrylic craft finish with a satin or matte finish would be great.

Ah, cat hair. *sigh* But this close up of the tiles after being sealed shows that they're definitely coming along. Lots to do yet, but it's a good first stage.

I couldn't resist popping the walls back in place (the door has been glued on the back wall, as you can see) and taking a look at the scene, even though it's really far from being done :) I think I'm going to like it!

William and Mary kitchen door

2010-07-08T08:21:00.000-03:00

I decided to use the lovely strap hinges I bought in England on a rather rustic kitchen door I'm making for the WMH.

They're real metal, but a darkish grey, and I asked David if I should paint them to make them look more like iron. "Use the black patina", he suggested.

If you don't know it, black patina is used by ship and railway modellers, but it's mostly used by stained glass artists, to give lead or solder the dark patina of age instantly. David introduced me to it a few years ago for another project I was working on.

And it worked brilliantly on the little hinges! You can still see that they're metal (once you paint them, they might as well be plastic) and it darkens them enough to make them look authentic.

I bought a smallish bottle of the stuff last year in Toronto at a stained glass supply shop, and it will probably last me years :) You can try it on all sorts of metals. You just brush it on and if it's going to work, it works instantly. Chemistry is magic!

This door will go in the back of the model. It will probably never be used, but it's got damned good looking hinges! It was made precisely the way I made the kitchen door for the castle, but I just bevelled the edges of the boards rather than really going to town on the carving ...

Ground floor foam walls

2010-07-07T15:24:00.003-03:00

I'm on a roll! I just can't stop cutting foam!

Here's the back wall in place --about 47" long and 11 inches high:

Now for the tricky one: the gable end of the kitchen. Because the kitchen is just a one storey extension to the main building, the kitchen end of the house needs to be angled to take the roof (which will be non opening). I decided to add part of the chimney, too. Because the front edge of the foam is set back 3/4 of an inch from the front edge of the model, so that a wooden facing strip can be put on it, I have to take that into account when designing my roof.

Right angles are good for the up and down bits ...

45 degree angles for the roof line:

Here's the gable end all drawn out:

And here it is propped in place! You can see that when the 3/4 inch facing strip is put along the front edge of the foam, everything should line up neatly (I fervently hope).

You can also see that I should have changed my blade near the end :)

But it's actually starting to look like a house! Woo hoo!

And I've used less than $8.00 worth of foam :)

I've ordered some yummy things for the house -- flooring for the front hall, lots of wallpaper and a few light fixtures, but there're many things I can work on to get the model to the next step while I'm waiting for my purchases to arrive.

First I have to mark where the interior walls hit that back wall, so I can start marking in the rear window openings and the back door ... Then I can make the staircase unit for the hall, the back door for the kitchen and the kitchen fireplace.

Cutting first foam wall -- drying tiles -- Mum's doll

2010-07-07T13:26:00.000-03:00

This is going to be a rather "bitty" update :)
First of all, I bought a lovely new utility knife (box cutter, Olfa cutter) and cut out my first foam wall!

The walls for the ground floor are 11" high, and the plans for this house call for the foam side walls to be set back from the front edge of the base 3/4". (These forward edges of foam will later be covered with 3/4 inch thick wood to which the dollhouse doors will be attached with piano hinges.)

Cutting the foam was really, really easy. I was prepared for it to go all granular on me, but by cutting slowly and in layers (i.e. not trying to cut all the way through on the first pass) and with a super sharp knife, everything went smoothly.

Here's the first wall propped up! This is probably going to be the dining room's fireplace, but I just couldn't resist getting a sense of the scale of the thing, with Kris Compas's gorgeous little settee in place!

Next update: the kitchen floor. Well, it's definitely cracking, but it's not shrinking :) I'll rub some crack filler into most of the cracks before I paint. It certainly is drying fast, and it's a nice terracotta colour ... I should be painting it by Friday!

And, finally, I took a few photos of Mum's doll in her roombox -- she looks very much at home there, and has made friends with Mini-Emma :) Mum hasn't named her, but it's just a matter of time -- Mum names EVERYTHING, including our 1950s era teak salt shaker/pepper grinder ("Lily St Cyr" -- because she shakes and grinds ...)

Terracotta kitchen tiles -- impress mould tutorial

2010-07-06T13:02:00.000-03:00

So, time to do the kitchen floor in the William and Mary house. I decided to use air drying clay for the first time. I was amazed to find terracotta coloured clay in my local art supply shop the other day. I'd never seen coloured air dry clay before, and I was so bowled over by the novelty of it I decided to use it for the kitchen floor. I used a tile impress mould from Malcolm's Miniatures for these.

When I'd used my impress moulds in the past, it was on quite small bits of rolled out polymer clay (for the insides of fireplaces and the like). This was a much bigger project, about 15" deep and 11 inches wide!

I started rolling out the clay on a piece of parchment (or baking) paper. Not a great idea, because although the parchment paper keeps the clay from sticking, it also wrinkles. Note: If you have something hard and smooth to roll your clay out on, it would go much better :) I started rolling out with a (full) wine bottle until David took it away from me, muttering something about the sediment :) He then returned with my kitchen rolling pin and placed it firmly in my hand!

I just couldn't get a big enough piece rolled out to the right thickness to cover the kitchen floor at one go, so I decided to piece it together on the floor itself, and then make it smooth.

I spread white glue on the floor and then began piecing in chunks of thinly rolled clay. I tried to put the straight edges of my chunks along the perimeter of the room.

Once I had all the floor covered, I rolled it smoother with the rolling pin. You can see little air bubbles in the above photo. I just pricked them with a nail or stylus and rerolled over them.

I started from the back. I should have started from the front edge, so that a row of complete tiles would be right on the most visible part! I started off very carefully matching things up, but got a little sloppy later on (as is inevitable with me). When I was done, I neatened the edges where the foam and plywood will be glued.

Now I need to let it dry until Friday or Saturday, and then I'll paint it. That should conceal a world of irregularities!

Staining floorboards

2010-07-05T16:03:00.000-03:00

I just got back from a fruitful trip to Bridgewater, our nearest shopping Mecca :) I bought a small can of Minwax PolyShades in Mission Oak to try out, and a nice brick of terra cotta coloured air dry clay (that's for the kitchen floor).

I LOVE the Mission Oak colour. I didn't want the woodwork in this house to be too dark (it wouldn't have had time to really darken too much), and was going back and forth on what colour to pick. I wanted a darker oak shade, and the colour sample looked pretty good in the store. Here's the dining room floor after I rubbed on one coat of stain:

I really, really like it. It's a big load off my mind to know what the basic wood colour is going to be for the house, which will have a lot of woodwork in it.

Yummy!

I'll do the parlour's floor the same way, and then I'll start playing with air dry clay and my Malcolm's Miniatures impress stamps for the kitchen floor!

It's so refreshing to have a new project to work on -- do other people feel that, too, when you launch into something new?

Scribing floorboards - tutorial

2010-07-05T12:43:00.001-03:00

I scribed the floorboards for the two wood-floored rooms into the plywood base this morning.

First, decide which way your strips of flooring will run. If you're using plywood, then I advise you to go with the grain :) (I scribed the boards on the upper floor of the kitchen wing against the grain and it's the biggest mess imaginable!) Because the grain of this plywood is obviously along the long side, as it tends to be, my floor boards are going to run across the length of the house rather than back to front. This is important because if you choose to have visible beams anywhere, they need to go at right angles to your floorboards for consistency. (So, for example, my kitchen beams will run back to front.)

I used a long steel ruler and a steel knitting needle to do the actual scribing. You need a very firm straight edge because your scribing implement (knitting needle, awl, gouge, empty ball point pen, etc) will want to follow the wood's natural grain, and we want to force it to make nice straight lines :)

Starting at the back of the base, and moving forward, I scribed lines just as hard as I could into the plywood. Because this is circa 1690, the floor boards don't have to be perfectly even (thank god). Much later than that and you'll want to make your boards equally spaced.

Then I imagined where the floor joists might be (remember, the invisible, imaginary joists run from back to front under this floor). Real floor boards butted into one another across the joists, and it's also where they're nailed down. To represent this, decide where your joists will be. Place your ruler firmly along this line (in this case from from to back -- in any case, at right angles to your floor boards). Scribe a short line across the width of one "board", then skip two boards, and scribe another short line. These represent the ends of the boards, sitting across the joint. You'll end up with something like the example above. (I'm not showing you the section where I DIDN'T skip two boards, and instead went mad and scribed a whole bunch of boards that didn't need to be scribed. Sigh. I'll put a damned rug or something over it, but it will haunt me for the rest of my days:)

Then add the nail marks. I did this with a small sharp nail -- pressing it into every board, because every board gets nailed to the joist. You could probably put four nail marks into the boards that have the scribed line down them (two on each side of the join) and just two marks into the other boards. You can also wait until after you've stained and add black magic marker dots, or you can go nuts and hammer teeny tiny little nails into every floorboard :)

Next I'll stain and varnish these two sections of floor.

Starting on the William and Mary House!

2010-07-04T20:21:00.000-03:00

I've been planning like a fiend and sketching madly for the last couple of days, and I have my plans pretty well worked out for the W&M House. Yesterday we finally went to the lumberyard to get the first lot of materials!

I'm following Derek Rowbottom's basic plans and techniques for the country house in his excellent book, Making Georgian Dolls' Houses, but I'll be making a few alterations.

His original plans make a two storey plus attic building 38" long and 16" deep, with six main rooms and four attic rooms. I'm modifying it to make a 48" long building with seven main rooms and three attic rooms -- I'm adding a single storey addition on the ground floor for a kitchen, so that I can have a separate entrance hall (in Rowbottom's original, the front door comes right into the dining room :)

From left to right on the ground floor: kitchen, dining room, entrance hall, parlour
From left to right on the first floor: bedroom, library, blue and white room
From left to right in the attic: servants' bedroom, hall, children's bedroom

I bought a 4' x 2' piece of good one side birch plywood, 3/8" thick. I also bought two 2' x 8' sheets of 1 inch thick medium density polystyrene foam, since it's the material Rowbottom recommends for side and back walls. I'm very curious to see what it's like working with this material, because everything I've built so far has been plywood all the way. If nothing else, it should make the model lighter!

David cut the plywood to size this morning for the base:

We then made an underframe from .75" square pine and glued and clamped it in place on the underside of the base.

Here's the base on the dining room table so I can mark out the different flooring types that I'll need. The kitchen is going to be tiled, the dining room wood (I'll scribe and stain this nice plywood), the entrance hall will be marble and the parlour wood.

Here's two short lengths of the builders' foam (we had to break each 8' length into two bits to fit it in the car :))

It's got a very useful rabbet on each edge which will mean that I'll be able to get a nice join on the base:

It's not as pretty as flowers, but I've finally started this project and I couldn't be more excited!

200+ followers! Welcome, everyone!

2010-07-03T17:50:00.001-03:00

Imagine that, over 200 followers! I'm gobsmacked. Reading and commenting on other people's blogs turns what many people imagine is a solitary, self-referential activity -- blogging -- into a true community. Thank you all for opening my eyes to the huge world of tiny things, and especially the wonderful people who share our interests in the miniature!

Welcome to:

Naty, a Spanish miniaturist, who writes at El Mundo Mágico de Naty and whose latest project is a bakery!

Jonna or "rudoo" who blogs about miniatures at BuggaBoos.

JRB Creations, who makes gorgeous small stuffed animals, blogs about her work at JRB Creations and sells her work on Etsy and eBay! She also makes some 1:12 scale minis :)

Susan aka "microcrochetmad", who, as her user name suggests, crochets the maddest little teeny tiny objects! Check out her microcrochetmad blog!

Daisy is a Brazilian AIM miniaturist who has lots of blogs -- one of them is Daisy's Miniaturas 1/12.

Miia is Finnish, and blogs bilingually (Finnish and English) at Hallahovi.

Jamie is a Kansas Hallowe'en artist, and she blogs at Creepy Creations!

Emily is a young fashion design student who is taking up the family hobby of miniatures -- she's blogging about her latest project, based on the BBC Merlin series at EmilyClaireFashions.

And then there's rmartedal, ele B, Margriet van der Zee, otterine, Lyn and Kathy Beaman about whom I can find no extra information, but who are most welcome, regardless :)

If I've missed your site or shop, then please leave a comment so we can find you!

I'm going to stir around and work up some kind of giveaway to mark this milestone in the life of the Tudor Dollhouse Project Blog, but I want to consult with the KnitWits first :)

Doll by Teresa Thompson

2010-07-02T17:14:00.002-03:00

I ordered a doll for Mum's roombox from master dollmaker Teresa Thompson aka Costume Cavalcade in the UK, and it arrived today! I'm so excited!

The doll's model name is Dulcie #2, and she's one of Teresa's gorgeous Edwardian children. The details on this tiny work of art have to be seen to be appreciated -- she's perfect in every respect. I'm still undecided on whether I want dolls in my houses or not (I think I may prefer just cats :), but if I was going to have dolls, I'd start with Teresa's work. She's a real expert on costume, and that's very important to me :)

This is a pair of William and Mary/Queen Anne dolls circa 1690 -- doesn't he look like the somewhat more serious, less libertine younger brother of Sue's wonderful dummy board, Gentleman with a Cane, aka, Lord Fancypants?

And this is Teresa's early Georgian family, circa 1720. Aren't they GORGEOUS?

Okay, I think I may have to have dolls after all!

Thank you, thank you, Teresa, for your wonderful work :)

Almost at 200 Followers! Welcome, all!

2010-07-01T12:45:00.000-03:00

First of all, Happy Canada Day (or Dominion Day, as it was known when I was a girl :) Today we celebrate 143 years since the British North America Act created the Dominion of Canada. Canada is one of those countries which, logically, shouldn't exist, but I'm very glad it does :) I love my country, and am proud to be a Canadian!

Goodness! We're almost at 200 followers -- we'll have to do another giveaway to mark that milestone when it happens -- I'll have to ask the KnitWits what they'd like to do :)

Welcome, everyone, to this blog -- we really appreciate your interest in what we're doing and your comments when you feel moved to make them! New followers include:

Carolina from Spain blogs at An Edelweiss Little Homestead.

Beatrice is a French dollmaker and blogs at Miniatures Beatrice. She just got back from a successful fourth outing at SIMP!

Etsy Team MIDS (Miniatures in Dollhouse Scale) is a very active Team at Etsy. They run many blogs, but their main blog is here. If you buy or sell minis on Etsy, they're very welcoming!

Mincka is a Dutch miniaturist whose site is Markus & Minka Miniaturen.

Oiseau de Nim is a French miniaturist specializing in food. Her blog is here and she sells at Etsy, too!

Terry is from Italy, has an AMAZING looking cat, and blogs at minihouse de terry.

Carolyn is a New Zealand miniaturist working on a wonderfully shabby cottage, who blogs at Carolyn's Little Kitchen.

Kristi blogs under the name "Fiver". She's one of the most talented miniature animal makers I've ever seen -- do check out her blog, Mini Menagerie, if you don't already know her work!

Lainie is an American blogger in Texas who blogs at Lainie's Little Things.

Lorraine is the genius behind DFLY, a line of handmade creepy miniatures that looks fabulously detailed! She blogs at Dollhouse Minis by Dfly Creations , and sells her work at Etsy and eBay.

Carol is Irish, she blogs at Wee Cute Treasures, and sells adorable little clothespin dolls at Etsy.

Klara is Dutch, and blogs about dolls houses, miniatures and scrapbooking at Klara's Blog.

Heather is from California in the United States, and blogs at Diary of a Dollhouse.

And there's May and Sara Carlson for whom I cannot find a blog. If I've missed your info, please let me know in the comments!

More welcomes to come :)