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

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

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

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

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!

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!

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

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!

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 :)

Dole cupboard

I made a little hanging dole cupboard yesterday.

A dole or livery cupboard was used either to store food in the private areas of a medieval or early Tudor house for the use of the family, or was used to distribute left over food to the poor, usually in a church or in a great house.

It's related to an aumbry, which was also used for food storage.  Both pieces of furniture have piercings or spindles so that air can circulate.  In fact dole cupboard, aumbry,  almery cupboard and livery are often used interchangeable.  Some sit on the floor, and others hang on the wall.

It's very rough because I really bodged it together, mostly out of balsa wood, which guarantees that a piece is going to be extra rustic :)  But the door actually opens and closes and I like the effect when it's hung in the bedchamber.

There's one of the beautiful cushions Flora gave me!

Stairwell and kitchen hallway

I've been moving my workroom around, and I've finally got the three pieces of the Castle off my worktable and onto the perimeter of the room, so I can wire them all together.   I used my first homemade sconce to light up the minstrel's gallery in the Great Hall, so I moved the lantern that used to be there into the stairwell/kitchen hallway.  I also made another side table for the hall.  In medieval kitchens there would often be a room devoted to the final dressing of dishes for presentation at table -- I'm imagining this little space performing something of that function!

Here it is at night:

And here's the kitchen this morning: