The other weekend I took a bit of a break from breaking open the Laurel box (okay, this probably took me several hours all told ) and worked on a "sewn card" to send to my mother for her birthday. I hadn't done embroidery work since I was a teenager (so it has been quite some time). I stitched on miniature pieces of fabric like patchwork, and then looked up various embroidery stitches on the internet (found quite a few from here http://www.needlenthread.com) to try. Then to finish the card, I mo
Had a couple days off during the holiday to myself, so cracked open the Laurel box:
Did a quick dry-fit with the main pieces:
This house is very similar to the Willow-- blank slate, wide open spaces. A bit simpler than the Tennyson but still many similarities; these kit designs are not complex structures like the Beacon Hill or Willowcrest.
Took me awhile to figure out what wallpapers I wanted, but finally settled on something that may actually end up being the fi
Needed some trim strips on those roof corners (1/32" basswood):
And some shrubbery (Woodland Scenics "bushes - light green"); I had never used this before, but it is very easy to apply, comes in foamy clumps.
And some grass powder:
And here's my lean-to thingie, to hide the power strip:
And can't do without some window dressing. This was a bit fiddly, but using pelmets sure helped alot. I mounted strips of matboard on the backsides of the drape
Well now that I am using Mozilla Firefox, I am back in business! (IE11 wasn't letting me input photos or URLs...)
Here we are ready for paint washes:
But first, some half-scale goodies from http://www.dejouxminiatures.com/, a rug and a little sewing machine, and a table set:
And my order from http://www.oakridgehobbies.com/ finally came in, the Grandt line O scale (quarter-scale) trims. I never did find any decent photo images of these items online; hopefully one
Had to take a break from the Rosedale to finish my Spring Fling entry (you can see it here, "Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle's House" http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/index.php?app=gallery&album=6487), but back at it now!
First, I don't think that I showed yet what I did with that unfortunate bathtub (which was not quite to scale):
I used thin basswood to side it and I think that its footprint (at least) fits to scale much better now (though I suspect that its depth would probab
After some white spray paint and some cloth panel finishing-- I used a couple wee spots of tacky wax to keep the bedspread in place.
And in the half-scale Rosedale bedroom-- someone needs to dust!
Trim is looking a bit better:
I wanted the bathroom door to be hinged, so I put pins on it, installing it on the top trim first, then gluing the top trim in place (the bottom pin has been pushed into the floor):
I also put plank flooring on the attic floor, and planks on the attic ceiling; these will be white-washed.
Now to what I've been working on (inbetween cleaning up after a sick dog :suck: ):
I had made 1:12 chairs from Kr
I made fitted cardstock templates of all the floors and ceilings, marking each as to which side is out:
Parlor and kitchen floors in dry-fit. The parlor "carpet" floor is a flocked scrapbook paper (doodlebug design inc. "1879 bon bon - crushed velvet cardstock"); I didn't glue the papers to the templates (that would've been too thick) but rather used the templates as patterns to cut out the flooring papers.
Testing the lights--
Some of these
Before I show my Rosedale build progress, this programming note!
Whilst mini-blog-hopping, I recently discovered this blog: Architecture of Tiny Distinction http://tinydistinction.blogspot.com/ It isn't cited on many mini-blogs that I have noticed, but this one stuck out to me because of the careful and polished work that the mini-builder is putting into her decors. I love the wall and floor treatments that she is doing, as well as furniture-- check it out, it's very nice work!
&#
Re blog post How I made the wing chairs http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/index.php?app=blog&module=display§ion=blog&blogid=82&showentry=2417#commentsStart:
Untitled-51a.pdf
Better contrast:
Untitled-12aa.pdf
Print as-is (don't let the program shrink to fit or resize)-- let me know if it works!
Regards, rbytsdy
I thought about titling this post "It's the little things" but that wouldn't be very descriptive.
Whilst thinking about my next big step with the Spring Fling, I got into the half-scale Rosedale package. This is the first half-scale kit I've ever tried.
The sheets of plywood are quite thin, but much denser than the old 1:12 die-cut sheets. Also they are pretty curvy due to being so thin, so will have to watch about that. The laser-cuts were very nice-- minimal sanding
The finished bed, from Kris' fabulous tut on http://1inchminisbykris.blogspot.com/:
You might notice that I added some fabric-covered cardstock to the front and back of the headboard-- I sprayed the bed down a couple times with white spray paint (which shows every dust mite, I might add ) and I need to work on my spray paint skills-- got some dripping going on, which I had to hide!
Well time to get down to business-- the business of finishing this house up, that is. I turned the house on its side and finished the wiring.
Starting to get there. Finally got around to doing something about that base, which I'd been waffling over for months; the Magnolia's paperclay stones looked great but didn't hold up well to travel (a nick or two ) so looking for something more durable. Actually it was a clerk in my local craft store that said something about stucco a
I am so pleased with these upholstered chairs that I made from Kris' tutorial at http://1inchminisbykris.blogspot.com/! I did get more foamboard (got a whole bunch of scraps for free, actually, from the framing section of my local craft store); I did run out of batting and used some stuffing in the second chair which I do not recommend since it's formless and won't cooperate... (You might be able to see where the seat of the second chair is a bit bulbous here and there.)
Well I was determined not to buy shingles and still had alot of shingles leftover from various houses, and decided to use the hexagon ones; I ended up scrounging through all my scrapwood stashes and converting a fair number of fishscale to hexagon, but finally made it.
Don't worry folks, it doesn't stay this color! The first coat of paint:
An in-progress pic showing my attic flooring, half-way through sanding it (and before I stained it):
Moving on with the 2nd story porch, I pinned the newel posts in place, and cut the hand-railings to size, gluing them onto the spindles:
Then I added accents to all the posts (DecoArt's "Royal Ruby" metallic paint):
It was a good thing that I had taken that previous picture of my layout, because once I got the railing pieces all painted and ready to install, I had a hard time remembering how it was all supposed to go together!
In order to t
I finished the siding, with a few to spare; this was two packs of 40 siding strips each. Fit the sills over the siding. And yes I did cut tiny strips to side around the bay windows... It took forever (the strips kept splitting) but it just looked right that way!
A note about the siding: I've always had trouble with buckling, so I tried something different for the left and right walls which have alot of long pieces: I used wood glue to tape them on and taped each layer really well w
The roof pieces; I was waffling between the music sheet wallpaper and white-washed planks, so I decided to do both. I haven't installed the roof yet because I think I can install some of the planks before I glue on the roof...
I decided that some stout trim would add alot of strength and help keep things square, and add a finished look to boot, so I found just enough leftover from the San Fran to fit along the ceiling edges of each room:
Then I had a loo
It is starting to look like the color pink exploded in my work room, and I haven't even started with the exterior paint yet...!
Installing the kitchen ceiling with my light fixture made of jewelry findings (on sale at HL, as was the pretty pink paper, "Daisy Embossed - Pink" by the Paper Studio); I installed everything on a cardstock template first, then fed the three sets of wire through holes in the wall, then braced the wood base of the light fixture trio with foam so that it wo
Oh boy, I just lost that entire blog post. Oh well, here goes again--
Nothing terribly interesting, alot of prep and dry-fit work, including on the staircase:
Now doesn't this window trim look much improved! Also I installed interior doors (using the cutouts with basswood trim); this house doesn't have nearly the architectural interest that many of the Greenleaf houses have, so it needs all the interest it can get.
You can s
Well I am glad that the Greenleaf site is back-- for a bit there, I was looking into blogspot and wordpress, thinking that I might go that route and jump into the blogosphere, but I like it here much better.
I got the main pieces sanded up and dry-fit, and started mapping out my wallpapers:
The wallpapers are all printies that I found on the internet, printed on cardstock:
The music sheet paper in the attic (which I may end up ditching for white-washed p
Well I just now broke open the Tennyson box, which I got off eBay a few months back, and it actually had instructions in it!
Not that I am going to pay a whole lot of attention to them, however, especially since I have Gina's blog to consult! http://moreminis.blogspot.com/2010/02/tennyson-dollhouse-day-1.html
I have not gone through to count the pieces; I'll probably get to that this afternoon, my last day of holiday. This is an old Artply kit, so very splintery.
It is currently bouncing along in a delivery vehicle-- well hopefully not too much bouncing...
Some lit pictures-- finally got my transformer in:
Some shots of my wing chairs and sofa:
The legs turned out to be alot shorter this time around, but that's OK.
I wanted to make something for the kitchen, so I looked up Kris' tutorial for kitchen cabinets out of matboard: http://1inchminisbykris.blogspot.com/search/label/How%20to%20make%20ki
Now that the Willow is out the door (and apparently reached its destination with minimal damage-- a few things popped off but sounds like an easy fix), I am cleaning up the Magnolia so I can get it in the mail in the next week or so.
It's not pretty behind the curtains!
Here you can see what all contortions I was going through to make these parlor curtains for the Magnolia; I wanted to use the tulle, but it won't stick to anything with anything no-how, so I had to devis
