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Hi everyone. Planning a project to begin early December as I will be participating in National Writing Month in November but am planning on going to a miniatures fair at the end. I am planning on picking up things for the project while I am there. I am planning a story about the bookstore and it is set in a quaint English village. The idea i am working with right now is that it either started off a part of a french chateau that had burned down and the lord of the area had found it and brought bricks and doorways back. I just don't know if it would look wrong in an english village. My other thought was that it had been an English Folly that had been relocated from the grounds of a manor house to the village and turned into a store. I had thought that the owner could live on the upper floors. But now i am in love with a cottage that they could live in. The owner will be a writer. And then as Audrey Hepburn is my idol and I love Funny Face i thought i could sorta make the bookstore look like the one in the movie. With a reading room on a mezzanine or second floor. http://blog.paperblanks.com/2013/04/movie-bookshops-funny-face/ But I can't seem to decide. Originally I was going to choose this one https://www.petitepropertiesltd.com/la-belle-boutique-1/48th.html as my bookstore. This would be the old chateau and my first instinct was "I love it!" But the more I look at it the more i question. It would be hard to make it look Audrey. I could remove the shutters and balconies to look more English. The other one would be this one https://www.petitepropertiesltd.com/no-2-station-road-double-fronted-shop-1/48th.html This would be the old Victorian Folly. I can see so many possibilities and it could be turned to look like the store in Funny Face. But i did not have the same reaction as the first one. This is the cottage that I will be doing probably as the writer's house if i end up doing the second floor as a reading nook. https://www.petitepropertiesltd.com/august-cottage.html Or I may make it a tearoom. Any help would be appreciated Struggling so much to decide as I like them both but only room for one.

If somebody has built this kit or one by the Laser Dollhouse Design Company, could they please help me with the flooring pieces. I can get the base to take all the A pieces, but after I tape them together for my dry fit, I cannot get the next floor to fit on top! My last dry fit, I just didn't have the correct tape and simply sat each floor on top of one another after I had completed it. So I have Completed a dry fit three times now, and although with this last time I did have the correct type of tape, I still could not get the flooring to actually fit. HELP! Is there a trick to this?

I just got a message from the Betterly's about a new magazine. They and the super sweet people at True2Scale have done a joint venture for Christmas. It's free to download, but they also included a link to buy it if you want. I'm putting in both. e-magazine purchase link I met both of these couples at Philadelphia Miniaturia last year. Wonderful people, and their work is stunning.

I have some tiny 1:48 furniture kits - they look perfectly logical for assembly...but I am wondering about glue. For 1:12 I used wood glue - it was pretty thick. Is there something special I should use for tiny wood kits? Or just use regular wood glue but with a tiny needle dispenser? Thanks!

I'm planning on putting stairs in my cigar box house project. I've looked at Railroad accessories and the stairs have a stringer with treads but no risers. I'm sure this is great for those outdoor setting railroad scenes, but not for my indoor needs. I considered these from Petite properties: http://petitepropertiesltd.com/onlineshop/index.php?_a=product&product_id=279 But I am doing unusually high ceilings in my cigarbox house (4") so these would be too short. I am open to partial faux stairs and "suggestions" of stairs as this scale is hard to work in. IN SHORT - I am looking for any input on making tiny stairs. Did you give up? Did you find it easy? Did you make stringers with risers and treads, or just use little blocks of wood? Thanks! I've fallen way down the rabbit hole and am dabbling in 1:48 scale. With laser cutters, the furniture options seem to have really opened up and even gotten more affordable.

Dr Thaddeus has decided to go into the real estate business and put his quarter scale steampunk fairy house up on the market for sale. Drop by my Etsy store to visit this little charmer when you have a minute. https://www.etsy.com/listing/100771135/quarter-scale-steampunk-fairy-house-an Deb

Ah, springtime when a young mad scientist's fancies turn to love. Would you believe that Dr Thaddeus Robertson has fallen in love with a fairy? Apparently it's pretty serious because he's built a house for her. Well, to be honest he took a quarter scale house (the carriage house from one of the Greenleaf villages) that I'd built about a year ago and finished it. I'd originally intended that house to be a witch's house and had gotten as far as doing the stonework on it but then I got started on the Rosedale and the little house got lost in the shuffle. Dr Thaddeus dug it out of the UFO box and put on strong copper doors and a roof of steel plates bolted together with brass rivets. He complained a lot about having to do menial labor like that when what he was really itching to do was make things like the water well pump in the side yard and the carriage lamp out front. He even put a pretty fairy medallion over the door. The fairy must like it because I see smoke coming from the chimney and that's always a good sign of a happy home. I'm not sure how things are going to work out with them, but I truly do wish Dr Thaddeus all the best. He deserves to get out of the laboratory once in awhile and have some fun. Here's a teaser pic of the fairy house. You can see more pictures including close up details in my steampunk gallery here on the forum or if that doesn't work for you, you can go to my website here. Deb