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Diving back into the miniature world.


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I've been lurking around the forum for the past couple of weeks and on my daughter's advice decided to finally join. I'm Lion.Mother's mom. Years ago I was quite involved in miniatures, starting my own house and making one for my daughter. The thing that really fascinated me at the time was the making of the miniature accessories. I like to build and I think I even have a box in the basement of creations from long ago. Life got in the way and I've been away from miniatures for quite a few years.

Circumstances with my parents leaving their home to a nursing home and then my mother's passing away, put me back into the world of miniatures. My daughter kindly offered to help me sort out boxes, and boxes and boxes of little things. Up until that point, I put a few things away for spring project of a couple of fairy gardens. My daughter's enthusiasm for the little world is contagious. All of the houses we found on the main floor of the house have been mostly finished, with siding, electrical, wallpaper and carpets but while working on the basement, we found a "Les Shoppes" house, the shell finished with nothing else. An empty shell of a house is really more to my liking, so here I am, back at it. Here's the house as I brought it home.

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As I've never really finished a house, from start to finish, I'm sure I'll have lots of questions as I go along and I look forward to this community, as there seems to be a really great group of people here.

Susan

http://thesmallpartofmyworld.blogspot.ca/

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Welcome to the GL family. It's exciting to have a mother-daughter combo. There may be others that I'm not aware of, but it's the first registered that way that I know of. Congrats on all the wonderful opportunities you will have. Hope you will share pictures as you build along. We are eye candy junkies around here.

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You know, I could blow that unknown age/birthday thing right out of the water...

Also, interesting: my new member intro started with "wading back in" and yours is "diving back into." Funny, since neither of us swim and are prone to seasickness.

(And I'm glad you finally bit the bullet and joined, Mom. No one likes a creepy lurker ;) Welcome!)

(Furthermore, I think you took all the glue plus all the electrical. I'll trade you magnets and... breakfast sandwiches? And I no longer need hinges.)

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Welcome, Susan. I am so happy you listened to your daughter and took the plunge back into the little world. I can understand your attraction to the "Les Shoppe" project, but something tells me your empty shell won't be empty for very long. It will be exciting to see what you do with it. So come get your feet wet, take as much time as you need, and enjoy.

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Now this is going to be fun to watch! :D Welcome,Susan! Your daughter's avatar(and she!) has already become a very welcome sight here for me when I log on! Welcome to the fun! ^_^ Kat

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Welcome Susan! Glad you have joined us. It is a great place you have landed. Your DD has led you to the right place; a wonderful place!

I agree with Kat, this will be interesting! Many of us have children (daughters) who do not find our hobby as intriguing as we adults/parents do. It is great you both have joined the fun here!

My DD will get interested far enough to bring me/show me something that will work in a DH (or brag I do so much with a DH ((I really am not as good as a lot of folks on this site))), but that's about as far as that goes. My DS has started to bring me things he would normally throw away, in case I can use them in my DH's (and he encourages me to build from scratch not a kit - says he knows I can). But Neither DD or DS want to build or decorate or anything else to do with DH's.

You are blessed and we look forward to seeing what you both are up to and how your houses grow and what they become (eye-candy is very welcome around here).

WELCOME! You are in a like minded place.

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Thank you all for the warm welcome. I'm really excited to be here and the more Les Shoppes sits on my kitchen table, the more I'm getting excited about working on it.

Jennifer your're on for the trade for electrical and glue for magnets and breakfast sandwiches.

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Susan, you might find Lionel & Ann Barnard's The Dolls' House Shopkeeper helpful to furnish the shop's interior; there are patterns for display shelves, cases and counters and accessories for all sorts of shops. I furnished a general store and I have a Brimble's kit waiting for more of their goodies when I finally build it.

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Susan, you might find Lionel & Ann Barnard's The Dolls' House Shopkeeper helpful to furnish the shop's interior; there are patterns for display shelves, cases and counters and accessories for all sorts of shops. I furnished a general store and I have a Brimble's kit waiting for more of their goodies when I finally build it.

I have that book, Holly. It's excellent.

I have three shops - Doll's House Emporium (UK) The Bell Inn; plus (can't recall the maker right now) the Jubilee Terrace Shop; plus a slightly wrecked Arkwright's Stores. All three need a lot of work. I hope to create a ''Bohemian' Art Nouveau restaurant; an Art Deco Tea Room; and, possibly, a 'Ladies' Outfitters"' - either, WWI or WWII era.

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Welcome back! And yes what a joy to have your daughter and you enjoying this hobby together! , neither my mother or my daughter have an interest in even seeing any pictures of my craft, on the flipside my dad is quite the enthusiast and builds birdhouses and now gnome dwellings

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Thanks again to everyone for such a warm welcome. Instead of doing the Les Shoppes as a store, I think I'm going to convert it to a house. I think the open concept will work well for a contemporary home.

It is exciting to be able to share this hobby with my daughter as it's a real treat to share something so exciting with someone special.

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One more welcome, Susan, and this one is from a relative newbie. I joined the group a few weeks back and love this community. It's a great place for advice and encouragement, not to mention humor!

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Welcome Susan!

I am very intrigued by the Les Shoppes. It looks like a decent size with many possibilities and I like the style.

Have you started planning what you are going to do to it? :construction:

I couldn't find much on the internet, except a book with the plans. There wasn't much information about what exactly is in the book, so I took a chance and bought a second hand copy on Amazon this afternoon.

Would it be possible, when you have some time, to share a photo from the other angle please?

When my book arrives, I can compare the plans to the one you have and start visualising the whole build in my head.

I have a thing for shops and don't really want to end up with 30 houses converted into shops. Vertical buildings would work well and give me room to accommodate a lot of the minis I have already collected.

I started optimistically collecting wall-mounted boxes from Ikea to build a shopping mall, but they are not deep enough and I need something more dollhouse-y, if you know what I mean!

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Hi Lene,

I've got another photo of my mom's Les Shoppes here: http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/index.php?app=gallery&image=98127

Also, if you search for "Les Shoppes" in the gallery on here, someone else made a half scale version out of sheets of foam core, that shows some additional walls that may be in the plans, but aren't in the shell we found.

Mom - can you take a look at the plans and comfirm this?

(Also, I love that you're working on several ideas at once. But how do you keep it all straight?)

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Jennifer posted some great photos of it and there's a few more on my blog http://thesmallpartofmyworld.blogspot.ca/

Holly, before I found out it was originally meant to be a store, my first thoughts were a brownstone style.

Lene, one of the things I do like about it the most is the small, square space it takes. The base is around 21" square.

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