Hangin' out on the veranda

I do love the wraparound porch, but I don't love the fact that it's plain, smooth MDF.  Well, we can fix that.

All you need is some strip balsa wood, a pencil, a ruler (or other straight edge), a utility knife and a pair of scissors.  

At 3/4" by 12" (and 1/32" thick), the stripwood is both long and too wide, so it needs to be cut.  I measured and marked each strip into 3-7/8" sections, and I also drew another line straight down the middle of it.  Each strip yielded 6 "planks" with a little bit left over.

There's one thing you should know about balsa wood: it's very weak along the grain, but not so much across it.  Splitting it was easy; I used the utility knife to score a line down the middle, and then I simply exerted a little pressure on it to make it snap.  Kinda like cutting plexiglas.  Balsa isn't quite so fragile when you're going against the grain, though; attempts to use the score-and-snap technique resulted in… well, a mess.  I used scissors instead.  Worked like a charm (cutting along the grain with scissors is not a good idea; the wood will split in ways that you did not intend).

Next, I used wood glue to fix the boards to the MDF.  I used the glue sparingly but balsa will curl no matter what. I've been working a section at a time, weighing the boards down with wooden blocks until the glue dries.  This is what it looks like right now:

Interesting, isn't it?  I'm not sure if you can see it, but I drew guidelines onto the MDF to ensure that I laid the boards straight.  I'm nearly done the side of the porch, and then I'll work on the front.  The corner is going to be a bit of a challenge; I'll probably need to miter the boards there.  We'll see.

By the way, this picture does a good job of displaying the unevenness of the paint, doesn't it?

Once I finally get all the boards laid down, I can start the oh-so-fun process of putting masking tape all over the place again so I can stain the porch.  Minwax has a nice gray stain that I'll likely use on the shingles, too.  Then I can finally start working on the inside.  Woot!

It's coming along...

So having (mostly) constructed the cottage, I've been slowly working on the exterior, seeing as how I'm a massive slob and know better than to do any decorating before the outside is done.

One of the things I love best about this hobby is the tendency for actions to have unintended consequences that actually work to my advantage.  For example, the first thing I did was give all outside walls two coats of KILZ Odorless Primer.  Much to my annoyance, the primer raised fibers in the MDF, giving the initially smooth (milled) siding a rough look (also, some of the primer made it inside the cottage but as I said, I'm a slob).  I grabbed my sanding block and prepared to give the thing a good going-over.

Except...

The raised fibers sort of looked like wood grain.  In fact, they looked a lot like wood grain, and I decided that it looked cool.  I put my sanding block away.

I then painted the walls with the lovely Valspar sample I bought.  I had two unintended consequences with this one:

1. I forgot that paint tends to dry darker, so the house isn't going to be quite the color I expected it to be.  The actual color is still very pretty, though, so this doesn't bother me.
2.  Despite the two undercoats of primer, the paint job was somewhat less than perfect.  I'd been hoping that I wouldn't have to use more than one coat for fear of covering up the cool wood-grain effect, but there was no other option.

Except…


I like the unevenness of the paint.  It's not blatant (I'll have pictures later, though I doubt that you'll even be able to see the "problem") but when you look at it closely, it's got that slightly-faded look that means that the thing needs to be repainted - not now, but sometime in the not-too-distant future.  Again, I decided that it looked cool, and abandoned plans to add a second coat.

                                                                                   
So right now, the house is on its side atop my dining room table.  This is because I decided that a beach house should probably have a cement foundation, so I have been troweling on some slightly-diluted dollhouse mortar.  It looks fantastic; I hope it holds up.

In-between making messes, I painted the door, the windows and the ladder.  I also cut acrylic "glass" to fit the windows because, as previously mentioned, the door came with panes of acrylic but the windows did not.  This is the first time I ever cut plexi, which is a deceptively simple-appearing process that is nonetheless fairly time-consuming... although I'm more than willing to admit that my inexperience is probably to blame.

You cut acrylic by scoring it several times with an acrylic or glass-cutting tool, then exerting pressure along the cut line until it snaps.  If you don't cut deeply enough or often enough, the plastic will break where you don't want it to, and you will be sad.  Miraculously, though, I managed to ruin only one small piece of it, so I'm going to go ahead and declare this a success.

And now, the other cottage

Last month, Hobby Builders Supply offered these at an obscene discount:

Cute, right?

As I mentioned previously, a few of my friends bought these, too, and we all gathered together this past weekend to put them together.

If you want one of these cuties (HBS no longer sells them but they are still available elsewhere), be aware that it comes in two versions: one with a component kit (which includes 3 windows, a door and a ladder) and one without.  The one with the component kit has siding milled into the MDF, while the other kit has smooth walls.

This is a Houseworks kit so it's not only solidly-made, it was easy to assemble.  We were at it for quite a long time but if you exclude the amount of time we spent gabbing and goofing around (not to mention the very leisurely lunch break), I'd say we got them put together in about 2 hours (which includes time spent taping the pieces together and waiting for the glue to dry before proceeding to the next step).  I dry-fit the windows and doors but will not glue them into place until they are painted and finished (for some odd reason, the windows don't come with glass, although the door does).  I also didn't assemble the roof, figuring that the loft would be next to impossible to decorate with it on.  To make things even easier, the floor/ceiling slides out and does not need to be glued in place.

My friends don't know what they're doing with their cottages yet, but mine is going to be a shabby chic beach cottage.  I have already picked up several sheets of scrapbook paper (do people still shell out for actual dollhouse wallpaper anymore?) and picked up a really pretty paint sample to use for the exterior.  Behold Valspar's "Secluded Garden":

It's not quite as dark as it appears in the pic, but it is a super-pretty soft teal.  I'll be painting the doors and (shuttered) windows white.  I don't know what I'm going to paint the porch, though.  Gray?  Taupe?  I don't want to do white, but I want a contrast with the green.

I'm back

And yes, I am properly ashamed of myself.

I know that there are a great many people who swear by Greenleaf dollhouses but I am absolutely not one of them.  Give me a Houseworks or Real Good Toys house any day of the week but please, please keep the Greenleaf stuff away.

And then I bought the Sugarplum Cottage.

It was on sale on my club's sales table for only 5 dollars, and it was already mostly-constructed.  I figured that my friend's kids would like it, so I bought it (I later discovered that it was for sale because the previous owner hated it even more than I do.  In fact, she offered to refund my $5 if I agreed to come over and watch her set fire to it).

But I soldiered on… kind of.  I told myself that I would not be permitted to work on anything else until this thing was finished and shipped off.  This backfired severely.  See, I did stick to my resolve and quit working on my other projects, but it turns out that not working on anything else did not, in fact, motivate me to work on the cottage.  Ultimately, the only thing that worked was telling myself that I wasn't allowed to go to N.A.M.E. Day unless I finished the cottage.

I finished the cottage the night before N.A.M.E. Day.  Here it is:

Yeah, plastic roof.  I would probably feel bad about that if the adorable Tudor trim wasn't made out of cardboard.  I made up for it by making cushions for the settles, a mattress and linens for the bed, and interior window trim.  The butterflies are scrapbook embellishments and the wallpaper on both floors are scrapbook paper (I don't know why the 2nd-floor paper photographed so peach-y; I assure you, it's pink).

So onto stuff I actually want to work on!  As it turns out, though, I will not be returning to the MiniTown Loft just yet.  That is because Miniatures.com had an insane sale ($20!) on these little cuties:

A few of my mini-obsessed friends and I are having a kit-building party this weekend.

The loft will not die, but I intend to build the vast majority of what's going in it by hand... and, well, my procrastinating over the Sugarplum has put me severely behind schedule.  I will not have time to execute my plans for the loft before the next show, but I will have plenty of time to do what I want to do with the little charmer above.

And none of it involves tab-and-slot furniture punched out of a sheet of wafer-thin plywood. ;)

A brief detour

A month ago, I purchased a mostly-constructed Sugarplum Cottage for a paltry $5 and decided to rehab and finish it for a friend's kids.  And then I got a new job, and have therefore not spent a lot of time on it.

The time I have spent on it has been... memorable.  First off, the lady that built it wasn't as careful as she could have been, so I've had to do a little patching and re-gluing here and there.  And then there are those spots where things just didn't fit right.

I don't mean to badmouth Greenleaf houses, but lets just say that they are not made of the sturdiest plywood.  Any attempt to separate any misaligned pieces will almost certainly result in their destruction.  Heck; I broke a piece while pushing it out of the plywood sheet and had to glue it back together, so there is no way I'm going to try fixing anything that's already been glued down.  I've had to swallow my pride and my perfectionist tendencies and shrug it off.

I stained the floors, and they turned out pretty well, but then I started painting the exterior... and the plywood ATE the acrylic paint!  I probably should have primed first but since I didn't have a problem with the stain, I assumed the paint wouldn't be a problem, either.  Ha!

So 4 coats later, it's finally acceptably painted and waiting for the application of the trim (which is made of cardboard, fml) and a coat of poly to seal it (I'm a bit worried about splinters).  Pics when I've got it looking decent.

An update on the loft: I got the doors done.  They're stained a lovely shade called "Jacobean"  and I put brass fittings on them: handles on the French doors, doorknobs and a kick-plate on the entry door.  I also stained all the interior window trim (same color), and painted the exterior trim.  It has also benefited from the laziest wiring job in recorded history... but when you're a noob, you need to keep things as uncomplicated as you can.

Know what this thing has?

Openings.  Lots and lots of openings.  It has openings for a door, a small window, two large windows, one very large window and two skylights.  Plus I, in my infinite wisdom, decided to add a powder room to the mix, so there's an additional door.

Oh, on an intellectual level, I knew that there were a lot of openings.  But it's one thing to know about them and quite another thing to work on them; I have spent the last two days painting and staining doors and door/window trim.  And remember, each door/window/skylight has both interior and exterior trim, so I've been having a great time.  No, wait... what's the opposite of a great time? Yeah, that.  That's what I've been having.

The doors are French doors, which means it has mullions.  These, thank heavens, are removable, so all I had to do was cover the plexiglass inserts with masking tape.  Yay!  Then, I will frost the glass on the powder room doors (I thought double French doors would look cooler, even though the powder room isn't going to be much wider than they are) and I'm done!

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but I didn't think I needed to illustrate the application of Minwax. ;)

Oh, and I also did some wiring.  More about that, later.

And onto the next thing...

I bought the MiniTown Loft Kit from Hobby Builders Supply.


I've uploaded the stock picture instead of an image of my own because I've put the thing together and yes, it does look exactly like this.

I'm envisioning this as a 2-person office space, maybe for a start-up web publisher or something, and I want an urban/industrial vibe to it. The floor on the main level will be concrete, the floor of the loft will be wooden. The back wall will be brick; I will paint the other walls but I haven't decided on a color yet. There will be a small powder room in the rear right corner of the main level, and a kitchenette in the loft. The rest will be office space.

I also bought the component kit because I don't feel like cutting plexiglass and trim for all the windows and skylights. I think the staircase (which also came with the component kit) will take up too much space, so I will bash it into some kind of switchback arrangement.

Stay tuned...

All Done!

Because I am a lazy sloth and of course waited until the last minute to finish up, I don't have as many pics as I wanted to have because I spent that time… you know, finishing up. :)

Anyhoo…

Now that I had the whole thing taped up, glued together and patched with tape and/or oaktag, it was time to do the fun stuff. Like putting "stucco" on the outer walls, using DecoArt Texture Terra Cotta (color is Santa Fe), applied with a small palette knife. I overlapped the exposed brick a bit.

Doesn't that look nice? Yeah, I don't like it, either. I'm going to have to do something about that.

Much better! I made a solution of brown acrylic paint and water (4:1) and sponged it on. I then immediately rolled a wet, wadded-up paper towel over the surface, unevenly removing the wash. And although I didn't get a pic of it, I added an antiqued bronzed brooch finding above the window.

So now that that's done, let's work on the interior.

While working on the bakery project, I discovered that the best source for wallpaper is the scrapbook aisle at the local craft store. Last time, I used regular scrapbook paper and had to apply it to white cardstock to keep it from wrinkling. I then glued the cardstock up with liquid glue. But if you're lucky enough to find an appropriately printed cardstock, you can skip the intermediate step and ModPodge that sucker directly to the wall.

I found a really nice piece of cardstock that looks like Venetian plaster that has seen better days. Perfect! I used dark green paint on the casement window, then added some of the leftover brown wash (I let it dry instead of wiping it back off). I then put on a coat of "weathered wood" texture medium and when that dried, I added a thin coat of green again. This gave the paint a slightly shabby look that didn't photograph as well as it looks. The window handles are from Houseworks (Houseworks is great; just don't buy their clapboard siding). I sealed the taped-up edges with Sno-Tex.

And now, the finished product… all furnished up!

On the walls, left to right: a miniature painted plate given to me as a gift, two jewelry findings connected by a twisted length of red embroidery thread, two enameled charms with the hanging loops clipped off.

In the window: a clay geranium purchased from Hobby Builders Supply.

On the floor, left to right: a terra cotta planter from HBS (filled with pieces of a floral pic purchased from a craft store), a basket and some grapes, both from HBS (I made the grape leaves from punched floral tape and fine-gauge floral wire), and a pair of pruning shears, also from HBS.

Furniture: balloon-back chair from HBS, handcrafted table (made from a mahogany wooden disk, a resized-and-printed image of a mosaic tabletop and bent-wire legs covered in DecoArt Texture Fierro).

On the table: battery-operated brass lamp, reading glasses, wine bottle and wineglass (all from HBS), and a miniature newspaper purchased at a craft store.

Building the walls

Now that we've got the floor squared away, it's time to put the walls together.

The walls were pre-cut from foamcore, but they still weren't quite ready for assembly. For one thing, they were flat. In order to make them fit on the base, they needed to be bent. Foamcore doesn't really like to bend, so it needs a little help.


The answer is to v-e-r-y carefully score it with a sharp craft knife, resulting in a sort of hinge (miraculously, I managed not to cut all the way through the foamcore but if you do, there's no need to panic; you can always tape the pieces back together). I also cut window openings into both walls.

Once I scored the pieces, it was time to put them together. The larger wall went in back, and the "wings" bent forward so that the entire construct fits neatly on the base. There is a largish gap between the front and back walls, but only in the center; the side pieces fit together snugly. I taped the side pieces securely together with masking tape. You can't see it, but I stuffed a couple of pieces of styrofoam into the center section for stability's sake. And I dry-fit the adorable casement window (from Houseworks) for about the 50th time, just because.


The kit also came with a few patches of "brick", also made from spackle, that were intended to give the walls that "lived-in-but-not-necessarily-well-maintained" look. I'm planning to stucco the exterior wall and I want it to look like the stucco came off in a couple of places, exposing the brick. In order to do that, I could glue the patches of brick onto the walls and then cover them with a thick layer of stucco OR...

I could do what I did, which was trace around the patches of brick and using that sharp craft knife once again, cut around the outlines and peel away the paper. Then I carefully gouged out the foam to about half the depth of the wall and glued the bricks into the resulting holes. Voila!


Notice that I taped over the corners of the outside wall, where the "hinge" left gaps.

I gave the bricks the same treatment I gave the floor: I painted them (brick red, what else?), further tinted a few of the bricks with pastel chalk, and then slapped a coat of varnish on top. Once everything was nice and dry, I grouted it... but this time, I wasn't so careful cleaning up. This resulted in a pleasantly shabby-looking effect.

The last thing I needed to do was cover up the gaps between the center sections of the interior and exterior walls. I used oak tag (also known as "the stuff they make manila folders out of") to cover the top and to line the window openings. In order to make the oak tag bend cleanly, I had to score it. I know my limitations, so my handy-dandy sharp craft knife remained securely in its case because there was NO WAY that I wouldn't cut all the way through (oak tag may be thick, sturdy paper, but it's still just paper). Instead, I lightly went over it with my paper cutter, being careful not to exert any pressure. This gave it the light scoring I needed to give it a nice, sharp-edged bend. I also cut notches into the top so that the stiff oak tag would curve neatly over the tops of the walls.

And here's the finished product, complete with somewhat grungy-looking brickwork.


Next time, we'll finish up the walls.

Hi! Long time, no post.

Well, things have been crazy busy for quite some time, but I'm finally back in the swing of things... just in time for the upcoming show!

This year, I've got something a little different: a vignette. This is a very simple structure consisting of a pair of foam core (aka paper-backed foam board) walls and a round, "flagstone" floor cast from, of all things, spackle. Sounds like fun, yes?

Let's start with the floor. I would love to tell you how to cast one but, unfortunately, I'm not the one who did it. I can tell you that spackle-cast pieces are flat and flexible; mine came glued to a circle of foil-faced insulation. Obviously, the pallid color of the spackle wasn't going to cut it, so I painted it a nice, flat slate gray.



Nice enough, but not very interesting.

There are ways that you can spice it up, though. The instructions say to use acrylic paint to dry-brush some other colors onto it. I, however, am a cheapskate so I just used some pastel chalk that I already had lying around. I rubbed the chalk over the surface of the stones and then used a stencil brush (though any stiff-bristled brush will do) to blend the color in. I then gave the whole thing a good coat of varnish and let it sit for a few hours.

After it was nice and dry, I added some plain old sand-based mosaic grout, waited 15 minutes and wiped off the excess with a damp paper towel. Then I let it cure overnight before giving it a more thorough wiping with another damp paper towel. I want this vignette to look a little dilapidated and the pristine look of the dove-gray grout didn't really work, so I made a 1:1 mix of black acrylic paint and water to serve as a wet wash. It dirtied the grout up nicely.

So here's the finished floor. The colors are actually more subtle than the photo depicts:



Next up: the walls.

Complete Bakery

I realized that I never uploaded a picture of the finished project. Here it is:

Bread and bagels

And with this, I am officially done with Fimo food... for now, anyway. :)

I have to admit, though, that bread is one of the easiest and most relaxing things you can make; all you need is clay, aluminum foil, pastel chalks and brushes. Once they're baked, you can garnish them with powder (the round rustic loaves and the regular rectangular ones) or colored sand (the Italian loaves and some of the bagels).

I've been learning to bake!

I have been very busy lately learning how to make baked goods from Fimo. Here are my sweets:

Everything is made from Fimo, Fimo Decorating Gel, Translucent Liquid Sculpey, oil paint and/or sand. They are highlighted/decorated with colored sand, soft pastels and talcum powder.

Later this week, there will be bread and rolls… and I can guarantee the update because the roombox has to be finished by Saturday. :)

Long time no post

Sorry for the lags between updates, but real life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of my minis. Stupid real life.

Anyway… I thought it would be really cool to put baked goods on that pretty gold-wire étagère but decided that it would be a good place to put gift items instead:

Top shelf - a Chrysnbon kettle and tea cups painted with enamel.

Half-shelves - seed bead bracelets. The boxes are made from vinyl scrapbook paper and white craft foam. Ever tried to fold and glue a piece of vinyl into something that roughly resembles a ½-inch by ¾-inch gift box? Don't; it is not fun. Stick with cardstock, which holds its shape better.

Fourth shelf - four "jars" made of glass millefiori beads, silver jewelry findings and Swarovski crystals.

Bottom shelf - at the back are two picture frames (difficult to see in this shot) that are simply pewter bracelet charms with the hanging loops clipped off. In the front are two turquoise jars made of beads and pewter jewelry findings.

Floor - Dolphin sculpture composed of a painted wood disk, a "wave" made of marbled white translucent and blue translucent Fimo, and an iridescent dolphin-shaped charm (loop clipped off).

Next project: I'm going to turn the white unit (against the left wall) into a bakery case for breads and rolls. I've got all the pieces (at least I think I do)… now, I just have to figure out how it all goes together.

Wall Art!

As pretty as the scrapbook wallpaper is, I couldn't let the walls be bare. So I spent some time putting together some things to hang up there.

• On the upper left are a pair of shadow boxes put together from strip wood and moulding, including leftover pieces of the double chair rail. Although you can't really see it well, the back walls of the boxes are covered in a scrapbook paper that coordinates with the wallcovering (it's more purple). Those are real seashells glued into the boxes. Tiny, tiny little seashells. Aren't they cute?

• The posters on the upper right are three clip-art photos of baked goods that I cropped and resized. The photos are printed on bond paper, which was glued to poster paper, which in turn was pasted onto basswood. The frames are made of bits of trim and the "glass" is an adhesive laminating sheet.

• On the lower left is a photograph of the inside of an abalone shell taken by Jeff Miller for the University of Wisconsin. As I did with the baked goods photos I cropped, resized and framed the image.

• On the lower right is a little blackboard ornament that I wrote the day's specials on with a white charcoal pencil. If you look carefully, you can still see a remnant of the hanging loop; I wasn't able to get all of it off. It's not too noticeable, though, is it?

And here they all are in situ. I used glue dots for placement, but I'll need to go back later and permanently affix them to the walls. Now that I look at it, I think the chalkboard needs to be hung a bit higher.

Ready to Roll (pun unintended, honest)

So all the fixtures and basic decor are in place and the bakery is ready to be decorated, accessorized and filled with whatever FIMO delectables this novice can manage to turn out.

I worked on the outside first, by putting up wooden siding (note: avoid buying siding from Handley House; the wood is poor quality and one of the segments was a different scale than the rest). I bought a lovely "French Blue" Glidden paint sample from Home Depot; it cost only $3 and contained enough paint for two coats. The window and door are by Houseworks. While the door is flush on the inside, there's some dead space under the threshold on the outside; I'll have to fashion a doorstep, which shouldn't be too difficult. Also, I'm not very fond of that wide expanse of wall next to the window, so at some point I'm going to fashion a large sign to hang there.

That was actually easy compared to the inside. Because I am capable of learning from my mistakes, I bought pre-made flooring this time around. I found the perfect wallcovering and border in the scrapbook paper aisle of JoAnn's. Scrapbook paper is similar in weight to copy paper and has an unfortunate tendency to wrinkle, so I had to use a glue stick to adhere it to some poster paper before affixing it to the walls. It turned out surprisingly well.

There's a lot of trim involved in this room! Baseboard, crown molding and double chair rail molding. There's no interior door trim in this pic, but the window has no fewer than 12 pieces: in addition to the 4 surrounding the outside of the window, there are 4 surrounding the inside. Plus, the window is not as deep as the door and the edges of the plywood showed. Therefore, there are 4 more pieces of trim covering the raw edges, one of which I fashioned into a windowsill.

And now that all that's taken care of, it's time to put in the furniture:

Note that the door trim has been installed. :)

The display units are purchased. Behind the counter are two things I made myself: on the right is the counter extension that goes from the the display case to the window, and on the left is a "swinging" door (which has glued-on hinges but doesn't actually work) to close off the employee area from the rest of the shop. The countertop is a molded styrene tile sheet that I painted with cerulean blue enamel, drawing in the grout with a white Sharpie. The countertop is not yet attached because I need to be able to remove the display case in order to fill it.

Next up: accessories and decor!

The Preliminaries

Now that I've gotten the box put together and test fit the furnishings, it's time to get started for real.

I'll be using scrapbooking paper to cover the walls, so I don't know how much the dark (and, more importantly, differently-colored) plywood walls might show through. Therefore, I've slapped a coat of white paint on all the walls.

As you can see, the paint didn't take to the plywood evenly, although it did do a bit better than I expected (yay, Ceramcoat!). I'll need to put at least one more coat on it before I start papering. I made a bit of a mess on the floor but that's fine, since I have separate flooring to install. I like the color of the plywood; the stain I'm going to use on the floor should make it about that color.

I've also been busy painting the window and door so that I can pop them right into place once the paper's up.

Onward and Upward

So now that the 2010 show is done and over, it's time to start thinking about next year's show.

Next year's club project is a scene inside of a wreath. I've decided to use a papier mache hatbox and a grapevine wreath, and I've actually started to do a sketch or two. That's for later, though, as I'm still in the very early planning stages and am not entirely certain how to proceed. I do know that stucco, "wrought iron" and lots of miniature plants will be involved. Gotta get rid of all that leftover dimensional paint, lol.

The other project, which is already in progress, is a room box that I'm turning into a bakery/gift shop. I need to start now because I plan to make all the food myself (yes, I shall be plumbing the depths of FIMO hell; pray for me).

Fun Part the First was putting the stupid room box together. First off, there was the hole issue. The kit came with pre-cut door and window openings, which was great! The window I'd bought didn't quite fit the opening, but a little grinding with my handy-dandy Dremel sorted things out. However, the door was a HUGE problem; the opening was only slightly too narrow for the door I had (grind, grind, grind), but it was nowhere near tall enough.

Really? REALLY? Okay, doors do come in a variety of widths, but the height is pretty much standard. This door opening was a full 1/4" too short. I love my Dremel; I'm not going to make it do that much grinding. I unpacked the jigsaw I got on sale about a month ago, but had no way to hold the piece stable enough to use it (and frankly, I'm kinda scared of that thing; I think I'm going to give it to my cousin or something). The plywood was too hard to cut with my X-Acto knives. I finally wound up using my Dremel to drill a series of pilot holes into the panel and then followed up with some elbow grease and a hacksaw.

Also, the kit contained no helpful tabs, slots and grooves and the box is too big to fit inside my 10"x10" gluing jig, so getting it glued together with corners that are somewhere in the vicinity of "square" was something of a challenge. I wound up assembling it in the master bathroom, using the counter and the backsplash for support and holding it together with about a half a roll of masking tape. Voila!

I went to my favorite mini supplier and was talking to them about the project. One of them pointed out that if I'm planning to display it, I needed to light it. She's right; there was an exhibit at the show that was unlit and it was rather difficult to see inside. But I didn't want to deal with wiring because the box's final destination will be a shelf in my office/hobby room and I don't want to go through all that trouble for nothing. I figured an LED spotlight would be a good compromise.

Well, I popped into Lowe's and found a battery-operated light bar with 3 LED elements. It attaches with either sticky tape or Velcro and is less than 1.5" deep, so I'm going to slap it up on the the underside of the box top and either fashion a bit of a drop ceiling, or just glue an extra bit of trim on the front of the box.

Next step, finding a nice wallpaper. I'm planning to put posters of baked goods on the walls, so it'll need to be something subtle. Guess I'm going to be hitting the scrapbook paper section of Joann's tomorrow.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Club Show

Yesterday was my local mini club's annual show and sale. It was a blast; we had dozens of exhibits and tons of vendors and although it took a lot of work to pull the thing off, everyone had a wonderful time and my club members told me that I did extremely well for a first-timer. My only regret is that I didn't pack a lunch; the hotel charged $9 for an okay sandwich, a bag of chips and a small soda.

Anyhoo...

Every year, the club has a designated project; this year, we had a small loft kit (the kits were made by one of our members). I decided to make mine into a cozy reading nook. I made the kit exactly as intended (other members did some kit-bashing that was nothing short of fabulous) and filled it with store-bought elements, because I was trying to keep my main focus on my other project.

My other project was a bit more ambitious; a gazebo set on a serene brick courtyard.

This was a mix of store-bought and hand-made things. The gazebo was a kit, the courtyard bricks were a molded styrene sheet that I painted and grouted, the clock is a pendant from which I snipped the hanging loop and the table inside the gazebo was a mix of purchased and crafted elements.

The courtyard wall and planters are made of Styrofoam covered with dimensional paint. The trees are trimmed and painted bottle brushes, the bushes and flowers are cut-up floral picks. The tiled panel and display vase are made from air-dry clay; the clock is actually an enameled pendant and the roses are scrapbook embellishments. The central planter is made of both Styrofoam and air-dry clay and is filled with moss. The urn is a store-bought piece that I painted antique gold.

Does the sofa look familiar?

The rug is store-bought. The canopy is a reconfigured necklace kit draped with cream-colored bridal veiling. The planters are drawer-pulls embellished with an embossed strip of FIMO and painted gold. The plants are made from fabric and floral wire, set into the planters with clay and topped with sand. The table is a mix of store-bought (the tray, the teapot, the mugs and the plates) and hand-made items (the table frame and the FIMO toasted sandwiches).

Now I'm ready to start planning for next year's show. I haven't forgotten about my Newport, but there isn't any use in starting to build it until I have my hobby area set up. So while it might be a while before I can show you any pictures of the house, I'll periodically have pics of my club projects for next year.

Ciao!

Sofa

For my next trick...

I wanted a Moroccan-inspired sofa for the gazebo. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be something that mini furniture manufacturers are scrambling over each other to make. If I wanted one, I was going to have to make it myself.

It took a couple of weeks to put together, mainly because I had NO idea what I was doing. No idea whatsoever. It was two weeks of trial and (lots of) error, blood (I really sure be more careful with those X-Acto knives), sweat, tears and swearing. The result isn't the most professional-looking thing ever, but I'm pretty proud of it anyway. Here it is:

If you're feeling masochistic and would like to try it for yourself, here is what this thing is made of:

Frame:

• 4 pre-cut basswood rectangles
• 4 pre-fab wooden turnings (for feet)
• 1 length of miniature resin molding
• brown acrylic paint
• black acrylic paint
• antiquing medium

Upholstery

• craft foam
• poly-fill
• Pier 1 napkin
• burgundy and green fabric scraps
• gold fringe trim
• sewing thread
• gold thread

Next up... a Moroccan-style tray table.