Inspiration, Crooked Walls, and Kit Chaos

A few weeks ago, I commissioned several tiny copper baking molds from my jeweler friend, Tony. In addition to making awesome stitch markers, he uses a copper-smithing technique called chase and repousse to shape copper sheets into fun designs. I'd watched him make a few things and asked how small he could work. Happily, he'd been quietly interested in miniatures for a while. You can see where this could get both of us into all kinds of fun trouble!

Originally I wanted 6 little copper molds in different shapes. If these were life-sized they'd be called mini molds and be the right size for the individual cakes that have become en vogue in the last few years. Small also means i get more variety. We weren't sure what shapes would work and which would fail utterly. So Tony sketched up several. Most of them worked! The apple did become an acorn, but I'm cool with that.

I'm really happy with these pans. They're his first attempts at working so small with that technique. We both figured out changes he can make for more improvement in the future. But I love them! :-)  Oh and check out the copper scimitar that he made too! I may have to create a doll to wield it.

In the original batch of molds, Tony tried out a tiny pan. It's small and would either work in a 1:24 scale scene or be the size of my real-life, smallest skillet scaled down to 1:12. He asked if I wanted him to try larger pans and bowls. Of course I said yes! He even made the absolute best miniature colander I've seen that is affordable by mere mortals such as myself!

All of these kitchen minis reminded me that I had a roombox that I'd planned on dividing into a kitchen and dining room. I'd inherited it from a friend in mini club and it needed some overhauling.

I removed the cat, wallpaper, and trims. There was a debacle with the original wall section I'd cut out. It got lost. I found the leftover wood from cutting the first wall and decided I could use it. Of course I found the original wall section the day I was trimming up the second piece to fit. I decided to keep going with the new section. The old section needed more work done to it.

And then I installed the wall in the middle of the box. That was Tuesday. Today as I was prepping to take pictures and then wallpaper, I discovered the wall was crooked! So when I'm done here, I get to remove staples and make adjustments.

Incidentally, this is the wallpaper for the kitchen. I ordered it a while back for the Big Dollhouse that has once again had it's interior plan altered. I've ordered coordinated paper for the dining room and hopefully it will arrive next week sometime.

And now the the "chaos" I mentioned. This is a pile of kits from Shenandoah Designs. As you can see, some of the kits were already in various states of assembly. Some of them are actually missing parts, which is aggravating. But for a pile of kits that I was gifted, I'm not going to complain too loudly. 

FuuzyHusband has recently taken up 3D modeling objects to either be lasercut or 3D printed. He's designed a modern sink basin that will fit the standard base cabinet kit in this pile so I can kitbash a nice looking sink for my scene. It also fixes the issue of some of the missing parts. Some. Not all. The refrigerator is the other partially assembled unit that is missing pieces. I will have to make a few replacement parts. 

I've already pulled quite a few things from my stash for the dining room. Lots of food items as well. I'll show them off next weekend, if I remember. For now I'm going to go pry out some staples and hopefully get the kitchen wallpapered before it gets too dark.

See you next weekend!