Snow? Really?

That was yesterday. We had about 7-9 inches in places. Worst storm of the season... after the season was technically over. Gotta love the midwest!

I did get some work done on the memorial room. It needs some wall art and a chocolate Labrador puppy. It also needs me to redo the wallpaper as it didn't stick well the first time. Hopefully I won't have to use a different paper. I really like this one.

Thanks to the snowstorm, we didn't get to go to the alpaca show yesterday. And since the wind was coming from an odd direction, I couldn't spray sealer onto any wallpaper. So my backup plans for fun were out the window.

But today it's gorgeous, if a bit chilly, and we made it to the show!

And I found a new friend!

That's all for today.I need to get back to cleaning. FuzzyHusband was sick all last week, so not much got done. He was so sick that he actually stayed home for a bit. Poor guy. Now we're playing catch up... and by "we" I mean "me" because he still can't catch his breath.

See you next weekend!

Printed Mini Books

Last week was really busy. Ellie had to be put on a course of oral steroids to combat the current outbreak of "rodent ulcers," aka eosinophilic granulomas on her mouth and left hind leg. She's not thrilled about being pilled twice a day, but I'm just happy the medicine is helping. She's still on the smaller side size-wise. Not even 5.5 pounds, so her doses are small too.

I was also fighting my way back into my miniature studio space. I managed to get lots of things properly put away and a couple of boxes that "belonged downstairs" sorted through and dealt with properly. Only a few more of those to go, which is nice. I"m refusing to ignore them during this round of studio reclamation.

One of the unexpected and time eating things I had to deal with over the previous weekend was the aftermath of Artie knocking my possessions off shelves. Several cherished stuffed toys from my childhood ended up on the floor... where Ellie peed on them. Repeatedly. Lots of soaks with enzyme cleaner and rinses in cold water later and I managed to save them all. I was less than pleased though. With Artie around, merely keeping things where they belong (not on the floor) is difficult on a good day.

The naughty duo!

Oh and did I mention that I irritated my left knee, probably whilst dodging around things trying to get into the studio area. I'd built a wall of tubs to keep a certain dog out of there un-supervised because at one point she was having issues with housebreaking. Apparently my wall was trying to keep me out too! So I'm moving slow as I get things done.

Anyways. On to the fun things!

Miniature club members, myself included, went back to our late friend's home to go through even more of her mini supplies. I came away with a tidy haul of "printies" (printable miniatures) and found several pages with items I wanted to use in my memory scene.

A Mother Goose book that came out of a NAME Miniature Gazette and a sketch pad, with some drawings, from a Dollhouse Miniatures magazine.

This one I had a bit of fun with. It's a coloring book from a printie page in Dollhouse Miniatures. I decided it should have some color added to a few pages. Good thing I didn't need to worry about staying in the lines!

I still need to make the inserts for the walls in the room and glue the carpet in place. Also there's a duffel bag kit that I plan on putting together. Then I'll find (or make) a pet of some sort that will be lounging amongst the disturbed bedding on the sofa bed. Probably right around the squished up
pillows.

I need to get back to work on regular laundry and clearing accumulated stuff from the desks in the studio. Hopefully I'll have this room finished next week. See you then!

Teaser

I'm up to my elbows in real plumbing for the last few days. There's still some painting to finish on the charity auction dollhouse, which hopefully will be done tonight or tomorrow. Until then, here's the "before" and "after" pictures of the bed that was donated by another member of miniature club.

Before:

After:

I need to get back to work. See you next weekend!

Wallpaper and Cabinetry

Firstly, I did manage to get the wall straightened. It took the better part of an hour to remove 7 staples and get the orientation fixed. Many words not fit for polite company were said. I'm glad I didn't stream that!

The wallpaper went on pretty easily. It was fiddly getting the border sections to line up, but not heart-wrenchingly so. The left hand corner lined up better than the right hand corner. 

The strategic placement of a hanging plant will help hide the misaligned border in the corner and I will happily move along.

I need to order some 7/16" crown molding to hide the exposed wood around the top. I should have plenty of baseboard, but I need to check my supply.

I did start in on the pile of kits this week. Currently this is as far as I've gotten.

I need to sand everything before I get further along with some of the larger pieces. Also the dishwasher front needs to be painted before it's glued down. I'm kit-bashing one of the 3" base cabinet kits to create a more modern sink. FuzzyHusband has designed a sink in a 3D modeling program that we can print out and it will fit the kit dimensions. The sink will set between the cabinet with 4 drawer and the dishwasher.

To have the layout I want, I need three 2 inch upper cabinets and two 2 inch base cabinets, I'm on the look out for more of these kits, or something like them. 

The dining room side is on hold until the coordinating wallpaper arrives. I do have most of the furniture for the room already: table, four chairs, and a side board. I'm hoping to find a China cabinet that will match the existing furniture's finish.

So that's all for this week. Hopefully I'll find some additional kits and the other wallpaper will get here soon. Otherwise I'll have to get as much done with this project as I can and then switch to a different one for a bit.

I hope everyone has a great week! See you next time!

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!

Lists

I needed to take some time this week for self-care, so I don't have any project pictures to show off.

What I ended up doing creatively was figuring out the dolls that I will need for my Haunted San Franciscan house. It's a house party, so lots of them.

This is the list so far:

- Headless Horseman (1)
- Werewolves (2 adults, one pup)
- Mummies (1 adult, 1 kid)
- Frankensteins (1 adult, 1 kid)
- Invisible Man... don't know how this one will turn out, but I'm going to try it
- Vampires (2 adults, 1 kid)
- Witches/Warlocks (3)
- Ghosts (1 adult, 1 child) [I already have one ghost, made by Jodi Creager]
- Phantom of the Opera
- some type of creature to be the nanny in the room with the kids


Then I played around with figuring out some other dolls that I know I want/need for other projects.

- Esmeralda, the witch that Hibiscus helps out
- the man who breeds ball pythons, for my ball python breeding set up
- a couple of anthropomorphic characters to practice those types of figures

None of these dolls are on a specific timeline. I'll likely make one here and there. Heck, the San Franciscan house isn't even built yet! Neither is Ezzie's house. Which brings me to the next list...

Projects that are waiting for me to have access to a laser cutter: (Note: the MakerSpace is in the process of getting the laser cutter operational. So: soooooon!)

- 1930's nursery scene: windows
- Patchwork Peach Quilt Shop: shelving
- Bertie's (the "naughty" doll I inherited) box: plexi-glass shelves
- New windows and doors for the San Franciscian
there were two more ideas for other projects, but I couldn't (and still can't) remember them

Projects that require me to repair something that didn't work right, or Artan broke, so I can finish them:

- FuzzyHubby's hunting cabin: front wall of cabin is warped
- second Attic Lamp needs re-wiring
- Trading post needs the bed repaired and a smaller mattress made
- completely repair my Independence Day room and cut thin plexi-glass for the front... thanks Artan

I'm not even going to list the projects in various states of progress right now. It would be disheartening.

But these lists will hopefully give me a bit of focus.

What I want to work on in the next few weeks:

- getting some work done in my dining room/kitchen box
- dressing Hibiscus
- a couple ball pythons

Wish me luck and I'll see you next weekend!

Technical Difficulties

We've been having issues all week with the internet. It was assumed the reason I couldn't stay connected to Twitch for live streaming was due to the big E3 conference last week. Mnay other streamer friends were having similar issues. However, E3's apparent bandwidth requirements weren't the only culprit. The modem is dying.

As I type this, I don't know if I'll be able to hit "Publish" and actually get a positive result. I'm keeping this short and sweet for that reason.

Since I couldn't stream, I sat with my foot up and sewed tiny plush elephants. They'd been cut out years ago and some of them were mostly (and poorly) done. I say poorly as I was under tremendous stress when I first started these pint-sized pachyderms and it shows in my stitching.

The three on the left are the originals. The four on the right in various states of assembled are the ones I started playing with on Tuesday. They all have eyes, ears, and tusks now but for the sake of expediency, I'm not taking a newer photo.

I did make two pairs of fat quarter bundle earrings on Monday before the stream crashed 6 times. However I don't have a picture of them. They will have to wait until next week.

I'm cutting posting this close enough as it is. FH and I will be replacing the modem after the sun comes up and hopefully we won't have more connection issues. I really missed streaming this past week. It just wasn't the same.

So see you all next week! Until then, take care!