Wednesday Weather Watch

Okay - it's official - I am completely fed up with winter when it's supposed to be spring. While I am incredibly happy to be living just outside of Fredericton, New Brunswick, where the worst of any weather patterns seem to pass us by more often than not, and I am sorry for people in the other Atlantic provinces who are continuing to get pummeled, I am, nonetheless, more than ready for spring! It is, after all, officially 9 days into it. It's time it started acting it's age!

So - knowing how quickly things can change in our neck of the woods,I have decided to occupy myself by tracking the changes once a week until spring finally well and truly shows up. Here are two pictures - one taken from our patio doors out to the back deck, and the next taken out our front window up the road.

As you can see - this weather sucks!!!!!

I'll post two more pictures next Wednesday just to compare, then the next Wednesday, and so on.

Now, on the miniature front - things are looking a little better there! The sleigh bed I am making for Louise's birthday gift - yes, she knows it's coming - once her birthday had come and gone I thought I'd better show her what I was working on so she wouldn't think I had actually forgotten her special day.

The last time you saw it, I had the foot board curved around a marker to try to set the shape properly while the glue dried. It worked! Once I took the tape off and repaired the places where the tape had pulled off some bits of paper, I cut and glued on 1/4" strips as trim around the edges of the bed. That turned out quite well but I still have to apply a trim to cover the edges of the paper layers on the head board and the foot board.

The next step was to make the sleigh runners that would take the place of regular legs for the bed. I toyed with a few different ideas, including making them from wire, or having someone cut them from wood with a laser cutter. In the end, I cut Bristol board (poster board?) into 1/4" strips, glued two strips together for the thickness I wanted, then started to work with the strip before it dried too much. I drew the shapes I wanted on graph paper, using a heavy line from a black marker. Then I placed wax paper over top of this so I could still see the lines but wouldn't inadvertently glue the runner to the paper pattern if there was some glue seeping out the sides of the doubled strip. I started with the long, main part of the runner then started to fill it in with the smaller curlicues.

Here is the beginning of it:

This seemed to work fairly well so I continued on, trying to make sure I kept the space even between the bottom of the bed and the bottom of the runner. Okay - I may not have been entirely successful with that part but I think it's fairly even. Once all the curlicues were in place, I cut off the extra length on the bottom runner and left it to try for a few days.

So - tomorrow I will be flipping the pattern over to get a mirror image, and start on the second runner. Once that is done I only have to add the extra finishing trim I mentioned above, apply a few decorative elements, gesso the whole thing, paint the runners and trim with metallic paint, paint the body of the bed with a pearlized paint, amd make the bedding - 2 Euro pillows, two bed pillows, sheets, comforter..... That's all!!! Don't worry Louise - I promise you'll have it before your next birthday!!! But, if so, I'd better get back to work! TTFN! - Marilyn