Bits and bobs.....

Okay - first off let me say how much I envy those of you who confess that you have the attention span of a gnat. Because at least you have an attention span!

Now, I know I'm supposed to be moving onto the Irish cottage - as well as finishing up the chimney pots for my Dorian Grey room box but, let me say this latest diversion really isn't my fault - it's Bruce's, my DH. Yup - that's my story - it's his fault. You see, he showed me these golf tees someone gave him. They're not ordinary golf tees and he was given 12 packages of them with 50 in each package. Even if he uses some of them - just think of how many that leaves for me to play with!!! I really like the top of the tees because, unlike your standard golf tees, these have three little "prong-like" sections that hold the golf ball. All kinds of ideas are flowing through my tiny little brain!! Can't you just see all the possibilities for these things?? I had to start playing with them. I just couldn't help myself! I know - not only do I have no attention span, I have absolutely no willpower!

So the first thing I wanted to try was a set of pillar candle holders. Cutting these little suckers straight was not the easiest thing but, keep in mind -- I have hundreds of these!!! So what if I waste a few of them while I'm trying this out? I have many tries left to get it right.

For the candle holders, I snipped them into three different lengths, then used Aileen's Super Tacky glue to attach the smallest size of my round "woodsies". Once the glue has thoroughly dried and "cured" I will paint them. I have been wanting to try making my own "chalk" paint because I really like the look of it and the store-bought stuff is really expensive. Plus, I'll be able to have a plethora of colours for many different uses if I make my own!

There are a few different recipes for home-made chalk paint but what I will be using is 1 part Plaster of Paris (dry - then mixed with an equal amount of water and mixed until smooth) to 3 parts of paint. So, if you were making a batch large enough to paint a life-size dresser, for example, and you wanted to paint two or three coats, you would use 1 cup of dry Plaster of Paris, mixed with 1 cup of water and beaten smooth. Then you would add this to 3 cups of your paint. Yes, I know that, once mixed, this mixture is now not 1 part to 3 but you get what I'm saying, I think.

What else am I thinking of for these golf tees? Well, I think I could use the largest of the round woodsies and the middle size to make a two-tiered dessert or hors d'oeuvres server. I'll be trying this out later this evening. The other thing I realized was that my crystal marbles fit perfectly into the little three-prong area of the golf tee. So, cut really short and installed on a base - crystal balls for my Wizard Emporium? How about making the overall height about two and a half to three inches and turning them into garden gazing balls? Maybe I could glue a mini cup and saucer into the indent and make tiny bird feeders for the garden? Could they be used as legs for three of four leg benches or tables? Okay - I can see I won't be getting any sleep tonight as I lay awake and try to think of uses for these things!


The other thing I've been playing with - because why would you want one distraction when you could have two?? - was a package of little wooden filigree pieces I bought a while ago. For one thing - they were pretty, for a second thing - they were cheap -and for a third thing?? - Hey - I'm a DIY miniaturist - I don't need a third thing!! It's enough just to know that it's something that I'm sure will come in handy some day!


I've been doing a lot of searching on Pinterest for French Shabby Chic inspiration, and for English Cottage style as well. With those inspirational ideas in my head, I looked at these fancy trim pieces, then I looked at the little frames I bought from Michaels and showed you in an earlier post, thought about my home-made chalk paint, and some ideas started to come together. The simplest of which was just using them to trim out the frames to make shabby chic mirrors or picture frames.

Testing the little wood pieces against the frames, I saw they would fit much better if I cut the bottom straight across for the square frame, and cut off the little end curlicues for the round frame. I glued one on with Aileen's Super Tacky and the other with a super-glue-type glue. Over time I'll be interested to see which one holds best and lasts longest. I'm going to let these two little frames alone for a couple of days before I paint them. One reason is to make sure the glue is well-cured, the other reason is that I want to finish experimenting with other little accents or pieces of furniture before I mix up my chalk paint so I can paint everything at one time.

As a final note - since I know how many brilliant miniaturists are out there - anyone have any other cool ideas for using those golf tees?? Did I mention that I have hundreds of them??? Okay - Maybe I'll actually let DH use some for golf - if he's really nice to me. So, until the next post - TTFN!!

Boxed into a corner!!!!

At least that's the way I'll probably be feeling by the time I'm finished! I decided I should probably start some tidbits while I try to make up my mind about what I'll make as "gifties" for this year's Camp Mini Ha Ha. I downloaded two different designs from A Lavender Dilly on Etsy. Now, this is a shop located in Australia so the recommended weight of paper to print these on was 200 gsm. Here, in Canada, even though our official units of measurement have been metric for decades, we're kind of schizophrenic when it comes to metric versus imperial measurements. For instance, when buying meat in the supermarket, we post the weight in kilograms, then advertise it as price per pound. When it comes to paper, we still tend to refer to the weight in pounds (per ream - 500 sheets). The biggest problem in converting the gsm (grams per sq. metre) to pound weight is that different types of paper comes in different sizes - 8 1/2 by 11 inches; 11 by 17 inches, etc. - so 500 sheets of one size paper does not compare to 500 sheets of another. Let's not even talk about how that then translates to gsm!!! Bottom line - it doesn't!! So, to make a long story short - and when have I ever tried to do that?!? - I made an executive decision and had the boxes printed on 65 pound card stock. It seems to be the perfect weight, thankfully.


My first attempt to put the boxes together, I decided, against the actual instructions, to score them on the inside, instead of the outside as recommended, before folding. As a result, the box tops did not fit over the bottoms. Once I actually followed the instructions and scored them on the outside, it worked fine. The only adjustment I had to make is that, on the two larger sizes, the ends with the tabs on them need the height to be trimmed a bit as, once all four sides are folded up, the ends are a little higher than the sides. Luckily I found this out after cutting out and gluing together only a couple of sets so was able to cut all the others out correctly.

My plan is to put together 4 sets a day so will have them all done in 9 days. Sweet!! Now if I can just think of what to do for my gifties...


Moving on, remember my Dorian Grey attic scene? When you last saw it I mentioned I was going to put chimney pots on top of the chimney I built to hide the wiring. I went online to a chimney pot manufacturer to find images of the various kinds of pots. I found this one:

They call this style "The Bishop". Now, why they don't call it "the Rook" is beyond me!! Anyway- of course that's exactly what it looks like to me so what could be easier than dragging out the old set of hand-turned and cut chess pieces I bought at Value Village last year? They're quite rustic - not a very practiced hand made these but. that's what I like about them. Measuring the length of the top of the chimney, I decided I would use 3 chimney pots. I want the middle pot to be taller than the other two so I chose two rooks and a king to use. I will cut off the top of the king, of course, then will paint them to look like natural terracotta. All in all I am quite pleased with them and will show you a picture when I have them done.

Switching directions again - anyone watch the latest video on "Creating Dollhouse Miniatures"? It's a three minute video showing a miniature dollhouse store. So cute - and very well done with all of the boxes of dollhouses, accessories, finished dollhouses, etc. Lots of inspiration here.

And, to finish today's post with more inspiration, I mentioned the two books of Brian Nickolls that I own and love. Each of them have about a half dozen plans for constructing different buildings along with detailed instructions for cutting, constructing and furnishing. The first is "Making Dolls' Houses in 1/12th Scale". I love all of the projects in this book but I think my favourite is probably the fisherman's cottage. Another one I would love to put on my list but even Santa doesn't have a list as long as mine is beginning to get!




The second Brian Nickolls book is "Making Character Dolls Houses in 1/12th Scale". Another great book with easy to follow instructions and lots of drawings and pictures - I like lots of pictures! I think it's a hold-over from my kindergarten days. Anyway, I do love the pub in this one, as well as all the other plans but, I think my favourite plan in this book may be for the cider house. He even gives plans for making the apple press and cider mill.


The last one I'll show you is a new one I just got in last week. I haven't had time to go through this one in any detail yet. Written by Julie Warrren, "Step-by-Step Dolls' House Furniture Projects in 1/12 scale" is, strangley enough, exactly what the title says it is!! Go figure!! Seriously though, it does seem to have detailed cutting, construction and finishing instructions for a couple of dozen projects which look like they should be fairly easy for even a beginner to follow. Whenever I get around to making something, or even reading through it in more detail for that matter, I should be able to give you a more informed opinion about it!


I end this post with another suggestion that everyone out there think about what inspires them most, in this mini hobby, and then share it with us. We can never have too much inspiration! TTFN!!!

Tim Hortons Is Everywhere!!!

Remember my friend Louise had a birthday last month and I gave her a couple of signs for her Via Rail railway station? Well, I knew there was a surprise birthday party planned for a few weeks later when other friends got back from vacation but I gave her the little signs on her actual birthday to "throw her off the scent", as it were. Anyway, tonight was the party her husband had arranged for her. It was a great evening and she actually never suspected - I suppose coming a month after her real birthday made it easy for it to come as a surprise!

Anyway - knowing that tonight was the party and that, in her upcoming project she also plans on including a ubiquitous Tim Hortons, I thought I would do something along that vein for today's "better late than never" birthday. I had some Fimo modelling clay I had bought years ago but never got around to using. I have never made anything with Fimo before but thought this would be a good time to give it a try. I decided to make doughnuts, bagels, cookies and TimBits for her planned project.

I started by trying to figure out what to make the trays out of. My first try was with some Penelope cloth but that looked too much like wicker baskets. Then I bought a cheap splatter screen at Dollarama and cut out the screening, thinking I could fold the edges and form rectangular trays. I found that the edges were much too ragged and sharp to either look good, or to keep fingers safe and blood-free. Then my DH suggested I try using a metal wall patch that is used when you have a large hole in your wall board that needs to be patched. We had a couple of pieces of it in the tool room so I thought it was worth a try. I peeled off the plastic mesh that is attached to these patches. It enables it to self-stick to the wall, in preparation for using crack-filler over top of it. Then I cut a strip I thought was the appropriate width, cut this into three lengths, folded up the edges and - Bob's your uncle! - They worked like a charm! Then I cut strips of a beige tissue paper to line the trays, like they do in Tim Hortons.


Then it was time to try out my Fimo and fill the trays. I started by kneading some cream-coloured Fimo, rolling it out, and cutting out 16 cookies. Then I took half of the cookies and, using the back of my craft knife blade, I made cross-hatched lines in these, to resemble peanut butter cookies. For the other 8 cookies, I used the sharp end of a toothpick to "texturize" the top of them a bit. Then I used my pastel chalks to colour the peanut butter cookies an appropriate colour. I did the same with the remaining cookies to make them look like chocolate. Then, I rolled out some more Fimo, thicker than for the cookies, and cut out some circles for bagels, making small holes in the middle - smaller holes than if they were for doughnuts. I used my chalks again to make half of the bagels look plain, and the other half the colour of multi-grain bagels. I used a fine tip black pen to dot over the multi-grain bagels to look like seeds. Then I rolled 33 tiny Fimo balls to represent TimBits. I coloured half of them for plain Timbits, and the other half for chocolate. Then I put these into a 220F oven for 30 minutes.

While these were setting up, I decided that Louise should also have some doughnuts but I didn't want to make more Fimo ones. So, I took some Cheerios cereal and made 16 doughnuts. I left half the Cheerios in their natural state and, having mixed up some pink craft paint with equal parts of Aileen's Tacky glue, I dipped the tops into the mixture to resemble pink icing. I then mixed up half and half dark brown paint with glue and completely immersed the remaining Cheerios to look like Double Chocolate doughnuts.

When the cookies, Timbits, and bagels were removed from the oven and cooled down, I used some of the chocolate "icing" to top the chocolate cookies, then rolled the chocolate TimBits in the icing so they would look "glazed". I rolled the plain ones in a watered down tacky glue so they would also look "glazed". Then I arranged them in the trays I had prepared earlier - gluing them in place, of course. Here's how they looked as I got them ready to be gifted to Louise:


Louise seemed very pleased to receive them. I hope she'll be able to use them in her Tim Hortons. One thing that surprised me, once she had opened up the gift, was that the Cheerios that I had completely immersed in the paint/glue mixture, had shrunk as they dried. They ended up smaller than the ones with the pink icing just on top. Hmmm. Now I may have to go back and make her another set using Fimo so they won't shrink after the "icing" is applied.

So - Louise opened her cards and gifts, we all enjoyed a nice meal and, just in case you don't know about the flamingo collection Louise has accumulated over the years, here's the birthday cake her DH got for her.


Thank you for inviting us, Brian. we had a great time. Happy birthday again Louise - this is the last time this year - we promise! TTFN!

All is revealed!

Yesterday I mentioned that, along with the other items I showed from my shopping trip, I also picked up some red duct tape and some bright yellow duct tape, but that I couldn't tell you what they were for. Well, now I can!

Today is my friend, Louise's, birthday. I know she is planning a project that will be a Via Rail train station interior so I thought I would try to make something she could use when the time came. I made a large sign that could go on the outside wall or, perhaps inside, and also a sign that will point travellers in the direction of the airport shuttles and the other trains. I had some mat board that was exactly the right colour for the background of the big sign and used the duct tape to make the yellow and red cut-outs for the VIA letters and the maple leaf. I also made a little birthday card with a flamingo on it. Louise collects all things flamingo, so I had to include one somewhere! Happy birthday, kiddo! I hope you've had a great day.



After returning home from dropping Louise's little gift to her, I took some time to ponder my greenhouse decorative frame again. I had already cut it out using cardstock so I took the plunge and started cutting double-sided tape to cover all of the straight edges of the frame. Once this was done I traced the curved sections onto a piece of white mat board, cut it out in one piece, and used a glue stick to attach it to the rest of the frame. Then came the task of stripping the backing from the double-sided tape and trying to carefully get the placement right. Okay - I confess - I did get DH to assist me. He made sure the alignment was correct on one side while I lined up the other. Then being fairly confident we had it centred properly, we pressed in on the middle and worked our way to the outside edges.



Now I'm going to take some time to look at it and decide if I like it this way or not before I do the same thing to the other side. If I decide I don't like it, I might take my sister's suggestion and just cut the shape out in negative form and paint over it, strip off the pieces where I didn't want paint, and just go with the painted illusion rather than the actual framework. Hmmm - I'll have to think about it. Maybe someone else has an even better suggestion? In the meantime - I'll wish you all happy "mini-ing" - until the next posting! TTFN!

And peace reigned throughout the land.......

It's my fairy tale - I can end it any way I want! Yes, our little guy went home to his Mom and Dad this morning. And yes, we were sorry to see him go. However - I am looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning and to the temperature of my kitchen to rise a couple of degrees since the fridge door won't be constantly opening and closing.

Last night our F.A.M.E. group had our monthly meeting. Only four of us were able to make it but we really enjoy getting together anyway. We all work on our own thing usually but last night I also brought along some kits to make miniature brooms for anyone interested. The tutorial is one from Casey's Minis site. I printed out Casey's instructions, (making sure it was clear where they had come from), and bagged up the materials needed along with the instructions. Here are the kits I put together and, in the second picture, Louise and Mary Lou are concentrating on putting them together. Okay - Mary Lou is. Louise is talking. Go figure. (insert smiley-face here, ha ha)
See the brown paper bags in the centre of the table? They are holding our "tidbits". We keep them secret until the end of the evening, then draw names and each person chooses an anonymous bag to take home (after opening it in front of us, of course!). We'll talk about that again in a moment....Back to the broom-making:

Two of us used the wire wrapping as shown on Casey's site and two decided to use leftover threads from the Penelope cloth to wrap the upper part of the broom head to make them look more "rustic". Here are the finished brooms:

After completing the brooms we all went back to working on items we brought with us until it was time to draw for the tidbits. In response to my last post where I had a "spoiler alert" because I was showing what I was making for this month's tidbit, Alayne asked how our exchange works. Basically, mimicking the tidbit exchange from Camp Mini Ha Ha, each month anyone attending our meeting will bring one small item that, if it were on the retail market, would have a value of around 3 to 5 dollars. Hand-made items are always highly coveted but, given the range of experience and skill sets, ready-made items are also welcomed. It's just a way of encouraging people to find the time to do a little bit of mini-ing each month - no matter how crazy their life has gotten! Plus - we really look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. I showed you what I was making - a basket with a set of towels and bottles in it. Since that photo, I continued with the basket by dry-brushing "straw" coloured paint over the whole thing to tone down the dark brown a bit, then I sprayed it with a matt-finish spray to seal the paint. After that was dry I arranged the towels and bottles, bagged it, and it was ready to go. Marijke ended up with my tidbit. I got a great set of fabric bolts from Louise - absolutely perfect for the quilting shop I will be working on this year.
One last note about the basket set I made - If I were to do the same thing again I would make the towels first, decide how I wanted to set them in the basket, then adjust the basket size accordingly. Well, live and learn!

We also took some time to finalize plans for the Miniature and Doll Show and Sale we will be hosting in Fredericton on October 22nd, 2016. The information and the application forms have been drafted and will be sent out to targeted people and groups that we think might be interested. If anyone reading this would like to be included in the mail out, please let me know and we'll make sure to get it to you.

Along with the show and sale we are planning on doing two free workshops - one for adults and one for children. Numbers will be limited - especially for the children's workshop. I received a package from Maureen H. of St. Albert's Minis. She sent me a number of templates for making chairs out of folded paper (and fabric if you wish to glue it to the paper). These will be perfect for an item in the children's workshop. Thank you so much Maureen. I brought them to our meeting last night and everyone was thrilled with them. Personally, I'm also thrilled with the lite brite pegs you sent me for making bottles out of. I can hardly wait to give them a try!

As I mentioned in the last posting - this next week is "Irish Week" for us, leading up to St. Patrick's Day, and we will be very tied up with events we are involved in so postings may be a little sporadic. I will do my best to check in as often as I can. Until the next time - TTFN!!!

Two down, one to go...

..and, as much as we love him and know it'll be so quiet when we take him home on Wednesday, there is something else we realize too....it'll be so quiet when we take him home on Wednesday!! Wow - we do forget how much energy they expend, don't we? Not to mention that we've been getting scary previews of what Brogan, the teenager, will look like just by watching Brogan, the 5-year -old. It seems that every 10 minutes or so we find him with his butt sticking out of the refrigerator!! I have no idea how our daughter and son-in-law are going to afford to feed him in another ten years! Oh well, that's why it's nice to be the grandparents - we do get to send him home.

I did get a little done, in between long Jedi battles where everyone seemed to be the bad guys and the good guys at the same time. It really was hard to tell the players without a scorecard! We had a busy day of game-playing, walking to the play park, going to McDonalds so he could play in the play room, coming home to play some more, then, finally, bath and bed. Ahh - quiet time....until early tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow evening is the monthly meeting of our mini-group, F.A.M.E. (the Fredericton Area Miniature Enthusiasts) and we have adopted a feature of our Camp Mini Ha Ha experiences: each meeting we bring a "tidbit" for exchange at the end of the evening. Spoiler alert to any F.A.M.E. members - you are about to see what my tidbit for this month is!

I wanted to try out one of the basket tutorials from Kris Compass's site and also, I really like the towel tutorial I found on Elizabeth's site as well. So, I made up the basket last night. I didn't use the handle from the tutorial because I wanted the basket wide open the fit the towels in. Instead, I used two staples. I couldn't get the staples in at first so I took a sewing needle and made little holes first, then I dipped the ends of the staples in a little glue and pushed them into the mat board ends of the basket. Then I used three strands of brown floss to wraparound the staples to look more like wicker or rattan. Finally, I painted the basket with Brown Iron Oxide acrylic paint, including the handles. Tomorrow I'll check the paint for needed touch-ups then spray it with a sealer.

Today I also took a few minutes to do up a couple of towels and a few bottles to add to the basket. Elizabeth uses baby facecloths she buys at a dollar store to make her towels since the cloth is quite thin, but still looks fluffy enough to look like towelling. Unfortunately, I can't find those packages of baby facecloths anymore. All the ones at the Dollar Store here are brightly coloured, if they're a solid colour, and have large baby-inspired patterns on the others. So, I bought a terry-cloth baby sleeper. I would never actually wear it on a baby since the fabric is so thin, but it seems to be a good weight for the towels. Plus, it also provides a lot of material to make a lot of towels! I've shown you the pieces here. Tomorrow I'll finish it off and put it all together. Then I will post a picture of the final product. It's a little more than I would normally do for a tidbit but the members of our little club are worth it!

Also, over the last couple of days, I glued together the 3/4" MDF I am using for the floor of the greenhouse. Then, trying to use what I had on hand so I didn't have to drive to the store, I used bathroom caulking to affix my stone and glass tiles on the subfloor and, after several hours, I "grouted" by using drywall compound I found in DH's workroom. The picture I've included here shows part of the tile washed off after the grouting dried. I still have to wipe down the rest of it. Unfortunately, once this dried, there are "holes" at every corner of every tile where the drywall compound dried and shrank (shrunk? - whatever!). If I try to fix this by grouting the whole thing again it'll take forever to clean off all the tiles. Therefore, I think I'm going to use a glue syringe filled with the compound and just "inject" it into the corners where it's needed. Much less mess and clean up - I think....

Once this is done I will start fitting in decorative frameworks around the perimeter of the green house, overhead beams that will allow me to hang lots of plants in addition to the plant tables that will also be full, a "misting system" to provide much-needed moisture in the greenhouse, bits and bobs - you get the picture. Then I will move on to the potting shed that will be attached to one end of the greenhouse, and finish off by landscaping around the whole thing.

March is a very busy time for us since we are so heavily involved with the local Irish Association but I will still try to find time to do some minis. It's hard to go cold-turkey when you're really addicted. Have a good evening everyone. TTFN!!