Probably my last plants

I was looking through my stash of things to see if I had a pot for my proposed Swiss cheese plant and discovered a white rose kit which was a lovely surprise.  This led to continuing the stock check to see if I had enough vases or pots or whatever for my proposed three plants; inexorably this led to me treating myself to these.

I wanted to share this purchase in case you are looking for perfect scale, hand blown, paper-thin glass at a price you can afford.  The vendor is just the very best.  Glasscraft
Nothing here costs more than £7 ($8.80) and the cute tadpole in a jam jar at the front was all of £3.50 ($4.40)

The bon-bon dish is 'silver' with two gilded cranberry glass dishes

The perfume bottle has a removable long-stemmed perfume stopper and is incredibly dainty

apologies I put the stopper back in wonky.

With enough vases now but still no answer to the Swiss cheese plant container I decided to press on.

Ladies Mile Miniatures

as usual I added veins

wires glued to the back

I made a cardboard pot; later it was painted silver grey.  In these pictures it is at its inception with the surplus cardboard on its bottom waiting to be cut off, trim added and then painted.

When the leaves were all cut to different lengths but not yet finished, they were shoved into their proposed embryonic container and placed in the room to see if they were going to work.

chair at the front with plant at the back??

the reverse version??

The grey pot was soon discarded as it was too clunky and I found this over-size vase/pot in my things and used this.  The leaves were bent into shape and glazed with Americana triple thick brush on gloss and glaze - any pva glue will do the job.

The first decision for the final room was this

After eating a pizza and wondering what to do with the lovely little 'table' in the box the next iteration became this.

now centre front and small rocking chair added into the left hand corner

 It sits very well on its pizza box spacer, smack bang in the dormer window grabbing all the light it can.

So, on to the roses.  I have shown you a picture of the real plant first, so you can see how careful Theresa Stringer is in making her plants realistic.

Rosa x alba 'Alba Semiplena'

White rose of York

the real one

great kit as always Ladies Mile Miniatures

top

side

back

ten and and one extra

Looks best in front of the mirror .......

............. but I wanted them on this side of the hall where there was going to be a painting but I think they will be too 'busy in front of that.  I have a fetish for symmetry.

This little tweak will cost me a good amount of money as I now have to buy another Jim Coates Trumeau mirror for the other side of the hall for perfect symmetry.  The postage will cost me as much as the mirror.

My second flower was a rose.

Pink Standard Rose 'Maiden's Blush

the real one

Ladies Mile Miniatures

in process

top

side

 I loved making the buds.  The pieces for these buds/centre of the rose are cut on a sort of angle - like a child's windmill so they 'want' to overlap each other.  If you just gently roll them between your fingers they fold over each other beautifully.

A word about stamens - all flower makes start with adding a small blob of glue to one end of the paper covered wire to stop the petals being pushed off.  You need to decide if this is going to be visible or not and, if visible, what colour it needs to be painted.  In something like these roses they were not intended to be seen so they can be left like this.  The glue dries almost clear and takes on the colour of the green paper underneath so they are very subtle.

ta - dah

This story has a bit of a sad ending.  I bought these for the music room without really thinking about it and now realise they just don't look nice in there.  It proved difficult to find a place for some flowers in that room and, if I did, they really need to be yellow as the room is grey and gold, this pink just jars.  Hey ho, one for the sell-it box.

Back on track

I hope I am back on track and I have started to settle down to getting the mini house sorted now the big one is ticking over nicely.

Crossed fingers I can produce the old Saturday edition of the Dalton house blog each week, again.

I am still putting back rooms and looking in my storage boxes for tiny things to see what dressing I may or may not have for said rooms when they are settled.

Today (14/06/16) I got four rooms back in place.  They are all on the ground level and are the formal part of the house which is mostly used for entertaining visitors.  It has been refurbished and furnished to echo the feeling of the house's original rooms.

The sitting room - the lamps at the back need holes drilling for the wires to go through to the back and I want two paintings for the sofa walls.  the wires will go through two pretend wall sockets and I may add another on a side wall.  I have a lovely Elizabeth Causeret (I think??) green bowl on the right hand table and a clock which won't go on the mantle on the left.  It was intended for in front of the mirror but the mantel is too slim.  Georgian mantels didn't hold loads of 'trinklements' like the Victorian ones went on to do.  The walls won't need radiators as there is underfloor heating on this floor of the house to help keep the feel of the original building.

formal sitting room

The hallway - I have no idea what I will dress the hall tables with; all I have so far is a plant and a bunch of keys.  Again this is the ground floor and free of radiators but it still needs some wall sockets, an alarm, and a doorbell box.  I also need a painting for the left wall.

The dining room - I would love to find and make another House of Miniatures huntboard (like the one on the left wall) for the right wall rather than the too small demi table  - I do love symmetry.  In the loooooong meanwhile whilst waiting to find one the demi table will have to do.  I actually have far too much stuff to dress the dining room with - lots of silver and glass and china.  So, very soon, I will be getting on with that and wondering what to do with the leftovers.  Yet again two more wall sockets are needed in here.  I also need two very grand paintings for each side wall.

The music room - again I need several paintings of various sizes for this room.  There is a bust of Mozart so the paintings will be part of a celebration of the baroque - as that extended from 1600 to 1750 I should have enough to go at.  The pair of black pots are lovely.  They have lids which actually come off and the bases are paper thin and so pretty - I don't really have a good place to show them.  They may end up on a windowsill.  I need two pretty chairs one for each side wall and I will be making a chaise/bench seat for across the centre front (between the two left hand windows)  The room could seat a dozen people and for a larger gathering it can have the furniture moved around and others chairs brought in.  It is a music room which is used by the family but occasional recitals are also given here.  It doubles up as a card room too and card tables and chairs are brought in for the occasional game of bridge after dinner with friends.  One table is always left in place for the family to use.  Someone has left an unfinished solitaire game on it right now.  On a more prosaic note it needs wall sockets. (but no radiators!) 

I am having a hard time dressing the rooms as they lack suitable surfaces.  I intend to try to make windowsills when I come to work on the fourth wall so a few things can be dotted about there which will help.

Music Room - A trim too far?

It is strange the things you get up to trying to avoid watching paint dry.  I am painting the various trims to go in the music room, all twelve of them, so there is a lot of waiting time between coats drying.

So, meanwhile, I pondered how to pretty up the music room without it getting too decorative - bit of a contradiction.  I have ended up with a very plain room - just as in my real life.  On the one hand I validate it by saying this is how I would live there and that Elizabeth is my alter ego in my dream life so why not follow that path; then, on the other hand, making minis is a way to escape your real life and real self and do something else.

Back to the overly plain room.... how about a decorative ceiling.  I did lots of gandering around the web looking at Georgian/Regency/Adam ceilings and, boy, were they over the top.  Very beautiful but not what I was looking for.  So, starting with a memory of some laser work I had seen somewhere and the idea of keeping it angular (to go with the dental trim) I doodled around on some graph paper.

thoughts become concrete

How to make it (?) not sure cardboard would work, lets try coffee stirrers....

made more concrete

Here is the finished product - a bit inelegant but you get the idea.

spot the missing bit

In this room I would need two of these to define each area.  The room is a combined original room plus a space that was once divided off for a staircase.  The position of the windows make my larger room sort of offset still with a larger and smaller portion.  It works fine and rooms were often like this.  The main part of the room will divide again into two as there will be two ceiling lights, one either side of the ireplace.  I measured and fiddled the paper and stirrers up on to the ceiling along with a light and tried to imagine another to the right of it.  My plain brain screamed, " Too fussy, too fussy"

Do I like you?

How about if I  paint you white and cut you out?

Still probably too much for my plain room.

So, I wandered around the house.... no use in the dining room or sitting room unless I put one in each as the rooms are - one on the left of the hall and one on the right of the hall and it sorts of knocks them off symmetry.   That left the hall......... 

winky-wonky

It is a bit winky-wonky and either the light is off centre, or my home made 'plaster-work' leaves something to be desired as it won't quite centre itself nicely.  It has set me off wanting one (or two) proper ones though for somewhere.

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Hey Presto - ordered from Dolls House Direct.  Now the big debates begin.....

.......small set diagonally, small set square on, two pairs in music room for each light in there, one in dining room and one in sitting room, one in the hall and none in the other rooms, none at all.....  see how my poor festering brain dashes around getting no where.

First I made a template of the ceiling using a wallpaper sample

Then spent ages deciding on best place for them

I balanced the lights where they would go, took a photo and spun the photo upside down so I could get an idea of what they would look like suspended.......  OK that was eleven squid wasted - just don't like the idea any more - find it too fussy for a room I intend to keep sparse for paintings and they drown the puny lights.  (ceiling too low for grand lights)

(18/5/17)

Take a breather

I am not alone in mini world in believing that 'thinking' is a huge part of 'doing'.  I suspect I spend as more time 'off' the project thinking about it, researching for it, problem solving, shopping, seeking inspiration than I am actually hands on doing.

Now and then I gather all my thoughts and clobber together and see just how much of the house I am able to complete.  I dress each room as much as I can, using the furniture I will keep for that room and other stuff as stand-ins just to give me an idea of what's to come.

From this I can figure out what I might need to complete the room and the order of work.

So this is where I am up to:

The basement which has the Rec Room, the Hive and the Mud Room, is finished other than collecting a gazillion little bits and pieces to dress the three rooms.

The ground floor which has the Dining Room and the Vestibule and the small Sitting Room, is fully decorated and lit except for a couple of lamps and one ceiling rose.  I also have most of the furniture.

Dining Room using some stand in furniture

Sitting Room using stand in table and mirror

The upstairs which has the Music Room and the Library is where I am working now and has some furniture waiting for it, which is helping me find where to put the fire and lights etc.

Music Room - a mix of keepers and chuckers

Library with proper table and chair and some stand ins

The attic level which has the Bedroom (bathroom off there) and open plan Kitchen and Sitting Room seems a long way off right now, but I need to be working towards it in case I find things at a show that would be useful for it. 

kitchen and sitting room - paper cupboards

bedroom - paper bed and cupboards and borrowed desk

Doing this dress rehearsal has the benefit of clearing up my work area and, being a bear of tiny brain, I need a clear pathway to enable clear thinking.  I can keep my perpetual shopping list up to date and order anything practical that I am going to need to let me get on with the step after the one I am currently working on.  I hate being held up for a door knob or something silly like that.

Hope you had fun deciding which pieces are staying in which room and which things were stand-ins.

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I thought I might just do a post scrip in case it helps somebody.

While I was having my grand tidy up I dropped a plaster ceiling rose (aaarrggghh).  If you are lucky and it breaks leaving you all the pieces you can fix it and use it.

two pieces broken out

the solution

I peeled off one side of double sided sticky tape (it is very, very thin) and stuck the pieces carefully in place.  I then trimmed off the surplus tape.  The fine cracks will fill in perfectly if you want to put a coat of paint over it.  I am not even bothering to do that - they really are not visible when its on the ceiling.  When I come to stick the rose in place I will remove the other covering from the tape and the exposed double sided tape will help in the process of sticking the rose to the ceiling.

Moral of the story is don't bin something in a temper (as I nearly did) put it aside for a while and see if you can find a solution.