Sidetracked Once Again......

OK who was in charge of pulling on the string to get me out of that room? Whomever it was didn't do the job early enough.

I love sidetracking. Look what I found! It was just the box and the floor.

It's one of those room box kits that Miniatures.com sells. I bought two of them years ago. I am sure that I had plans for both of them.....This is as far as I got. The other one is still in the box.

I wanted to make a Colonial kitchen in one. I got the floor done. I guess I got bored, as usual.

Incidentally, this is another way of doing a slate floor. It is done with pieces of textured paper that was called "leather paper" when I bought it at an art supply store here in town. That was about 15 years ago. It came in the brown that you see here, an actual slate color and terracotta. I have horded this paper. I can't find it anywhere. It's heavier than cardstock.

I cut a piece of mat board that was the shape of the floor. I painted it slate gray. I took a piece of the paper and cut a piece out of one corner. I stuck this to the mat board with white glue. I kept cutting pieces of the paper in irregular rectangles and oblongs. Each piece was glued down with a "crack" between. By doing it this way, it assured me that they were all going to fit together. Once in a while I had to trim some edges to make up for the cracks. After I got it all glued down, I used some Prismacolor pencils to shade some of the pieces. Then I ran a stylus down all of the cracks to smooth the edges of the paper and round it. I am hoping that someday someone will point me in the right direction to find more of this paper. I have looked all over the net. No luck. The store went out of business right after I bought it. Just my luck!

Inspiration comes from many places. The inspiration for this kitchen comes from a set of cookbooks that I bought around the bicentennial. The illustrations are like a history of American kitchens from the beginning. These two photos are what I am using for ideas. The kitchen will be much smaller but I want to have the same feeling.

I have gotten as far as taking measurements in the box and deciding how big I want the fireplace.

I then went to my stash of foam core and started cutting. I am ready to start putting together the fireplace wall.

I just discovered that I am out of gesso. There will be a slight pause while I untie the string on my big toe, put on my shoes and go to town to buy some.

Hopefully I can stay on this track for a couple of days and finish what I started a long time ago. I have pretty much all of the things to finish the kitchen. All I need is gesso.

I managed to get untangled from the string. See you tomorrow.