Grand Opening Tomorrow!

If I put that title up.......I will have to make sure that the shop is ready tomorrow. That's one way to outguess myself.

I have been working on it this morning. I semi finished the outside. I made the front sidewalk area.

I used my regular method for the front area. I like to have it so that it can be moved separately from the building. It is less cumbersome to move from place to place with that piece not attached.

First I laid a piece of newspaper under the front of the building and traced the shape that I thought I wanted. This is what I came up with. I tried not to make it stick out much more on the sides than the shape of the building itself. That way if I need to put several buildings close together it will not be a problem. I am thinking of putting a street of shops on the plant shelf in the kitchen. They will be visible but out of cat reach there.

Next I laid the pattern on dark green foam core. I cut it out and made sure that it fit around the building. I beveled the front and side edges with my exacto knife. Then I peeled off the green part from the part where I wanted the path. I wanted that area to be just a little lower than the grass.

I smeared Elmer's white glue on the path area and sprinkled it liberally with model railroad ballast. I let that dry and then put glue on the green area and spread that with railroad coarse greenery. I let that dry and fit it once again to the building.

The last thing I did was go out in the back yard and cut some rosemary and nandina branches. I will probably put one or the other on the outside of the building permanently. I use the rosemary a lot of times, stripped of it's leaves for vines on buildings. It has a kind of interesting gnarled shape as a basis for plants. I am leaning towards the nandina(heavenly bamboo).

The nandina that I cut is not quite dry enough to use yet. It still has it seed balls on it too. Sometimes, if I am careful, those will stay attached to the stems. They make interesting, kind of witchy looking plants that way. The seed balls turn dark orange and the stems turn almost black when they dry.

The door step is a slab of mica that I picked up somewhere in my travels. It was about twice as thick. I was using it as a step on the Witches' Warehouse. The nice thing about mica is it splits into layered easily. Now I have two door steps where there was once one.

If I am going to open tomorrow I had better get back at it. Wish me luck and keep your fingers, toes and eyes crossed. See you then.