With a Rope Tied to My Ankle.....

I made a big mistake this morning. I got brave. I tied one end of a rope to the door handle of my workroom. Then I tied the other end to my ankle, thinking that it would make it safe to venture inside to find the Chrysenbon kits for the 3 Victorian chairs. The rope came loose on my end. Granny knots are never good........ I sat down in my desk chair. It was like one of those science fiction movies where the chair grabs you and won't let you get up again.

I decided, since I was trapped anyway, that I should do some sorting. First I went through the piles on my worktable. Huh! Who knew that there was really a table under there. I even cleaned up the cutting mat that I made to fit it. (Here's a hint for you. If you have one of those old green, self healing mats that they sell for sewing, they also make great cutting boards for minis. They can be cut with utility scissors to any shape or size you want. This one started out as a large square. It was too beat up to use for sewing any more so it's now a heavy duty cutting mat for minis. It works great.)

Things were going good. Here's proof that I do indeed have a worktable. I have a small place to work....Things were also going bad. I didn't find the chair kits.

I found the bottom of my magnifier. Now I can move it to work on things other than on the desk. I also found more work to do. The cover on the base is needlepoint that I did about 10 years ago. It is really beat up. I need to make a new one.

I also found the ivory button bracelet that I made a couple of months ago and put somewhere for safekeeping.....It's on the neck of the magnifier. Progress....

I swiveled the chair. There was the desktop. Mind you, the chair still wouldn't release me.

I proceeded to clear that off. I had to do surgery on Charlie(the skeleton). His knee was broken. He is healing nicely now. I left the pyramid beside him just in case the superstition about their healing power works.

I also found my Exacto L square. I have been looking for that for a couple of months.

Here you see a leftover piece of the mat laying on top of the desk. The smaller one is from Micro-Mark and is handy to carry around with you when you need one for workshops, etc..

Now for the bad news. Still no chair kits.

I sat chained to the chair just looking from shelf to shelf for a while. I finally spotted them. It was great. I had the kits AND a place to work on them!

Strangely enough, after I finished the chair kits, the desk chair released me. I found the end of the rope to get away. I managed to sneak back in the room to take photos. I made sure I didn't sit down. Anyway, here are the chairs in the photo studio.

Now on to bigger and better things. I need a tree for the corner. Oh No! That means another trip into the workroom. Well, the side with the plant materials isn't as big of a mess as the desk and worktable. Maybe I will chance that trek tomorrow......See you then if I can get in and get back out......Stay tuned to see what happens.

All Tied Up

Here's the pattern for the folded tie that I promised you yesterday. These are very easy to make and I'll bet you can't make just one! Just remember to use natural fabrics. If you use poly or other synthetic you will be tearing your hair out by the time you finish one. Remember the glue factor? The first photo is the one that you want to copy to your computer. Then you can re size it to 4 1/2" long. I took the measurements off of one of my husband's ties. They haven't changed much in measurements for many years. You can change the width if you want, but this one measures about 3" across in real life and I wouldn't make it much wider than that. I cut the form out of regular index card.

The next photo shows the tie form glued to the fabric. Please note that I have put it on the diagonal(bias) on this one. You can do it either bias or straight. It makes no difference since it is glued right to the card stock. You will want to trim the fabric about 1/8" from the edge. It should be narrower than the tie form itself. I cut out notches in the corners and on the tip of the tie. You don't have to notch the sides. The fabric is so narrow there that there won't be a problem getting it to lie down right on the back of the tie.

When you finish gluing the edges to the back side, the front should look like this.

The last step is to fold the tie in half with glue on the back. Then fold it in half again. Either lay it somewhere for display or hang it over a rack or chair. Put some glue on it to keep it folded.

I did this one out of regular cotton shirting material. If you want to get fancy, find some old silk ties with a small pattern at a thrift shop (or in your husband's closet).

A couple of the ties on the rack in previous entries are from silk ties. The rest are straight out of my cotton stash.

I hope you have fun with these. I know I did.

See you tomorrow.

Getting Better....

Stupid runny nose! It interferes with doing minis, among other things. I did get the gingerbread painted and put in place and the bottom on the bow tie stand.

You can see the gingerbread up under the porch roof. It turned out pretty good. I put a teak wood bead on the bottom of the bow tie display.

That's about all I did today. I forgot to tell you that I made the bow ties from 1/8" silk ribbon. Synthetics won't do. It's the glue factor again. I made the bows separately first by tying them around my fingers. It's little fiddly work but it turns out better bows that way. You can also tie them around pins placed in your pinboard. I used the ends that I cut off after tying for the neck part. I will try to do directions for both kinds of ties as soon as I am finished with all of the sneezing and blowing my nose. For now you will just have to be satisfied with this photo. Sorry about that.

See you tomorrow. Hopefully I will be back to normal, whatever that is........

Vested Interests

Today's entry is going to be very short. I am in the middle of a bad cold. I will however, show you what I have done in the past 24 hours.

I did three vests. Two are fabric and one is leather. I punched out buttons for them and some shirts and then I made 8 bow ties. The tube that they are displayed on is the infamous tampon tube covered with fabric. (Smallest size.) I am going to put the tube on a wooden base and stand it upright.

Now I am going back and lie down and feel sorry for my nose and pout about being sick.

See you tomorrow.

Jiffy Gingerbread

I just finished cutting and gluing gingerbread for the haberdashery. No, I didn't drag out the jigsaw, nor the coping saw. I used a paper punch! EK Success puts out some dandy corner punches that make wonderful gingerbread. I came up with this idea a couple of years ago. I was looking for a bunch of gingerbread and didn't want to pay a lot of money for it. The laser cut stuff can be very expensive. As you know, I am for doing things the inexpensive way if I can.

The first photo shows the corner punch that I used. The trick is to pop the corner guide off of the punch. Yes, you can do it easily and it will pop back on if you wish to use it that way again. As you can see, I punched all the way around the edge of the card stock. Then I took a pair of small scissors and trimmed the punched pieces all the way out.


Next I glued 6 layers together with Elmer's white glue. I like that because it isn't as thick as Tacky and smooths out nicely in a thin layer between the pieces. Once you get 6 layers or more together and they are dry, you can treat them just like the wooden ones. I will let them dry 24 hours to make sure they are ready to take paint. Then I will paint them and install them in the corners between the porch posts and the roof line. They could also be used in corners of windows.

Someone on the Greenleaf list is using the fancy scissors to do borders for rooms. I don't see why you couldn't glue 6 together and use the strips for gingerbread edging too. I am going to have to try that, but not on this building.

Since this is short, I will send you to a site that you can get some wonderful vintage printies today. Bless Duke University. These are even copyright free for personal use. Go here. http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/eaa/browse I am using a couple of the advertising fliers for the haberdashery. Have fun browsing.


See you tomorrow.

Fit To Be Tied!

This morning I made ties and collars. The tie rack is a coffee mug hanger that I had in my stash. It was really too big for coffee mugs, but makes a great tie rack.

I have started investigating prices in the 1909 Sears Roebuck catalog. It took me a couple of hours to make them. They would sell for anywhere from 19 cents to 48 cents. Can you imagine what the makers of the real thing were earning back around the turn of the 19th century?

It is interesting to go through that catalog. There is no rhyme or reason in the order of the contents and no table of contents either! I don't know how you would find what you wanted unless you wandered through it page by page looking at everything......Maybe there was a method to their madness. I kept finding other interesting things while I was looking for the men's ties.

I remembered that I wanted to include some celluloid collars in the store. So I sidetracked until I found them......They were not celluloid collars at that time. By then they had modernized them to rubber! They were advertised as more comfortable. They also had real linen ones, but those were more expensive. I may have to have a few of those too.I made these out of index card. I think that they look passable.

I have in my collections of real things a round box covered with a faux leather, made of stamped canvas, that was made especially for preserving these. I think it was made similar to the covers on books. The design is pressed into the canvas and then painted with something to make it look like leather. The one that I have has an elaborate oval brass box set into the top that was for studs and cuff links to go with the collars.

This was another of the things that saved washing shirts all of the time. Put on a new collar and cuffs every day and that made them look fresh and clean. I imagine that after a week, you could tell that the shirt hadn't been washed in a while. Never mind the collar and cuffs.

I finished the dressing room this morning. I still need to rip the tape off of the mirror, but I thought that you would like to see where it landed.

M'lady will be spared the site of long johns flapping in the breeze now.

That's about all I have to show for my morning's work. I should get back to it. I still have lots more stuff to make, especially after looking at the catalog. I told you those guys knew what they were doing by leaving out the table of contents and mixing things up!

See you tomorrow.

Super Recycling!!!

Today I recycled a whole elevator!!! Not everyone can say that! Remember when I started to put an elevator in the book shop? Well, I saved it even though I decided on stairs.

I am not sure if they had dressing rooms in men's stores way back. I haven't found any information or photos. I am going to have one in this store anyway. I don't want men running around in their long johns in the store! Modesty prevails. After all, what if a lady should stop in for some handkerchiefs for her husband?

I simply painted the walls the same color as the walls of the haberdashery. I made a pleated curtain for the inside. It is very humid here today, so it may take a while to dry after spraying with hairspray. I will glue it in and put baseboard around the outside after it is finished.

I will be putting an oval mirror in the back of the dressing room. I need to put some kind of frame on it. I am showing it to you because there is a trick to make it look thinner than the normal mirror. I have edged the glass with black permanent marker. I will have to do it again as this is a very rough edged mirror. This takes away the glare of the edge of the glass and thus the thickness. When I put a frame around it the thickness will all but disappear.

I did tear the stainless steel floor out of the bottom of the elevator/dressing room. Somehow stainless steel didn't go well with a turn of the century haberdashery.

Try as I might, I couldn't get a photo through the glass without a reflection. I am to lazy to move this monster just to get a picture of it in progress.

At least you can get an idea of what I am trying to do. I think that the trunk is going to have to go further back in the store. I tried it in the front window and it blocked to much of the view.

I have to go check on the drying of the curtain now. By tomorrow I should have a dressing room in the corner permanently. See you then.

Without Strings.....

I have been making shoes all day. I am sick of shoes. They are slow and unproductive. I now have 4 pair of shoes and two pair of boots. None of them have shoestrings or buckles. I am afraid that you aren't going to have much to look at today.


This is the sum total of two day's work. Can you tell I am about to finish the paragraph with "Bah Humbug!"? I will spend the rest of the day putting in shoelaces and buckles on the boots. Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention the shirts and sweaters on top. I lost one of the ties. Again, Bah Humbug!


One good thing came out of today. Someone on the Greenleaf list suggested using the new energy saving light bulbs in your magnifying light. What a great idea! I went to K mart this morning and spent almost six dollars on this little gem. It is supposed to last seven years. The best part is, it solves a problem that I have had for the past 20 years!


When working on miniature cross stitch or needlepoint, I always work under a lighted magnifier. The light always got hot and I have wound up with burns on my hands a number of times. The other problem was that I couldn't work on anything for a long stretch without my hands becoming uncomfortable.

I worked all day today under this screwy light bulb. BTW, it's a 13 watt replacement for a 60 watt bulb, in case you want to try one. The color is true. No blue or unnatural light. No burns and no discomfort occurred! I think that this is the best six dollars that I have spent in a while. After just one day I am going to be running around recommending this to everyone I know!

Sorry that this isn't longer. I need to go tie my shoes now. See you tomorrow.

The Back Drop Again....

I did some more detailing on the back drop yesterday afternoon. I think I am much closer to the real one now.

After I finish it and install it there appears to be an artificial tree that goes on the right side of the painting. It seems to hang over part of the painting. Here we go again. Now I have to get out all of the plant materials and have a go at reproducing the tree.

I need to make some more Victorian Chrysenbon chairs. The ladder backs look strange in this setting.

This morning I put the fancy work on most of the counters and shelves. I still have to do all of the sanding and varnishing. The small counter on the top left still doesn't have trim on it. That shows you what a difference a little trim can make. All of the pieces were like that to begin with. I need to finish that one then I can get on to the last part tomorrow.

I did get two brown sweaters, two shirts and a couple of neckties made this afternoon at the Wednesday Witches' mini meeting. I still have a LOT of those to do.

The last photo for today is entitled "Still Life With Part of a Cat". This is what I have to contend with. Mookie decided he wanted to help....... That's what happens when a room box opens from the top. He hops over a wall and makes himself part of the photo that I am trying to take. He also likes to help stain and varnish. It's hard trying to hold off the cat with one hand and wipe on stain with the other. Now do you see why I don't get things done very fast. This helpfulness is going to have to come to a stop! Did I mention that he knows how to open doors in the real house? It is hard to keep him out of anything that he sets his mind to invade.

I'm off to drag Mookie out of the haberdashery now. See you tomorrow.

Bob Ross, Eat Your Heart Out!

That probably wasn't a very nice thing to say since Bob isn't around anymore. I learned a lot from watching him many years ago. I always loved that there were no mistakes in his world, just "Happy accidents". Thanks Mr. Ross. I miss you. It always amazed me that he could finish any kind of a painting in 1/2 hour.

I cheated and used some of his fast painting techniques on the backdrop for the tintype studio.

I tried to see around the guys in the photo, but I had to make a lot of it up as I went along.

This was the first step. I had a piece of mat board that I cut to what I thought was about the right size. The first step was sketching what I could see of the backdrop. Then I used tube acrylics to do the painting. I started with the sky. That was the furthest away from the viewer.

I am not going to go through all of the steps in pictures. Next I did the mountains, then the trees and buildings. Then the last was the columns and floor.

After I laid in all of the colors, I went back and did clouds, the details on the mountains etc, until I reached the front once more. Most of the scene will be covered by stuff in front of it. I didn't put in too much detail.

I did go back in with Prismacolor pencils to add a touch more detail here and there.

Here you see the panel in the corner where it will eventually end up. I put three chairs in it just to see if the scale looked about right. It does. I think that it could still use more detail. I only worked on it for a couple of hours, so it is not a finished painting as paintings go. I could spend days and days on it to get it right. I'm not going to. It's another one of those things that I don't think that people are going to inspect in detail.

Anyway, that's what I got done this morning. Oh, and I stained all of the counters and shelves. This afternoon I am going to add trims to those to make them look older. They are way too plain for my taste. Back to work.

See you tomorrow.

Reality Bites!!!

It's Monday......Rats!!! I have to clean up the real house and do the real laundry. I am not mentioning the fact that my real workroom needs cleaning once again too.


So I think that today will be one of those days that I send you on a virtual treasure hunt for minis on other sites.


You do get two photos of the smallest mini scene in my collection. This one is 1/144 scale. It is done in 3 1/12 scale fruit crates. It's a mini shopping "mall". I find this scale to be kind of tiresome. You really can't put much detail in it.


The figures are from a miniature railroad store. The furniture is mostly painted metal miniatures.


Now for something else to keep you busy whilst I clean house.

http://www.jennifersprintables.com/ This site is great for mini wallpapers of all eras. There are also some other printies if you look around.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dp.grice/booksweb.htm This one is a nice page of book covers.


http://www.cut-and-paste.rr.nu/ The last one is an old but good one. There are both printies and projects on this one.

Remember not to run with scissors and don't eat the paste! See you tomorrow.

J. Geil's Tintypes

This just seemed to me to be a good name for a photographer of the time. Freeze Frame.......

I inspected the tintype more closely and found that the back drop was exactly that. The scene was painted on either canvas or board and stuck up against the wall. That will make it a lot easier to duplicate. I won't have to stand on my head inside the box, with a three haired paintbursh to paint it. Yay Me!

I worked on the canvas trunk yesterday. Here you see it with the straps and handles in place. I did look up the Racing Form newspaper and it has been in publication since 1894. So I can use it somewhere in the scene if I so decide. I went with Rocky Mountain News for the inside of the trunk. I thought that the building looks like something out west, not back east.

Among other useless information, I went back and looked at the website about the history of coat hangers again to refresh my memory. It was invented by a guy named Parkhouse in 1903. He didn't get a red cent from it. The company that he worked for got the patent and claimed the fame. So if you decide to do something with a closet, no coat hangers before 1904. That's when it was patented and the wire company that he worked for started producing them. An extra bit of info, they must have gotten popular quickly. by 1906 there were 189 different patents for garment hangers!

Back to the subject at hand. Here's the trunk in it's finished state. I happened to have a trunk lock that I had been hoarding. I didn't have any nail heads. That is not unusual. I don't use them. Again, it is one of those lazy things that I do. I use Tulip dimensional fabric paint straight out of the bottle in antique gold. The tip of the bottle is super fine. It is much easier to squeeze out a tiny drop of that than it is to hammer in one of those tiny nails that always end up flying across the room, never to be found again unless your husband steps on it with his bare feet.......I have learned a few new words when nails, pins or needles have been found this way.

I plan to use this in one of the windows as a display of shirts and ties.

While I was on line, I looked at tintype cameras. That is going to be pretty simple to duplicate. Some of them were simply an oblong box with a lens on one end and a knob on the side.

The camera that I have is a cheapo metal one and looks more like a 30s or 40s era one. It has this silly birdy on the top on a stick......Watch the birdy? He's goin' down!

I don't think that I'm going to use the lady portrait unless I call her some one's long lost aunt or something like that. She is quite obviously from way earlier than the men. Pretty frame, but not the right time period.

A friend sent me the directions off of a roll of the flooring veneer that I used. Next time I will be able to do it right. It helps to have directions. I kind of like the way that some of the edges appear to be coming up a bit. I have seen floors like that in a lot of old buildings. I doubt if anyone is going to be inspecting the floor to closely anyway. There will be lots of other stuff to look at.

See you tomorrow.

Not On Your Tintype!

OK! I now have a handle on the haberdashery. I went through my stash and found a couple of tintypes that are of the era that I wanted. Here's a great image of some of the customers. These guys look like they just stepped out of the store, or maybe into the store......This gives me some clothes to follow. I bought this one at the swap meet a long time ago. They look like prim and proper business types.

I wish I had some background on who they are and where the shot was taken. From now on, it was taken in a corner of the haberdashery. I decided that having a resident photographer would be a little different spin on the store. I am going to recreate the back wall and the fake plants in the tintype.

After that one, I found the camera and another tintype. I am going to have to alter the camera but the tripod is a start. The lady is another tintype that I found somewhere. Come to think of it, I think I have some of my ancestors around somewhere too. I will have to look some more.

I think that the left corner will be the photographer's domain.

As you can see, I have been hunting and gathering.

My next find was a half finished trunk. I make a lot of these. Some are used for quarter inch room boxes, so I always have a few in the works.

I am going to line the trunk with newspapers and I will trim the outside with leather straps and buckles. Somewhere along the line I gathered a bunch of miniature Racing Form newspapers. Those might appeal to these guys. I wonder if Racing Form goes back far enough? I will have to research that one.

Anyway, I think that I have enough to keep me busy for the rest of the day. Check in tomorrow and see what kind of mess I made of this stuff. See you then.

The Way They Were

I found this post card photo of an old men's shop somewhere in my wanderings. I am hoping that is not a copyright infringement to show it. It is interesting that they used to put all of the clothes on tables. I did some research and found that the first coat hangers were invented in the early 1900s. I guess that this was before then. Can you imagine what it was like to have to hang all of your clothes on hooks or pegs in the wall? The other alternative was to store them in drawers or trunks. Closets were pretty much non-existent. People had rooms especially for clothes if they were wealthy or armoires. How in the world did they do it? We laugh about the "Saturday night bath" now, but back then it was true! And NO deodorant. It must have been a fragrant world!



I painted the walls with Old Parchment this morning. It is the same color as the trim on the outside of the building.



This is one of the counters that I am going to be using. I haven't decided what kind of finish to put on it yet. I cheated and bought some counters and such at one of the mini shows one year. I was going to use them in the general store. I figure I may as well use them. I can always build more for the general store now that I am stocked up on wood.



I did get three more sweaters made today too. This time beige crew necks.


The bad news is blogger is not letting me upload any more photos right now. I keep getting an error message. Oh well. I was just going to show you the door and frame that I dropped on the floor and broke for the third time. I need to glue that thing in! When will I learn? Probably not before tomorrow. See you then.

Fast Floor!

Today I tried the roll of veneer stripping. It works! It was the fastest floor I ever laid. I had the whole thing done in about 20 minutes. Now ask me if I like it.....I would say it is about fourth on my list of favorites.

I no longer had the packaging directions, so I had to wing it. I think that the iron was just a little too hot when I started. I had to move it really fast.

The method I used, since it was one long room, was to cut the strips all the same length. I made them a tiny bit longer and ironed them down to within about five inches of the end and trimmed with a pair of scissors to fit. Then I ironed the end down. I did have to pull some of them up part way so that I could make them closer together. That was no problem. If you heat them with the iron they come right up.

The only strip I had to trim was the one at the back. I cut about a quarter of an inch off the long edge of that. I didn't measure. I figured that the baseboard would cover the edges anyway. I still have to mark it for floorboard lengths and varnish it. So far it looks pretty good tho.

Looking through the front entrance, you can see that the color is not all that bad with the color of the rest of the wood trim on the porch.

I just stuck one of the hutches inside for scale purposes. Now you can see the real color of it.

This is the rest of the stuff I have been working on. The stack of green sweaters are made from a woman's sock. The satchel at the top is leather, lined with silk and it opens and closes with the buckle on the front.

Most of the shirts you have seen before. I did make another one of the beige and red striped ones. I want more than one of some of the stuff. I had that one partly made from the other day when I was showing you how to build them. I cheat when I want to stack them......I leave the collar off so that they stack nice and flat.

The piece of fabric that they are laying on was a once in a lifetime find at a thrift shop some years ago. It was a man's shirt and it has 6" squares of different tiny stripes and checks woven into it. I have used most of it dressing dolls. I only wish I had about 5 more. It is thin and all cotton so that it glues like a dream.

Do you all know the rule about buying fabric for gluing? Natural fabrics are best. Cotton, silk and linen are fabrics of choice. If you are thrift shopping or shopping for remnants that aren't marked for fabric content there is a simple test that is pretty sure fire for finding the ones that will glue. If you take the fabric and crush it in your hand and it holds the wrinkles, chances are it is natural. If it flattens back out, run don't walk, in the other direction. It may be pretty but it won't glue!

Anyway, that's it for today. See you tomorrow.

Weird Wednesday.......

This morning I ran into town to Michael's. I got paint and wood. Very exciting.....Not. This afternoon I had to stay home so I decided to finish the two hutches and start on some of the other furnishings for the haberdashery. I put a wash of burnt sienna on both before I left. When I got home I added handles. They were some that I have been hoarding for years. They are by Suzanne Russo. I am not sure if she is still making any brasses. Years ago she did a lot of different ones. These were actually supposed to be strips to put on a chest as decorations. I bent them into handles. I think that they look pretty good.

I kept experimenting to see if I could get a better shot of the color. This shot is still way lighter than the real thing. I proceeded to move the pieces around the room to shoot.

This shot is the closest to the real color on both of the hutches.

I am pretty pleased with how they turned out. Someone told me yesterday that it didn't look like a Michael's hutch. That's about the best compliment that I could get for the work I did on these.

By the way, I heard on one of the lists that Michael's is discontinuing the hutches. I don't know if this is true or not, but I went this morning with the idea of looking for them. I got everything else that I wanted but I totally zoned out and forgot to look for the hutches. I still have a couple so I guess that there's not rush. If they are still there the next time I go, I will have to stock up. As you can see, I cropped all but the thinnest edge of the other hutch out of the photo. Now for the reason for the cropping.

This is one of the photos that was taken in the same place. As you already know, the two hutches are the same color. The counter in the center of the photo is "Black Green Ceramcoat". Now I ask you, does that look like black green to you? That looks blue to me or am I crazy? I don't think that I will be using that particular spot for photos again. I can't believe that the two hutches look so different, being that they are only about 4" apart. I find it fascinating that the Canon can take wonderful pictures if the light is right and horrible ones if the light is just a bit different.

I want to get to the floor tomorrow and the wallpaper and/or paint for the interior. I think that I will go make some shirts or shoes or pants or jackets or socks or shoes or maybe even undies now. See you tomorrow.

Multiply by 10!

Someone told me a long time ago that when you are doing miniatures you should calculate the time that you think it will take to do a task and multiply that figure by 10. They have proven themselves to be right every time I do something mini.

I figured that I would have the two hutches done in an afternoon....Nope. I am still working on them. I put two coats of paint on the first hutch(left) and then I started working on the other one. I decided that I wanted to keep them together as far as the stages. I won't show you photos of the second one. It looked exactly like the first one all the way through. When the second one caught up I painted them both forest green.

I am not satisfied with the sanding or with the paint finish. I used a bottle of really old forest green that I had in a drawer. For some reason this photo makes them look a lot lighter than they actually are. I need to put a second coat on the last one. Then whatever I do to them they will look alike. I am planning on antiquing them with a burnt umber wash. Then there will be a final finish. Probably satin Deft will do the trick.

I am going to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening, hopefully, finishing them. It is perilously close to the "ten times" mark. Sorry to be so short. I need to get back to work. See you tomorrow.

On a Hutch.......

Here we go again. I worked on the hutch more this morning. It is a bit slower with the bandaged hand. It is a lot better today.

First of all, here's a back view so that you can see what is involved in making the hutch taller. The sides are now two inches tall instead of one. I cut a piece of scrap lumber the same size as the bottom of the original piece. This, I glued inside the bottom of the sides and front. Now I have somewhere to glue the base. Yes. I know that I need to peel off the labels. Don't nag. I will before I paint.

Now for the fun part. I put some L shaped molding along the side of the fronts to cover the overlap. I dug around in my scraps and found enough double bead molding to trim the sides and the front of the drawers.

I used some already stained brown scraps for the uprights on either side of the piece. then I added two pieces of wood for the drawers on the front. I outlined those with the same double bead to emphasize the drawers.

Last, I put bun feet on the bottom. They are the little plugs that people use on real furniture to cover screw holes.

The last photo for today is with the primer on the piece. I used Antique White Ceramcoat. Whatever color I put over it will cover it.

As you can see, once the paint goes on, it makes no difference that the wood was not all the same.

So far, so good.

I am not going to make you wait for the paint to dry. I can see some places that I need to do some more sanding too.

Hopefully, when you come back tomorrow It will be finished and have it's hardware. See you then.

Messing with Michael's Hutches

It seems like everyone has a different way of fancying up the little hutches that you find unfinished at Michael's. I have a problem with the height of some of them. The two that I want to use in the Haberdashery are short, very short.

I like the doors on this particular model. I just like them better if they are trimmed and sanded.

The door on the right kind of shows you how much I take off of the inside edge of the windows. The one on the left has the shavings taken out so that you can see better what I did.

As for the height, I took off the bottom skirt and the bottom edge platform. They are at the front of the photo. I just pried them off with a utility knife. I don't advise using an exacto for this. The blade will snap if you aren't careful!(experience speaking here)

Then I pulled off the knobs with a pair of needle nose pliers. They don't seem to use glue on these at all.

I determined that I wanted the body of the base 2" tall. I used some scrap 1/32"cherry wood that I had lying around. and covered the existing base. That will be the body of the bottom. Since I plan to use a painted finish on these pieces, it doesn't really matter what kind of material I use. I am thinking that mat board could even be used in a pinch.

After this dries, I will do some more sanding, a lot more sanding. Then I will put some fancy trims on the corner of the corners of the body. I will also put some false drawers on the front. No, I'm not messing with drawers that work if they are never going to be opened. You should know by now that if I don't need to do anything complicated, I won't.

I will put a piece the same size as the bottom of the original drawer inside the bottom of the cherry wood part to stabilize. Then I will glue on the original bottom and maybe some fancy feet in place of the skirt.

My cut hand is arguing with me about typing. It is much happier doing minis where it doesn't have to participate so much. I need to go work some more on these so that you will have something to look at and read tomorrow. See you then.

Oops! I Did It Again!

I think that I am trying to self destruct this week. Wednesday I slipped on some leakage from a bag of ice and put a large bruise on my shin. This morning I took a slice out of the web between my thumb and finger on my left hand. I now have a nice bandage on that. It is very difficult to type today. You get a short one today and maybe by tomorrow it will be easier.



Photo? Here are some ladies folded blouses that I made somewhat the same way as the men's shirts. These I added a layer of flannel about a half inch down to give them more body. and simply added trims after putting them together, but before gluing the fold(see #4).



There are other ways of doing these too. I believe in Thoreau. Simplify, simplify, simplify..... So that's how I did mine.


That's all for today. I will try for a bigger and better entry tomorrow. Ouch!!!! See you then.