Christmas Box.....What Christmas Box???

I am flusterated(one of my daughter's favorite words when she was little). I think that word is much better that frustrated. At least it describes my feelings exactly. I can't find the Christmas tree and nothing else seems to go together. I am just going to put out the Christmas Kitchen Island instead. That way I will have a longer time span to finish the box. Twelve months is better than one.

I went back to work on the basket shop this morning. It now has shelves in the left alcove. Don't tell anybody. The curve at the top was not cut exactly straight. It seems especially noticeable at this angle. The shelves are level. It's the curve that is off. Oh well. It's French country. Lots of wine for the workmen. The plasterers were plastered. It's a good story and I'm sticking with it.

The shelves were made from a piece of bass wood flooring that I had stained for another project somewhere along the line. It has uneven planks marked into it. I simply used the lines as guides for cutting lengthwise. Then I cut them cross wise with my miter box and saw.

When I started the other side I decided that it would be boring to have just shelves on both ends of the shop. I put in a seat at the bottom and a couple of shelves at the top.

I am still not sure that I like the color. It doesn't play well with the light terracotta color on the outside of the building. I may have to repaint it.

As usual, I couldn't wait until it was finished to see how a few baskets fit on the shelves.

I think that it is going to work much better than the shadow box that I have the baskets displayed in at the present time. It's one of those "One thing leads to another" times though. Now I will have to think of something else to put into the shadow box. Around in circles I go......

See you tomorrow.

I Can't See the Forest........

......Because I can't find the tree! I dug in boxes, under boxes, around boxes and behind boxes. I still haven't found the tree. I think that I may have tossed it at the time of one of my cleaning frenzies. Needless to say, I am not a happy camper. I thought that I would whip out a Christmas box in an afternoon. It's not turning out that way.

The more that I look at Santa, the more I think that he isn't happy in his Victorian garb. When I made him that type of Santa was in. It seems to me that for the past couple of years the style has gone back to the bright red with white fur that was the only way to go when I was a kid. He had to have a big black belt with a gold buckle and black boots. I think that he wants to dress like the Coca Cola Santa. Tradition.

This morning I bought a back up Christmas tree at Wal Mart. I am not at all happy with it. It will need a lot of work if I use it. It's one of those bottle brush trees and pre-decorated. It will have to be torn apart and reworked completely.

I did find green wallpaper for the inside of the box. I am still striking out on the fireplace. I may be rethinking the whole thing. Bah Humbug!

This is what makes me think that the tree is no longer with us. I may have taken all of the ornaments off and dumped it. My only other question is, if that is the case, where are the strings of lights. I had a couple of those. They are nowhere to be found either. The plot thickens and the mystery deepens.

Here are a few of the ornaments. I thought you might like to try some. They are very easy. I cut the fans an other floral pieces from Victorian stationary that I had. I glued them to either pieces of gold foil doilies or in the case of the fans, lace edging. Then I added a tassel to the bottom of each one. I give instructions for making the tassels here. http://caseymini.blogspot.com/2008/08/tassels-101.html Poke the picture to see them better. But then if the Victorian Santa costume is out, maybe the ornaments are too.

The angel and the snowman head are both made with shrink plastic. They were inked, colored and cut about twice as large as I wanted the finished ornament. After they shrunk, I just glued them to the tree. No fuss. No bother.

I am now going to go sulk in a corner and refrain from tearing up my room any further. Maybe if I stare at the shelves the tree will magically appear and my Santa will change his clothes. After all, Christmas is coming. I can at least wish.......

See you tomorrow.

Where's Santa?

About a month ago I bought a Christmas box at Home Goods that I thought would be ideal for a room. The part that is recessed in the front will be easy to remove and then I will have, essentially, a framed room box. I may even have a piece of glass that will fit the hole somewhere around here. The inside is lined with the same red plaid and it has the same Christmas tree printed on the back wall. I will have to cover that. Other that that, it will be pretty easy to do.

I had a scene in a bag that I made for Christmas years ago. It was getting pretty worn. I tore it apart a while ago and put the Christmas goodies in a box. The box was too small for Santa and the tree. Soooo..... I stashed the Santa and the tree in two separate places. Of course I did...... I was playing "Where's Waldo" with Santa Claus this morning. I looked high and low in the workroom. I finally found him in with some landscaping materials. I think that he is contemplating taking up gardening in the off season. Maybe he can grow a new tree.......I still haven't found even one branch of the tree. Logically, it should be with landscaping. Nope. So now I have to play "Where's Waldo" some more. I know it's in there. I just don't know where.

I think that Santa Baby needs some updating on his outfit. I don't like the shiny black trim anymore. I thought it looked pretty nifty at the time. Now, not so much.

I went around gathering up other things that I thought that would go in the scene. A Friend built this fireplace and it is really nice, but I am afraid that it is too small for Santa. I think that Santa would get stuck in the chimney for sure in this one. I think that I am going to have to find or build something more substantial for him. Too bad.

I found the box with the Christmas goodies. Still no tree. It is making me a little nervous. There are some decorations from the tree in this box, as well as all of the presents that were under it. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't decide to dispose of it in a fit of cleaning.

Right now, I am thinking that I may have to make a new one. I hope that it doesn't come to that. I am going to go hunt some more now. Wish me luck.

See you tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Good Morning! For those of you that celebrate it today, Happy Thanksgiving. I am on my way to Phoenix to have dinner with daughter April, her husband Seth and the extended family. A good time will be had by all. It is all black out and raining cats, dogs and frogs. The trip up and back will not be my favorite part of the day. Oh Well. I will take my knitting or needlepoint. I can't get all the tools for minis in the car, and besides, my husband would frown upon that idea. Can you see me traveling to Phoenix with the basket shop on my lap, painting the shadows in the corners? I don't think so.

Anyway, I hope that you all have a great day. Back to the mini world tomorrow. I am cheating and using the Christmas turkey as a Thanksgiving bird today. This was one of my very first tries at food about 25 years ago. Back then we used clear nail polish colored with brown paint to do the glaze! It still looks almost good enough to eat.

Happy Thanksgiving. See you tomorrow with minis in hand.

Up to My Elbows....

I am back to painting on the basket shop. I put the first coat on the inside this morning. I know. You want proof. Here's the left side.

And the right side. Yes they are the same color. Honest. The right side is closer to the real thing. Now I need to do some shading and blending.

While I was at it, I noticed that the second photo had the outside wall close to the color that it truly is. So I tried another photo of the outside.

I am getting closer all the time. This one is the best yet. It still looks a little washed out.

Can you tell that I am trying to pad this entry? Don't tell anyone. I need to get back and finish what I am doing. Then I need to get going on the cooking that I have to do. I'm sorry that this is so short. Alas, real life is getting in again.

See you tomorrow.

Alibris.com

For the next few days we are all going to be very busy getting ready for the big day. Black Friday......I, for one, am staying home. I am not crazy enough to brave the traffic and the crazy shoppers that are out then. One of the stores here is Tucson is advertising that it will be opening at 4:00AM. Even I don't get up until 4:15AM! That's just nuts!

I am thinking that shopping on line might not be such a bad idea. One of my favorite gifts is the Amazon.com gift cards that my family gives me every year. I can sit right here and shop away.

Someone on the Greenleaf forum asked about favorite miniature books a couple of days ago. I thought I would take this opportunity to direct you to a few of my favorites. There are different places to shop for used books on the net, but I have had really good luck with http://www.alibris.com/?DI=1 Before I wrote this I went to the site to make sure that the books that I am mentioning are available. I don't know how long they will be there. They were all there a few minutes ago.

They keep coming out with new ones, but I don't think that the ones that I am mentioning can be beat for general information and instruction. All were published back in the 70s. They don't have as many fancy colored photos as the newer books. They are just plain good and don't need them.

I have mentioned the three Helen Ruthberg books before. I am going to have to get new copies of a couple of them pretty soon. I have worn them out. You can just put in her name in the search on the site to find any of those.


Next are the books by Virginia Merrill, each with a different co-author. If you put in her name, you will get those.

The first one is "the Complete Book of Making Miniatures". It has lots of patterns for furniture, needlework and accessories.

As you can see, my copy of this one is also well worn. It answers most questions that you might have about making just about anything.

The second one of hers is "Reproducing Period Furniture and Accessories in Miniature". This one is a little more advanced and more detailed.

I don't know which one of these I like more. They are both invaluable as references.






The last one is a book that I got when I first started doing minis. It is still fun to go back and read. It's "Miniatures:How to make them, use them and sell them. It is a bit basic, but it has all kinds of neat projects. There is a chapter on how to build a Colonial Kitchen from scratch that is beautifully simple. It also has furniture patterns and accessories.

I am going back to Turkey Day preparation. Have fun looking on Alibris.com. If you put in dollhouse or maybe miniatures or both in the search line, you might even find something that I overlooked. Good Luck! See you tomorrow.

Bad Mistake!!!

Never count your stitches before they're crossed. Unfortunately, that's just what I did this morning. The printer rug is going to take 15,386. I probably have the 386 done. Only 15,000 to go.........Why did I do that? I always do that. I can't resist. I never count how many I have to go, just the finished number. It always amazes me how many stitches go into one of these little gems.

I think that it must be because I worked as an inventory clerk for an electronics parts store for a couple of years. Have you ever tried to count a barrel of resistors by hand? Let me put it this way. Some of them are too small to make into something miniature. That was back when there was no such thing as inventories on computer.

I still find myself counting everything that I do. I will be peeling carrots and find myself counting how many times I have to run the peeler down the length of the carrot.(It's usually about 9 times. I'll bet you didn't know that and you probably didn't want to know either.) I even count weeds when I pull them!

This is an early mini that I based on a real Two Gray Hills Navajo rug. It measures 3 1/2"x5 1/2". It's just a bit larger than an index card and it has 9,075 stitches. That one was pretty easy. It only had 5 colors and all were in straight lines.

Ignore the dust bunnies. I took this photo right in the southwestern room box without cleaning first. I didn't want to disturb the realism.

The largest rug that I have made so far is the one in the Regency Drawing Room. There are 38,080 stitches in this one.

What is the point of this whole thing? I got to thinking about how many stitches I have done over the years......It's scary to even think about it. I think that I must be pretty close to the 1 mil mark by now! And I am not counting full sized cross stitch or needlepoint. I can't even count the number of rugs I have made, let alone the stitches that went into all of them.

If you are interested in starting to go crazy counting stitches, here are a couple of websites that have some really pretty pieces. One is here. One is on the other side of the world. Both are worth looking at.

http://micro-stitchery.com/links.html Bobbie Schoonmaker is an IGMA artisan.

http://www.janetgranger.co.uk/cwebb.htm Janet Granger is in England. She has a book of rug designs that is good. I have made a couple of them. She also sells kits.

I am going back to counting now.

See you tomorrow.

Help!

For the past few days I have been trying to help another miniaturist start her own blog. I keep remembering back to when I started this one. I was petrified that I would do something wrong. That seems like a long time ago. Nostalgia.....Don't you just love it? That was February of this year!

I am afraid that I am not the best at helping, especially when I can't really see what steps she is doing. I think that she will get the hang of it just like I did. I did the same thing that she is doing. I dragged an online friend into the process. I asked Gina of MoreMinis@Blogspot for help. I was asking for help every few days for a while.

I had a blog on another server for a short time a couple of years ago. That one didn't last because uploading photos was a complicated process and it got boring quickly. Another reason for stopping that one was I started getting a lot of junk e mail wanting to enlarge parts of the anatomy that I don't even have! I finally just gave up on that one.

Blogger is a pretty easy system to use once you understand how to use it. I can't say that they are very good with the instructions for beginners though. I had to just keep plugging along with writing and deleting and adding photos and figuring out how to get rid of photos and other little quirky little things that they don't tell you about. I had NO idea what to do when I started. I just sat down one afternoon and said "Hmmmm.... How can I drive myself crazy today?". I don't know what I would have done without Gina to explain things. Thanks Gina!!! Now it's my turn. My only advice to anyone wanting to do it is "Go for it!". You can't really make a mistake. There is that nice "edit posts" page. If all else fails, you can just delete the whole thing and start over.

The only thing that still bugs me is when I can't get a gap between paragraphs. I still haven't solved that one. Oh well. Most of the time it is at least readable.

For today I have two photos to show you. The first one is the last inside wall of the basket shop is DASsed. Is that a word? I don't think so, but I am using it anyway! So there!

BTW, up under the roof line is the truest coloring of the outside that I have taken a photo of so far. See. It's not white or cream.

The last photo of the day is my final choice of colors for the rug. I got very little done after the blog yesterday. I got sidetracked by cheesy movies on the Sci-Fi channel.

That's about it. See you tomorrow.

Cutting a Rug....

Well no, I haven't actually cut it yet. I won't do that until I finish it. I am very excited about how this new technique that I dreamed up is working out. It is slow going so far. I am trying to accurately match the colors that printed out. Some shades are so close that it is hard to decide. I am working on it as I find colors that I like. There really isn't a lot to show you yet. It is hard to tell what is worked and what isn't unless you poke the picture. I have been working all morning and this is it so far. I figured that I might as well show it now as later.

This is going to be short because I want to get back to work on it. Here's a photo of the top perimeter of the canvas. I wanted to show you another one of my ideas. I used to write down the colors that I was using on my rugs on a piece of paper and pin it to the canvas....Or I would write the numbers in a notebook and immediately forget where I put it. Now I write the number on the edge of the canvas with a Pigma permanent black pen. Then I do two rows of 5 stitches each of that color. That way I always know what color I am looking for by color as well as number.

Before I go back to stitching, one more thing. I was at Wal Mart this morning and happened to look at a "Clearance" table in the craft dept.. I found these! They are gold embossed stickers that are printed on clear backing. There are 4 different strips that are 12" long. The widest of the strips is about 1/2". The narrow leaf design is about 1/8". I am thinking that they would make wonderful trim on furniture or even on ceilings and walls of a fancy room. I couldn't resist. I bought what they had left. They are Martha Stuart and I imagine that they were meant for scrap booking.

Last but not least. Here's another find from Martha. This is in the Christmas Party section of WM. If you like dollhouses at all, you have to love these. They are boxes to put your Christmas gift cookies in to give to friends. I am selfish and plan to keep at least one for myself If the back were cut out and lined, made into 3 storeys, and decorated, it would be a perfect 1/4" scaled house! I wonder if gingerbread furniture could be made to match the house for Christmas....... As her daughter says, sometimes Martha actually has a good segment!

I am done now. Ignore me for the rest of the afternoon. I am going back to my rug. See you tomorrow.

Experimenting Can Be Fun........

For just about as long as we have had a computer I have been making the old tried and true fabric rugs printed on muslin, stuck to freezer paper. This is where I learned to do it. http://www.printmini.com/printables/fabric.shtml Jim Collins has lots of great printies and offers this info on a side bar. It is kind of hard to read so just right click on it and poke "Select All". That will make it visible. If you search I think that there are some other sites that have instructions. The main thing is taking care in preparation and cutting of the paper and fabric.

For these particular rugs, I simply folded under the edges and glued them with white glue and then fringed a separate strips of muslin and glued them to either end of the rug. Yes, I know that the top one needs pressing. They have been in a box for years. They are part of a stash that I went crazy making when I first learned how to do it. I sprayed them with Patricia Nimock's Matte Spray Sealer. The color has held up pretty well.

At my usual 3:00AM "wake up and make plans for the day" time, because I can't get back to sleep, I had a light bulb go on above my head. Don't ask me why. I have no idea, but some of my best "spearmints"(experiments and spearmints were interchangeable words to my daughter when she was little) come to mind at that time of morning.

I said to myself "Self, why can't I iron #22 hardanger cloth that I use for cross stitch to the freezer paper and print on it?" I actually thought about it long enough that it didn't disappear by morning.

Here's a piece with the corner cut out so that you can see what it looks like. I wouldn't run this one through the printer because I didn't cut and measure carefully and I wouldn't want it to get stuck. The fabric and paper must be fused together well, especially at the edges and there should be NO threads hanging when you do any of this kind of thing. Printers tend to get hungry for spaghetti when they see threads hanging and start devouring your paper/fabric from the edges in.

I guess I didn't explain why I wanted to do this. There are many beautiful rugs on the net. It would be so much easier if you didn't have to graph them all.

http://www.1001arearugs.com/ Here is one of my favorite rug websites. The nice thing about these are they are a flat image that you can just use as is. If you poke the thumbnails you get a rug that is about 1/24" scale. If you poke that one you get one that is a pretty good 1/12. If you want it larger you can save it to a file and enlarge it.

Soooooo.....Here is the end result.

Now I will be able to start stitching. I think that if I do it again, I will run a test sheet on regular paper to make sure that the size of the rug will work on my #22 or #24. This one comes pretty close without trying. I was lucky. I also think that this method will be better for abstract designs and non formal.

I will keep you posted on how it stitches. I am off to find thread now.

See you tomorrow.

5.7 on the Richter Scale!!!!

OOPS!!!! Never try to put a bookshop on top of a seven foot bookcase without a friend. I am now speaking from personal experience. This morning I decided that I wanted the bookshop up with all of the other shops on top of the bookcase until after Christmas so that I could do some sewing. I use the table that it was setting on for my machine........

I climbed up the step stool with book shop in hand. I got as far as getting it up there and was sliding it back. I let go because I thought that it was balanced on the shelf.....That's when the OOPS happened. It wasn't balanced. A seven foot drop was not good for its health.

I did manage to get it up there on the second go around. It looks pretty good, doesn't it? Come a little closer and look again.....

Now look at that thin white line between the first and second floor. That and the door coming off of it's hinges is all the damage that the fall did to the building itself. The top didn't come all of the way off. I am going to have to glue the two halves back together and re-stone the area. I will also have to reglue the hinges.

Please don't ask to see the inside. Please. The shelves came loose. A couple of tables are now without some feet. And I was picking books out of the carpet for 10 minutes. They were all over the place.

Needless to say, this is going to take some time to repair. It is not going to get done today, or tomorrow, or the next day. I don't have the heart to start over on this right now. I am just glad that it wasn't more damaged. Buttercup held up pretty well and Morgan survived the crash.

For today I am going to go back to the real world and catch up for my lost 24 hours. I will start cleaning house as soon as I finish eating the end piece off of the banana bread that I just made. That will make me feel a lot better.....

See you tomorrow.

There Will Be a Slight Pause......

I went to bed last night with an upset stomach. I don't think that it was something I ate. I think that it was something that my husband brought back from Utah. The last day that he was there, he came down with an upset stomach.....He thought it was food poisoning.....I don't think so. I think that it was a stomach flu. The gift that keeps on giving. Anyway, I am still feeling really bad this morning. I am going to take the day off and hide under the covers without a good book or chocolates. That's how sick I am!


For those of you looking for something to do, I suggest that you go to the left side of the page and wander around in the blogs and websites listed there.

Hopefully I will be back to work tomorrow. See you then.

Back to the Easy Part.

Before I was so rudely interrupted by James Bond yesterday I was telling you about the mini feathers. The secret is that you can cut down the tip of any feather, whatever size, with manicure scissors. I prefer those because of the curve. The yellow/orange feathers on the basket yesterday started out over 6" long. Snip point of the quill of the feathera little longer than you want your mini feather. Shape the tip part of the feather in a curve. The feather will not fall apart. If the quill is fine enough you can get a couple of feathers out of one. That's what I did with the yellow one. That's all there is to it.

I dug out the Penelope canvas baskets to work on today. I am going to need a lot of baskets to fill up the shop. I found that 12 forms were already made. Yay! That meant that I could just do the decorative part, the fun part. I use the same over dyed thread on these that I use on the coiled baskets. These take a lot less time that the coiled version. This is what the start looks like. It doesn't look like much, does it?

I decided that I need a few baskets that look like they are being worked on. This one is a large oval. I won't go into all of the details. There is a tutorial for making them in the tutorial section. That makes sense...... Anyway, using two threads, first I did a row of back stitch between the rows of canvas. Then I pulled out the top 4 rows of horizontal canvas threads. Then I simply curled the verticals outwards. The pile of threads on the table, leading to the basket, are the threads that I pulled out. I will probably do a couple more of these. They are the most realistic when it comes to unfinished baskets.

I finished 6 more baskets. I used natural thread on three of them. It was Needle Necessities thread in natural colors. The other three are also Needle Necessities thread, but in brighter colors. I think that I like the natural ones best. I tend to like that coloring in real baskets too.

The stitches that I used on this batch was half cross stitch, back stitch, running stitch, stem stitch and a couple of real basket edging stitches on the natural ones.

Are you counting along? When I finish the other five I will have an even dozen in this batch. Believe it or not, I am actually enjoying making these. It is a very relaxing process. If I don't fall asleep doing them, I will have them finished tonight.

See you tomorrow.

I'm a Basket Case....

That was me yesterday. I coiled. Then I coiled some more. I thought that I should give you a few tips on mini coiling this morning.

If you went to the sites that I had in the blog yesterday you should have the general idea of how to coil a basket. The only difference between doing it large and doing it small is the materials.

I use a lot of Needle Necessities over dyed floss and some Weeks Dyeworks. Both are carried by a lot of needlework shops and can also be ordered on line.

For the core material I use #32 cloth covered wire. It's the kind that comes on a spool. I leave it attached to the spool. That gives me something to hold onto while I am working and when I stop in the middle I can hook it into the end of the spool so that it won't get tangled or lost.

Here you see the different steps of doing a basket. On the left you see that I have started coiling and have bent the first loop back on itself. I usually use a 4 wrap and then either an overhand stitch or a figure 8. On the overhand stitch you just go around the outside of the previous row. With the figure 8, you take the thread between the row that you are working on and the previous row. Both of the baskets in this photo are done in figure 8. It gives a greater separation between the rows.

Basically you just keep going round and round, wrapping 3 or 4 times and then doing a stitch around the previous row to fasten it. When you want to start building up the sides of the basket you just guide the wire to the place that you want it to go as you work.

Here's what I finished yesterday. I did the one on the far left all the way. The other three just needed finishing up and decorating with feathers.

That's another story. I will tell you about the tiny feathers later. I have to go now.

We are on our way to see the new James Bond movie. See you tomorrow.

A Tisket, A Tasket

Do you want to make a basket? I am in the mood for basket making instead of plaster work today......I can sit and watch TV and relax while I do that. So....You get to try your hand at it too.


Here are some that I made with the coiled method. When I work on these in miniature I use #32 cloth covered wire that comes on a spool and cover it wit two strands of embroidery floss. I use a #26 tapestry needle to do it. If you use over dyed thread you will get interesting patterns without trying. That is how the wall hanging in the center is done. If you want to do a design on your own like the one on the right you use two separate colors of thread and carry the one that you aren't wrapping with inside the wrap beside the wire. The main things that it takes to make these are good eyes and a lot of patience.



The second photo is of a group that I made with overdyed floss. The design just forms naturally as you are coiling. The feathers are parrot feathers from a friend's bird and the turquoise is real.



Rather than try to show you how to do this myself I will send you to a couple of websites that have excellent step by step instructions for full sized wrapped baskets. This is how I learned. If you follow their directions, substituting wire and floss for cording and yarn, you will get the hang of it in no time.


The first one that I am sending you to is for the basic basket instructions. It is the most clearly illustrated instructions for coiling that I have found. http://www.maizehutton.com/coilbasket.html


This second one has some more complicated stitches and a lot of background on real coiled baskets. It's very informative.
http://www.nativetech.org/basketry/index.html



Now go find some covered wire and some floss and make yourself a basket. That's what I am going to do. I will show you the results of my basket making tomorrow.



See you then.

Getting Plastered....

I'll bet that you thought I had taken to drink from all of the cleaning. Nope. I am very proud of myself for going back to work on the basket shop this morning. As you can see, I started right where I left off on the plaster work. I am moving right along on it. Here you can see that I am up to the front wall. I have the section around the door textured with the stencil brush and I have glue on the wall next to it, ready for the next rolled out piece of DAS.

The next photo shows the clay on the wall. It's not yet blended in to the other piece, textured or trimmed at the bottom. I just thought that you would like to see all of the steps it takes to get the plastering done.

I am using the rounded end of a small stencil brush(handle) to blend in the corners. The edges work fine with my fingers, but I can't get to the corners. If I try I get lots of marks from my fingernails and that's not pretty.

Last you get to see proof that I actually finished that wall. I am on the home stretch. One more end to do.

I am going to short change you today so that I can carry on with the last wall. If I finish it today, tomorrow I can paint. Then come the door and window. I don't like that part. When I used the DAS I made the door and window opening a bit smaller. That means an all new window and door frame to make. Bah Humbug! Why can't I leave well enough alone?

Meanwhile, here's a website to look at that is much more interesting than watching plaster dry.

If you would like to build your own mini furniture, this site has all kinds of patterns for real furniture that can easily be scaled down. There is a scaled ruler on each drawing. All you have to do is reduce it until that ruler is the right length. 1:12 and you have printed patterns. http://emporiumindonesia.com/Woodworking-Project-Plans/joinery/041-building-plans.htm Have fun looking. Then go build something. It will keep you busy until tomorrow.

See you then.

Pay No Attention to My Inner Six Year Old......

Tonight my husband gets home. It is down to the wire on cleaning the house and getting a little more done in the work room. Unfortunately, my inner six year old keeps popping in to help.

I vacuumed the house. Then I went and sorted some more stuff in the workroom. I found this while sorting........
It's the very first ever issue of Miniature Collector magazine! I had forgotten that I had it. It was from 1977. Maybe some of you remember when Miniature Collector was a small format magazine like Nutshell News. It was expensive for the time. The price on the cover is $2.50. There are still subscription forms inside. You could get it, if you subscribed, for the princely sum of 9.95 a year. Mind you, this was for only 6 issues.


Of course I had to sit down and read it from cover to cover. There is an article about making a sofa in the back that I might have to try. It still looks in style.


BTW, that's not my nicely manicured hand on the front cover. It is literally on the front cover. I think that it was there for scale purposes. All I have to say is that for the most part we have come a long way from that first issue to the realism that is shown in most miniature magazines now.


Back to the subject at hand. Next I went and cleaned up the kitchen. I hate dishes. You just have to wash them over and over again. I ate lunch off of a paper plate. I know that's not ecologically sound, but it was better than eating salad from the palm of my hand.

Time for another trip into the workroom. This time I worked all of 10 minutes. Then the six year old found this.


I got excited as only a six year old can about a blank scrap of #24 canvas and a pile of DMC floss from a garage sale. Hey! I had to try it out to see if it was still good thread, didn't I? After an hour I saw that it was still good.


Back to work. Dusting is another job that is never ending, especially when you live in desert country. I will just have to do it again when someone writes their name in the dust on the coffee table.

I went and started cleaning up the family room. That is always a good place to find something to distract. OH!!! The sack from Joanne's! Yes! It still is filled with the sock yarn I purchased yesterday with my coupons. I had to try out the yarn to see if it worked. Here you see the results. Yup! It works just fine for knitting socks. Please don't pay any attention to the different colored needles. I couldn't find a set. These are all the same size, but I am down to odds and ends needle wise. I am not going to tell you how many sets of #2 double pointed needles I have. Let's just say that someday I am going to be the proud owner of about 8 more pair of hand knitted socks. Please notice that I took the photo of the sock yarn inside the basket shop. Now it should count as miniature work. No? Rats! This six year old is not very good at pulling the wool over you eyes. No pun intended. At least I started a mini rug today and found a pattern for a couch to make in the future.

I'm going back to making my workroom into an atelier..... Maybe I should just shoot for "studio" for this week.

See you tomorrow.

Digging in the Files

Good Afternoon....I'm late. I went out craft shopping this morning. I had 40% coupons for Michael's and Joanne's burning holes in my pockets. When I got back I never managed to drag myself into the workroom(yes, it's still a workroom). I never went near the basket shop either. So I had to dig down deep into my files and come up with something to entertain.

First I found the original drawing for a bed that I designed and made for Pam Throop's Miss Marple's cottage that she did for Sarah Salisbury. Pam sent me a photo from a magazine that had a similar bed that had been painted and messed about with quite seriously. She wanted one with the "original finish", meaning wood. I went to the U of A Library and got my favorite book on English Victorian furniture and went to work. I always do my sketches on quad rule graph paper. Four squares to the inch makes it easy to draw out a one inch scale bed accurately.

Pam did the house in 1990, B. C.. That's Before Computers. It was a lot of phone calls and notes in the mail to plan things back then. How did we get along before these monsters came into existence? It wasn't easy.

After the sketch was approved I went to work with my trusty Exacto and files. I did the outline of the headboard on the Dremmel scroll saw, but the rest was all by hand. No rotary tool or anything electronic. I don't play well with those. Even the bedposts were "turned" with the Exacto.

Here is the bed at it's debut. I entered it in the TMS Miniature show and it won a first in the furniture class that year. Unfortunately I didn't have a digital camera back then and the photos aren't the greatest. I dressed it with antique linen handkerchiefs and did drawn and pulled work on the pillows.

I then sent it to her and she sent me back this Polaroid shot of it in Miss Marple's bedroom. This is probably the best photo that I have of it. I did the dressing table and little chair at the back of the room too. Sadly, I have no photos, other than this, of those pieces. It has a skirt with drawn work also. I have since learned to take photos of just about everything I do. I don't always keep them but at least I can say I did it.

When all was said and done, it got into Nutshell News in October of 1990. If you can find a copy of that the bottom photo on that page is the finished bedroom.......I tried blowing this photo up for you and it just fuzzed. I also did the wicker chair that sets at the end of the bed. She had a lot of different artisans working on furniture for that house. I was thrilled that I got to do the bed and other pieces. I think that it is in a museum somewhere now.

So much for the oldies but goodies. Please don't tell anybody that I didn't spend the day slaving away over a hot workroom. I'll get back to it. I needed a day off.

See you tomorrow.

Selective Creativity

That is what I am told that a lot of artists use. In other words, they subtract the non artistic qualities from a work to make a more creative statement. That's what I am doing with my studio. When it starts looking better I call it a studio. When it looks worse it's a workroom. If it looks really good I call it my Atelier. I very seldom lapse into French. I would say it is heading towards studio status today.

I actually found my worktable! It was under a foot of stuff. And I do mean stuff. I couldn't even call most of it supplies. About half went into the trash bin. I love my worktable. I really missed it. Now I have a small place to do small things.

I have been putting stuff away and throwing out for a couple of days now. I can do it this week because my husband is in Utah until Friday. I don't have to stop to clean up the rest of the house of cook. No excuses left for not doing it. Don't ask what the rest of the house is going to look like by Friday. My workroom will be, er I mean my Atelier will be clean.

However, when it comes to taking photos of my progress, this is where the selective creativity comes into play. You will notice that I have cropped all of the photos so close that you can't see the floor or adjoining areas. This one looks pretty good. I took it facing the window so that the glare protects you from seeing the excess stuff on the desk.....

Next we have the closet area. All of the drawers can now be closed. The wallpaper is all in it's own cubbyhole.

Please disregard the monkey hanging by his tail from the ceiling fan cord. He is there for comic relief when I start jumping up and down on things to deliberately break them. Then I have an excuse to throw them away instead of finding a place for them. He reminds me not to get that serious.

Again, you will see the artfully cropped floor and the outside of the closet. I think I am getting the hang of this creativity thing. All you have to do is cut the questionable stuff out of the picture. This is starting to be fun.

Here's the side that I face when sitting at the worktable.....It's the one that I am working on right now. It has not had the treatment. I still need to do some selecting and creating.

Since this one is a work in progress, there are some pretty messy areas. Every once in a while I go to one of my inspirational websites to keep me going.... No it's not religious or philosophical. It's the most amazing workspace for a craft person that I have run across. If you go to this site and go up to the top of the page and poke the little thumbnails you can see what I mean. http://www.teeshamoore.com/my_studio.htm This woman must either have a maid that cleans up after her or else she never works in the space. It has to be just for show. The floors shine!!!Give me that studio and I would have it in working condition in nothing flat. Oh well. I can dream. You can go and look at the rest of her site to see what she claims to do in that spottless room. Impossible!

I am going to go hide in a corner and sort tiny things now.

See you tomorrow.