A Bauble, Beads and an Impartial Picker......

For the second day in a row I got to go out to the gem show and find myself a birthday present.

April and Seth took me out to breakfast and then the three of us went back to the segment of the gem show that is housed at Tucson Electric Park.(baseball stadium) We wandered around looking at goodies for about an hour.

The ring to the left is what I picked out. I am having to fight Tessie off with a big stick for this one. See the little loop at the end of the ring? That's a catch that fits over the little ball to keep the secret compartment closed. It's almost as good as a secret decoder ring. Actually, I like it better.


Tessie also likes it. She seems to think that it would be a good place to hide ingredients for spells.
As usual,(I am finally catching on to the system.)I brought her something to keep her happy. This time she got a Peruvian bunny. She seems to have a thing for bunnies.

It also helped that I replenished my supply of #15 seed beads with some new colors. She has some of them ear marked for bottle netting.

Now to the important business. I promised a drawing today. Walter was out playing golf, so I had to find an impartial substitute to draw the name of a winner of the followers prize.

I turned to the commander of the house. He is the most impartial being around here. He is pretty much impartial to everything but food. That's Mookie.

I wrote the names of all of the people that made a comment on the blog the other day and folded the papers so that he couldn't peek. Then I told him to put his nose on the one that he wanted to pick. He shuffled them well with his paws then laid down on them. Here you see him putting his nose down on the chosen one.....And the winner is.......Kathi of Beautiful Mini Blessings http://beautifulminiblessings.blogspot.com/ !

Kathi, if you will e mail me with your snail mail addy, we will make arrangements to get your surprise to you ASAP.

Mookie says, "Congratulations!"

Tessie says, "But I wanted that!"

Sorry Tessie, Mookie didn't choose you.

Congratulations, Kathi!

See you tomorrow.

Taking the Day Off.....

It has become a tradition. The first day of the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show is usually right around my birthday. This year it was on my birthday! We use that as an excuse to celebrate.

Walter always lets me pick something out. That way he is sure to get what I like. Smart Walter.

This year I split it 7 ways....Yes. I said 7. Sounds extravagant? Nope. He got off for $25.00 in all.

First I picked out a pendant that I thought was a very cute mouse. It is carved bone and hand painted. It was not terribly expensive. It is amazing what the prices are on things at this show. I turned it over to see the back.....Carved into the bone was "Year of the Rat"! It was one of the Chinese characters for the year that you were born. I am not a rat. I am a horse. I don't care. There were no horses and anyway, I liked the rat.

I wandered around some more and found a table where another Chinese lady was selling pulled glass pendants for 2.00 each or 6 for 10.00 Yup that was the other six pieces.

When I got them home, Tessie immediately adopted the red glass lizard. He is supposed to hang by his tail on a chain....She is now trying to figure out how to animate him. The other five pendants didn't appeal to her, so I guess I can have those. Very generous of her.

I did buy a couple of other things. The triangular cabochon that Tessie is holding in this photo is, believe it or not, dinosaur bone! It is beautifully polished and the color is much prettier than the photo. I am going to do some bead work around that....If I can get it away from Tessie.

Problem easily solved. I am smarter than I look. I bought two miniature, hand painted Mexican pots. She is under the impression that I am trading those for the dinosaur bone. Ha! Don't tell her that I bought those with her in mind anyway. Chalk one up for my side!

I am going to go plan some beading now.

See you tomorrow.

...But I Digress....

I had quite a few people asking questions about the beading that I did on the swamp water bottle. So.....I decided to do a short, but by no means detailed tutorial on how to do net beading.

There are lots of places on the net that you can find page after page on how to do different bead work stitches.

I will show you the simplest version and explain how I do it. Each beader has their own method for doing the different stitches.

In this case, I am just doing a couple of rows on a pen as an example.

First, there is the base row. For a beginner to practice, I recommend using contrasting beads to set it up. It is much easier to count the beads if you do. For this one, I did 30 beads. Four gold and then an antique gold, six times. I then went back to the first bead and went through them all again I left a tail of about 5" to have something to tie a knot with. When I had gone around twice, I tied a knot tightly between the beads. Leave the tail. Later you thread it back through some of the beads and cut it off. Some people like to put glue on the knot. That's up to you. I is also up to you how close together your marker beads are placed. If you wanted a smaller net you could cut down the number of gold beads between them.

Now, to start the net work, you take up an odd number of beads on your needle. In this case, I was doing 9 beads total. Four gold, one antique gold and then 4 more of the gold. This makes it easier to find the center bead and also makes a nice accent in the net.

When you get back to the beginning of the row, go through the marker bead and continue on down to the center of the next loop to that marker bead and come out through that one.

That puts you in place to start the next row.

Continue with the pattern as many times as you want. I only did two rows, because I just wanted to demonstrate starting, stitching the rows and fastening off.

When you have the area covered that you want to do, simply start another row, but this time you will go to the number of beads that you started with and pull them up tightly and go around again. Fasten off by starting to go around again but make a few half hitch knots between a few of the beads. Then run it through a bit farther and cut the thread.

I didn't try to make the netting fit the pen, because I was just trying to demonstrate. If you were serious about covering the object, you would start with a divisible number that was closest to fitting tightly around the object in question.

When I did the bottle, I started with just enough to fit around the neck. The next row, I did loops of five beads. To expand around the bottle as it got larger, I did two rows of 7 stitches. Then I did several rows of nine. At this point you ahve to keep pulling it down to see if it fits. You also have to keep the thread fairly tight so that there are no gaps between beads.

On Tessie's bottle, I had to decrease the number of beads as the bottle got smaller at the bottom. I finished it off with three beads between the loops to pull the netting down to the shape of the bottle. Then I went through the last row twice and fastened it off.

I decided that the stopper for the bottle would be OK with just a few beads strung up on wire. That finished it off nicely.

Now about this photo of Tessie and her bottle....I brought out a few items done in peyote stitch. Some of you expressed an interest in doing that. As I said before, there are all kinds of tuts for round peyote on the net. I just wanted to show you what can be done with peyote stitch going round and round.

Tessie is holding a perfume sample bottle that I made into a pendant. The rings under her feet were made around a form that was the same size as the finger I wanted to wear them on. The earrings were made around an orange stick and then slid off to put on the fringe. The two taller objects are simply tubes that the beads come in when you buy them. These are all basically straight sided cylinders. No increases or decreases.

When you have been at it for a while, you will learn to increase and decrease by adding and taking away beads.

This is what happens when you do that.

Someone asked about stoppers. For the bottle that Tessie is trying to take away, the cork is in front of it. I started with a circular peyote mandala and then when it was the size of the top of the cork, I simply stopped increasing and went down the sides in a tube.

The pencil is mostly just plain round peyote. Close to the point and just below the eraser, I decreased a couple of stitches so that it wouldn't slip off.

Tessie is trying her hardest to shrink the bottle in the last photo. It's not going to happen. It has rubbing alcohol in it and everyone knows that can't be shrunken. I think that does something to the properties of the bottle. I am keeping that one.

Back to work.

See you tomorrow.

Welcome!

This morning there are six new party goers.

Out of the shadows comes msfierce7 and stampijill.

From the front of the list with pretty pictures, but no info, are Ingrid, Patricia, and Rae.

Then there is Wendy Luane Barber from World of Wendy Lu. http://worldofwendylu.blogspot.com/ I like her attitude. Her profile starts with this sentence. "My goal is to do something I like to do, every single day for the rest of my life." Her blog is about doll making, other crafts and life in general. Go see!

Welcome to the party! Come on in and sit a spell. Have a cupcake.

"Where Are MY Bottles?"

You are my witness. Two days ago Tessie said that I should practice on one of the large bottles that I got at the antique mall, before starting hers.

This is as far as I got. I started a collar around the bottle of choice. Then I got distracted and worked on a cabochon for a while.....That's when she caught me.

She pointed at my bottle and exclaimed, "You aren't even working on the practice bottle. You are doing something else entirely!" Then, "Stop that right now! If you aren't going to practice, then you should go straight to covering one of my bottles. Let's start with the one for swamp water."

I was having fun with the cabochon. Then I stopped having fun, with her bottle.

Come to find out, the shape of this one was strange and it was more difficult to cover than I thought it would be. Besides, the beads that I had chosen were boring.

I started it with a collar of antique gold #14 beads, leaving a tail about 5" long. I strung an even number that would fit around the neck. I went through all of the beads again for strength and tied a knot.

Here you see the start of the second row of Peyote stitch. That's the pale green that you see. I string through one of the gold, put on a green, pull it up tight, skip the bead that is directly above it and go through the next one. I kept doing that until I reached the starting point. Then I went through the gold bead and stepped down by going through a green bead. That set me in place to do the next row.

If I kept doing just that, the tube that I was creating would go straight down and not work on the pudgy bottle. I had to do a row of increases. That consisted of adding one single bead and then two. Alternating between those, I increased the number of beads in a row by half. I needed a pretty sharp flair to fit the bottle.

Each bottle will be different, so this isn't really meant as a tut. There are lots of places on the net that will teach you how to do Peyote stitch. Just Google Peyote stitch instructions or something similar and take your pick.

Anyway, I took the bottle with me to the Wednesday Witches mini meeting in the afternoon.

I kept going and kept disliking it more and more. It was too dark and dreary. If I covered the whole bottle, nobody could actually see what was inside.

By the time I got home, It was about 3/4 covered and I really didn't like it.

Tessie took one look at it and said, "It looks like my Aunt Fern's funeral urn! Yuck!"

I guess that gave me the push that I needed to take most of the beads off and start over.




This morning I took all of the beads off, right up to the collar. Then I decided that netting would be better than Peyote stitch, because it would allow one to see what was inside.

It is still a bit boring. I just used antique gold, with shiny gold at the intersections. I may go back in and put something bright in at the top of each diamond shape to liven it up.

Tessie agreed to pose with the boring jug if I would let her have the beaded mat as compensation.

Did you know that the Victorian ladies made mats like this for their tables? They were evidently all the rage in the 1860s. I have Peterson's Magazine for women in bound volumes for 1860 through 1865. There are lots of needlework patterns in them, including several patterns for beaded mats. They used beads about the size of our plastic pony beads to make them. Sorry. Once again, I got sidetracked. Back to the subject at hand.

As you can see, I am almost to the bottom of Tessies's first Swamp Water Jug, as she calls it. If I don't stop writing and finish beading it, she is going to start harassing me. I would rather bead than be harassed.

See you tomorrow.
P. S. Kim asked about my beading surface. It is a piece of one of those old velour"velux" blankets from the 80s and 90s that are kind of on a net/foam foundation. They work wonderfully for beading. They can be cut to any shape or size and the beads don't sink down into the fabric. When you go to pick a bead up with a needle, it is much easier because the texture of the blanket is like a very stiff velvet and the beads kind of "float" above it. it is soft but extremely thick. The beads don't bounce around on it like they do on regular fabric either. I think that there are places in the beading world that sell mats made out of this fabric, but they seem to be a bit expensive. At least they were the last time I checked. I cut it to fit in an old picture frame.

The Party is Three Hundred Strong!

This morning I awoke to 3oo people officially following this blog! Amazing!

When I started this blog almost two years ago, I never dreamed that anybody would read it, let alone follow it. I didn't even know what followers were until I was stumbling around on dashboard one day and discovered that I had some. I had to stumble around some more to see what that meant.

I am now the proud host of a wild party that just keeps going. I have a few new people to greet before we get on to other things.

I am always forgetting that blogger hides people without photos at the end of the list. If I have missed welcoming anyone, please forgive me.

From that part of the list, I found Aino of Tiitelintaatelin tuuteli http://tiiteli.blogspot.com/ She has minis and other crafts featured on her blog.

Also from that part of the list are some other mysterious people in the shadows......Snowberry,Merchu,Olivia.K.Alexander,Marika,Whittedraak,Irene, and Melabelo

Some people from the front of the list are Cheryl, Troy Bettridge,Pepi_mali, Evelyne M, Black Box and Miniannalee. They have the photos, but no info that I could find.

Next there is Lotte of Loten Nukkekotipaivakirja http://lottasatomaa.wordpress.com/ Her shoes are out of this world.

Then there is Claudia of Mockingbird Hill Cottage http://mockingbirdhillcottage.blogspot.com/ Her blog is mostly about living in a wonderful vintage cottage. Really neat.

Now about that three hundred......We need to really party. There will be a surprise in the mail to one of my followers. If you are a follower and want to get in on it, please send a comment to this entry. Followers may be old or new. In other words, you can sign up as a follower and make a comment, but you must be on the followers list. One comment per person please. I will give you until midnight of my birthday to comment. That is Saturday, January 30. On Sunday January 31, I will draw a name out of the hat and that person will, upon sending me their snail mail address, receive a surprise gift. I am celebrating 300 followers and my birthday all in one. Now LET'S PARTY!!!!!!!!!

P.S. I decided to make this my entry for today. I'll be back with the beaded bottles tomorrow.

See you then!

Bottles for the Pond Scum......

I didn't set out to look for bottles for the attic this morning. I just wanted a slow stroll around the antique mall.....I got bottles.

But first I found a Pfalsgraff bowl in black for my kitchen. Then I found this cute Japanese Candy dish with a curlicue handle. I have a weakness for 1920 to 194o design. Evidently, so does Tessie. She immediately jumped in and announced that it would make a great bathtub, "And it even matches my apron. See the little blue circular flowers! Just like my apron."

I told her she could either have that or some bottles to store her pond scum and swamp water. She decided that I could have the candy dish back.

As I walked around the mall, I happened on a booth that I hadn't seen before. Or maybe it was just new merchandise. This booth had all kinds of fancy perfume bottles. I pretty much ignored those and went for a basket that had old sample bottles in it. The ones without stoppers were dirt cheap.

I bought four of them for Tessie's attic. That made her day. I also bought a couple of larger ones without stoppers. Those, I am going to use for bead work. I usually make beaded cork stoppers for them, so I didn't need the tops. I am just glad that the people selling these things seem to think of them as useless if they don't have a top.

Unfortunately, when Tessie asked what I was going to do with the big ones, I wasn't quick enough to think of an answer that would make her lose interest. Instead, when I said I was going to do bead work on them, her eyes lit up and she said, "Oh good. You can practice on those and then when you are good enough I will let you do my pond scum bottle. I would like it in green and yellow to match the scum. Then you can do one for Swamp water in blue and brown. I will have to think about the other two."

I bought a big bag of cancelled stamps from all over the world. They come in handy for all kinds of things in mini as well as they do for big art and craft projects.

Tessie already found a bunch of Irish stamps that are paintings of birds that she likes. I saw quite a few that are promising.

The last thing in the bag was a treasure. It is a paperback book from 1984. "Creative and Collectible Miniatures" by Lillian Baker. It's one that I had never seen before. I am guessing that many copies of that one were relegated to the waste basket. It has a lot of black and white photos(only a few color photos) and good descriptions. However, the pricing guide in it consists of maybe ten pages in the back and when I looked through that, I couldn't find even one company or store that is still in business. When I have a chance, I am going to sit down and go through it more thoroughly. Right now, Tessie has it and is marking photos of things that she needs badly.....

Me? I keep looking at the photos and thinking that we have come a long way in miniatures since 1984.

See you tomorrow.

"Tessie!!! Drop the Match!!!"

It was a close call! I found Tessie trying to build a campfire in the attic this morning!

I got there just in time and wrestled the match and box away from her. She didn't even heed the warning to close the lid. The tea shop would have been a pile of charcoal if I had been a minute later.

I swept the kindling away and she whined, "But I was using a mat between the wood and the floor. I need a place to brew and stew."

I knew that I would get no peace until she had a place to cook. "OK Tessie, we will make you a hot plate."

"What do you mean by 'we'?" she asked. "Is Zar going to help? I don't want one of his weirdo contraptions. I want a real electric-ricity one. I want a plug and a place to plug it in. Instant on."

I decided to go for it. First I Googled "electric hot plate" in images. They were all pretty simple. Just a square base, round heating coil and a couple of knobs.

Here's Tessie with all of the pieces that I used. I didn't really measure. The base is about an inch square and around 3/16" thick. I rounded all of the top edges and corners.

I used a piece of Dark Annealed Steel Wire from the hardware store for the coiled burner. I don't have the package for that any more, but it looks like #20. I coiled with a pair of needle nosed pliers and kept it as flat as I could. I used #24, coiled around a toothpick for the cord.

Beside those pieces, I used two black flat beads for the knobs and a #6 black bead for the plug. I also picked out 4 white seed beads for the feet. That jar behind Tessie comes in handy for all sorts of odd beads.

I found a piece from one of the watches that was a round circle just the right size for the burner to sit on.

I painted the block white and glued the ring and then the burner to the top, the two black beads to the front and the four white beads to the bottom for the feet.

I glued the #6 bead to the end of the coiled cord and glued an extra, short piece of wire into the hole for the other prong of the plug.

Then I glued the other end of the cord to the bottom of the hotplate.

Now that it's done, Tessie is anxiously awaiting the test firing. Please excuse the pun. She keeps wailing that the bat wing stew is going to get cold and not properly cooked if it isn't plugged in soon.

I have to go make a place for her to plug in the hotplate. She is threatening to find the box of matches if I don't hurry.

See you tomorrow.

It's in the Dictionary......Honest.

Tessie made her list and I made the boxes. She had one more label on her list than I had boxes. Instead of making more boxes, I suggested that she get rid of something on her list. You will probably have to poke the picture to read the list.

I noticed that she has "Ant Whiskers" at the top of her list and "Octodecillion Ant Hairs" down a ways. I tried to talk her out of the second one. "Why do you need a second box of ant parts and why name it that?" I asked.

"Because that's how many ant hairs there are in the box! It is important that I be exact in counting. I don't want to have to do it again. And besides, I don't want to mix the ant whiskers and ant hairs in one box." she said.

She finally decided to let one go for the time being and of course it was the one with less letters that she got rid of. I looked "octodecillion" up in the Webster's Universal and was surprised to find that it really is a word. There is no way that she counted that high! It is a 1 with 57 zeros behind it....That's a lot of ant hair!!!

I proceeded to make twelve boxes for parts. I am sure that there will be more, but that's all I am willing to make today.

When I finished them, Tessie took them all and labeled them. Then, not satisfied, she illustrated what was in them. Have you ever seen a box with two ears? Very weird.

She dragged them up to the attic and started arranging them.

I looked in on her. "There's no place to put my rubber chicken!"

"Stick it in with the ant hairs." I suggested.

Nope. It seems that rubber chickens and ant hairs don't mix. She wouldn't tell me what the result would be, but she did specify that it would be a disaster to mix the two.....


Meanwhile, Zar heard the commotion in the attic and having to get in on everything, he found a way up.

Tessie specifically ordered no stairs because she didn't want anybody nosing around up there.

Now she knows how Zar feels when she tries to get into the secret room.

Please note that she has her hand poised over the Politesse Powder box. I had to look that one up too. It means "formal politeness"....I assume that the powder, if thrown on somebody(Zar)will make them polite. I also believe that she just likes the word because it has part of her name included in it.

Anyway, soon after she threw a handful at him, he politely excused himself and apologised for invading her privacy. He said, " I am so sorry. I will get down now and I will straighten things up in the tea shop. Then I will quietly leave the premises."

I wonder if that powder works on the person that made it. Nah.....Tessie would never make something that could work on herself instead of Zar. One can only dream.......

See you tomorrow.

Little Boxes in the Attic....Soon....

This is going to be short and sweet today. Tessie wants lots of storage boxes for her attic. I have just now printed them. I probably won't get them made and ready until tomorrow. I have other things that need to be done in the real world today.

These boxes were off of one of my favorite sites for printies. If you have not been there, I suggest that you go. Jim's site is one that I discovered when I first started working with the computer and have used it many times. He always seems to have what I need. http://www.printmini.com/printables/

I needed storage boxes and he had them. Tessie is very excited. She will now have a place to store her Ant Whiskers, Caterpillar Fur and other things. She is busily making labels. There is one labeled Misc. Parts. I don't think I want to see what she is going to store in that box.

I noticed that she has one labeled Pond Scum....I don't think that is going to work in a box. Now we are going to have to start looking for bottles too.

If you do the plain boxes, be sure to fold the ink to the inside. It will look more like a real box. That's what I am going to do with these. Then Tessie will have to glue the labels on the outside.

Anyway, while I am doing other things, she told me to remind you of her favorite French printies site. I ran onto this one via a French embroidery blog. http://minipitou.free.fr/ If you are interested in boxes, this site has lots of places to go look. On the first page go to "imprimables". Then you can look under "boites" or translate it with babel fish or Google and you will find that it has a vast collection of all kinds of sites for all kinds of printies. It also has all kinds of tutorials listed.

Have a good day and have fun searching.

See you tomorrow.

....But I have Money!

Tessie is now the proud owner of a set of new shelves. Now the only problem is, how will she fill them all? She wanted big. She got big!

You saw the basic shelving unit yesterday. This morning I added a strip of chair rail to either vertical side of the front. Then I mitered crown molding to go around the top edge.

In this first photo you can plainly see where the pieces are added.

Then I sanded it all down and painted it white. I sanded it again and gave it a second coat.

Now it is hard to see where one piece of wood ends and another starts.

After it dried, I added some of the paper edging that I used on the shelves in the hanging cabinet on the other end of the room.


She has already started putting stuff on the shelves, but she doesn't have nearly enough to fill them. I imagine she will expect me to help with that. Theo is still hanging around, trying for cupcakes. He is a very determined tiger.

As soon as Zar got a whiff of what was happening, he showed up once again. Tessie didn't lock the door and he just walked right in without an appointment.

She glared at him and said accusingly, "You failed to make an appointment. Get out!"

Somehow, I don't think that is a winning way to treat potential customers. Appointment or no appointment.

Zar doesn't give up that easy when it comes to cupcakes. He responded with, "I have money and I want to make an appointment right now."

Tessie calmly looked him up and down and replied, "I shall have to change the sign. Appointments have to be made in advance. I need time to bake what you want."

"But you have cupcakes right there on the shelf."

"Those are reserved for a special client."

Zar gazed longingly at the three chocolate cupcakes on the golden plate in front of her. Then he repeated, "I have money."

Tessie calmly took all of the money he was holding in his hand(a nice crisp ten dollar bill) and replaced it with a single cupcake. Then she turned, took the golden plate in hand and strolled over to Theo. Zar watched with his mouth agape as she carefully, bite by bite, fed the two remaining cupcakes to Theo As she did, she cooed to Theo....."Nice kitty. Theo is a good kitty and gets free samples."

Then she turned to Zar and said......"HE made an appointment yesterday!"

I am leaving now, before the next argument starts. I have a feeling it may turn into a food fight and I don't want to get in the middle.

See you tomorrow.

Here's What We Need.......

Tessie is anxious to finish the tea shop. She is even pitching in and helping here and there.

I decided to do the ruffled valences for the windows this morning. The winds are coming up and a storm is headed this way in the real world, so inside is a better place to be today. Tessie insists that she needs the windows finished before the storm hits. I think that is just a way to get me to work on the tea shop. How could the storm outside possibly get into the tea shop?

The first order of business was to redo the pin board. It was to the point that I couldn't see the graph on the paper.

For those of you that haven't seen me do this before, the basis for the pin board is a piece of acoustical ceiling tile. I work on the smooth back side. As you can see, this one is well used.

I lay sheets of quad rule paper on it, lining it up so that the squares match up on the overlap. I tacked them down and around to the back with blue painter's tape. Then, over that, I wrap a layer of waxed paper. That is to keep the ink on the paper from running onto the fabric that you are working with.

Here you see the valences pinned to the board.

First I cut the fabric twice the width of the area that I wanted to cover and as long as I wanted the valence. In this case it was 1 3/4" X 11". The window area that I wanted to cover was 5 1/2" wide. I just arbitrarily measured the length.

The next step was to run a fine line of white glue all the way around and smear it out. This is to keep the fabric from raveling.

I stitched a gathering thread about a quarter inch from the top. You could do it by machine. I did it by hand. It was faster than getting out the machine out and setting it up.

I pinned the top and bottom of one edge in a straight line, following the graph. Then I pulled up the gathering threads to the width that I wanted to cover and pinned the top and bottom of that side.

Then I pulled in 1/2" of fabric to make a quarter inch pleat and put a pin in the top and the bottom. Each pin has the head facing away from the body of the curtain to make it tight. You should be able to run a fingernail over the center of the pleated area and have the pleats pop right back up after the nail.

Next, you spray them with pump, max hold hairspray. Don't be afraid to get them wet. Let them dry or use a hair dryer if you are impatient.

When the fabric is completely dry, take out the pins and glue them in place.


As you can see, Tessie's curtains are in place and will stand up to gale forces.

I put the shelf in place to see how it fit. Tessie said that she guessed it would have to suffice.

If I had made it any bigger, I would have to add an annex to the building.....Shush! Don't give her any ideas.

She has started a list of things with which to fill the shelves. She used an 11 strip that I cut off of the side of the graph paper......I took the pencil away from her after she ran out of room on the first side and was about to start on the second. It was a struggle, but I won.

I have to go now. She is madly searching for another pencil and I am just as madly hiding any that I can find. Her list is long enough and she hasn't even started planning the attic yet.....

See you tomorrow.

"You Don't Have an Appointment!"

"I have a key and I'm not afraid to use it! Theo, get away from the cupcakes!!!" That was how my morning started. Tessie has started filling tables, and shelves to see how they will fit in the tea shop. It seems that Theo has a sweet tiger tooth. Here, all this time, I thought that they liked meat.

Tessie grabbed the plate of cupcakes from the table and put them high in the wall cupboard and locked it. I didn't bother to tell her that there is no glass in the front openings.

This is not the permanent table arrangement. I believe that she is going to have to settle for two smaller tables and maybe four chairs.

She is still talking "By appointment only.". Her theory is, that will make the shop more exclusive. "Everybody will want to be able to say that they had tea at Tessie's." she told me.

She is doing well at filling the worktable and the hanging shelf. I did notice that she thought nothing of swiping Zar's cappuccino machine. Somehow there is a double standard around here. Her side of the standard is a lot larger than the standard of the rest of the world.

Thanks to Debbie at Tiny Treasures
http://debbiestinytreasures.blogspot.com/ she has a golden tea service to serve special guests. I won it at Debbie's birthday drawing last year. Tessie confiscated as soon as she saw it.

I have started making boxes of teas from various printies websites. I am going to need a lot more, because Tessie wants some for the attic.

I did start a shelf unit for the opposite end of the shop. Tessie took one look at it and declared it "adequate". She was hoping for something larger. That's as big as I could make it and still fit it into the shop. I still have to sand and paint it.

She is presently perusing my cookbook collection for recipes. I hid the cupcake book that I received for Christmas in '08. I am officially through with cupcakes.

She already has lots of cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, larger cakes, tea and coffee. That's not enough. Now she wants all of the shelves filled. If this place is by appointment only, I think that she should bake as she goes. I am not going to stand around and wait to fill orders.

By the way, I also hid the Steampunk water pistol. Poor Zar is not going to get pulled into cupcake making. He has enough to do in his own house.

I seem to remember my list saying that the Clockwork Cottage would be finished first.....I wonder what she did to reverse the order? Maybe if I finish the tea shop she will be out of my hair for a while, keeping up with appointments.

I am quiting for the day. I need a vacation from Tessie. It's Wednesday. I get to spend the afternoon with other mini witches.

See you tomorrow.

You Call That a Door???

I managed to escape from the evil uneven exchange juice. The dose was too small to keep me wanting to build a stove more than a few minutes. Thank Goodness!!!

Sometimes it is really good to be the overgrown one in the family, as Tessie has dubbed me.

I decided that I should get a door on the tea shop before Tessie started nagging again.

I furthermore decided that It should somewhat match the windows, so I started with illustration board and worked out.

I didn't want a solid door on the shop, so I measured out the molding for the edges of the door and then cut rounded corners on the mat board to fit it.

I glued the molding to the outside of the door then I flipped it over and put a piece of the plastic in the oval and the molding over that.

I had it setting in clamps when Tessie came out of the tea shop. She took one look at it and named this entry for the blog. "You call that a door? It looks terrible. It needs to be all one color and it has no knob or lock. How am I going to keep anybody out with that thing?"

She finally ran out of breath. I grabbed it and quickly painted it. That appeased her a bit.

I dug into my hardware drawer and found a doorknobs with face plates that had keyholes.

I propped the door in place and she decided it was OK after all. Sparkly gold doorknob. Two sparkly keys. What's not to like?

I went away for a while to work on something real sized. When I returned, she had put the crowning touch on the door.


You can poke the photo and read, or I can tell you what it says......"Cupcakes By Appointment Only"

She turned and looked at me. She said, "There! I have the keys. I am locking the doors and if anybody wants to buy a cupcake they will have to hunt me down."

I noticed in the last photo that the glass in the door needs a good washing. I wonder if Windex works in her water pistol.......

See you tomorrow.

Longing for a Cupcake......

Yesterday, after I had the windows finished, Zar decided to see if he would be able to open them, once the building was closed.....Unfortunately, Tessie heard and saw what he was doing, stepped up behind him and pointed the Steampunk water pistol at him. As she did, she snarled at him...."Drop the pliers, Buster!" Then, without warning, she doused him with whatever juice was in the gun.

He obediently dropped the pliers and walked away in a sort of trance.

By the way, before I forget, I finished the windows by cutting plastic to fit and sandwiched it between the two pieces of each frame with Aileen's Fast grab. Then I cut thin strips of the golf leading tape with scissors and stuck it to both sides of the window in the same pattern. Then I painted the panes of "glass" with clear nail polish on the outside surface to make it wavy.

I fitted them in the windows, but I still have to cut arches of trim for the area above the windows on the inside.

I still have to do something about the tiny triangle between the top of the double window.....I am still thinking about that. Maybe I will just put a bird's nest in there.

Meanwhile, Tessie informed me this morning that she stayed up all night and guarded the doorway to make sure that the juice didn't wear off of Balthazar, so that he could come back and invade.

A little while ago Zar showed up at the front, door less, door of the tea room. He had bags and armfuls of boxes of tea and coffee of all kinds.

I heard him begging for just one more strawberry cupcake in exchange for the coffee and tea.

Tessie finally took the coffee and tea, gave him one tiny strawberry cupcake and sent him on his way.

She turned to me and said....."That will teach him. The juice was an "uneven exchange spell". I get to trade whatever I want from him for a measly cupcake."

She started stacking the beverages inside. The last thing she said with a grin...."It's good for three trades. That was all the coffee and tea I will need to open the shop. Let's see if he can crochet tablecloths...." and then....."And I am going to need lots of other things besides cupcakes to sell. You get him an oven and I will tell him what to bake."

Suddenly I have a strange urge to build a stove for the Clockwork Cottage.....I wonder where that came from. Oh look. My hand is all wet....How did that happen? "Tessie, I need a cupcake!"

See you tomorrow.

Alleviating Cupcake Theft......

"You have to do something about the open windows in the tea shop! Do it now!!!" That was Tessie wailing at me about 3:30 AM. I have said before that some of my best ideas come about that time of morning.....I am now of the belief that Tessie helps out by whispering in my ear to wake me up with ideas.

I was not about to get up at that time of night/morning to fix her windows, but it stuck in my mind and I couldn't get back to sleep.

It seems that Tessie set up my camera to take photos of proof of theft. She caught Zar sneaking away with one of the strawberry cupcakes behind his back. He swore up and down that he didn't do it.......Sorry Zar. You are busted!

The tea shop building came without windows and I am not of a mind to spend a lot of money on it, so I went the old fashioned route. "Use it up, wear it out. Make it do, or do without." I decided to cheat. Shhhh......

I held up a piece of paper to the odd shaped windows and traced them. Then I went and got some illustration board from my stash.

While I was at it, I also picked out some heavy poster board, some scraps of plastic packaging and some #3 white Perle cotton.

I cut out 3 of the window shapes from the illustration board and fitted them to the windows, trimming them where needed.

I numbered them to the window that each fit into. Then I drew the shape for the inside of the windows and cut that out.

Next I took the Perle cotton and some white glue and edged both the inside and the outside of the window frames. Then I painted them with gesso on the side that would be showing. In the first photo you see these steps from left to right.

After they dried, I painted them to match the rest of the building. The outsides will be antique white and the insides plain old white.

Tessie couldn't wait until I finished them to show you. I fitted the first one in place and stuck the plastic behind it. It still needs to be treated to not look like plastic.

She was satisfied, but did suggest iron bars. I told her that wouldn't be very inviting for regular customers and she had to agree.

Then she turned and looked at me and straight faced she said,"You are going to put in a door, aren't you? I need that done today too." And then....."No more free cupcakes for anyone!!!"

She marched inside, picked up the Steampunk water gun, perched herself on the director's chair and aimed it at the door.

I doubt if she will have any trouble with looters for a while. I am finishing the windows and the door as fast as I can. She may decide to turn it on me if I don't finish today....I don't even want to know what she has it loaded with this time.

Someone please tell me why I armed her in the first place.... What was I thinking?

See you tomorrow.

The Last Cupcake......

I went to frost the cupcakes this morning when they cooled from the oven and discovered that my Spackle was rock hard. My other choice was gesso. That was just right.

My cupcakes don't compare to the ones that some of the others in blog land make, but they must taste OK. Tessie and the gang seem to like them.

She volunteered to help frost......Yes......Ulterior motives were uppermost in her mind.

She got a lot more frosting on her fingers(she had to stop and lick it off about every 5 minutes)than she did on the cupcakes.

I kept hearing,"Oops! There goes another one." She figured out that if she dropped a cupcake it would automatically land frosting side down on the tile. They are top heavy, don't you know? Then, since the tile was clean, she could get away with scooping it up with the end of a toothpick. Then she would announce,"Oh no! This can't go back in the bowl. I guess I will just have to make the sacrifice and eat it."

After losing a number of cupcakes to that ploy, I shooed her away and told her to go see if the varnish was dry on the work table for the tea room.

That kept her out of my hair, and the cupcakes for about ten minutes. I managed to get some decorations on three of the larger cakes while she was away. I used tiny hole-less beads on two of them and a yellow silk rose on another. I hear that people are decorating their real wedding cakes with silk flowers nowadays. If big people can do it, I don't see why mini people can't do it too.

When she returned, she started pointing here and there, saying,"I'll have that one and that one and those over there." Then she said, "Can't you frost any faster?"

I ignored her. She left.

I started hearing rattles and bangs in the tea shop. Then I noticed that some of the cakes were disappearing in little puffs of smoke. Strangely, they seemed to be the very ones that she had pointed at.

I heard voices in the tea shop. Curiosity got the better of me. I went and looked.

There was Tessie in her director's chair and Zar was standing close by with a strawberry cupcake in hand.

The table was covered with cakes and each of them had a cup of tea.

I heard Tessie say,"OK. This is your last free cupcake, Balthazar." She always uses his full name when she is serious."This is, after all, a business and I have to make money. If you keep eating the merchandise, I will be closed in a week."

Actually, I was thinking that it would be a shorter length of time than that, because.......I am NOT making more cupcakes to fill the cupboards. If Tessie wants more, she is going to have to make them herself. It is her business!

I am going to go do something in big people size, as Tessie calls it. It's her turn to mind the store.

See you tomorrow.