Down Sizing....

Rather than bore you with photos of shingles being glued, one by one, I decided to bore you by showing you how the 1/4" furniture starts. All of the sketches are done on 1/4" graph paper. Don't forget to poke the photos!

Yes, Tessie gets in on the designing once in a while, when I will let her have a pencil. She gets distracted and doodles a lot. Note the design to her right. She would rather do charm symbols than furniture. There are three on this page alone.

I have a notebook full of design ideas for quarter inch houses and furniture....You never know when the urge to build will hit.

The page that Tessie is playing with has, among other things, a hammock that I did for the cigar box mansion years ago. There are bent wire chairs and table. I did those for the same house. Made from ladies' hairpins.

If you look closely, you will even see a design for a bonnet...That one is yet to be built.

Here's a page that I was playing with later. It has several pieces that I used the plastic furniture stencil to get the exact size that I needed. The chase lounge pattern in the top row was done with that.

I must have had an idea for a curved sectional sofa....See top right hand corner.

The third page has some toys, people(for size), a staircase, golf bag, and a pattern for a couch and wing chair.

This is the way I get all of the garbage out of my brain and onto paper. Even if I don't execute the designs, I have them for when I need them. There is even a rough sketch of a spinning wheel at the lower left.

This page is just more random sketching. I am not sure why I drew a modern kitchen. It's there if I need it.

Are you getting the idea now?

Last is a partial page that has a bed. Does it look familiar? The draperies and the crown on the bed are the ones that I used on the second French daybed. I might just have to make a regular bed like this one.

I have pretty much decided that the Half Timber Wall House will be an updated house in the Victorian age. That gives me permission to use a lot more different styles of furniture than the Tudor style would give.

Now. About those tiny, little, stinking shingles.....Back to work. "Come on Tessie. Put the pencil down. Enough doodling. I need help!"

See you tomorrow.

My Favorite Things.....

This is not going to be anything like the song. No raindrops on roses. No whiskers on kittens. Someone on the Greenleaf forum asked how people determine what will happen with a new house or other building. How do you figure out what is going to be happening in the scene, what colors to use, in what time period will it be set?

Most of the time I have the building, room box or container in hand and the idea comes. Once in a while, for example the castle, the idea comes first and then I have to build the structure around the idea.

Whatever comes first, there is always some paper and pencil involved. Usually this is a quad rule "Planning Pad". They are available just about anywhere you go. I get most of mine at Wal-Mart. I would have to say that I would rather have one of these and a package of Bic pencils than anything else that someone give me to attempt to entertain me. I don't know how many of these I have filled over the years. They are my weapons of choice for just about everything, especially for minis.

I seem to have a weakness for new paper and new pencils. I think that the most memorable Christmas present when I was a kid was my very first ball point pen. I was fascinated with the fact that you never had to sharpen it and could keep writing and drawing indefinitely......No one told me that they leak, you can't erase mistakes and sooner or later they run out of ink. I think that I probably lost it somewhere before that happened.

Then there was my great uncle Hank. He worked at a print shop and always had all kinds of neat pads made of leftover paper to share. He would give me stacks of these little pads every time I saw him. Yup. He was my favorite uncle. I also loved the start of each school year. Nope. I didn't particularly want to go back to school. I just wanted the new notebook with fresh paper and the new yellow pencils and always a sharpener to go with them.....That always somehow got lost too. If I was desperate enough, I remember chewing on the pencil wood to get to the led. That was not a great way to sharpen them though. Are you starting to see a pattern here? New pencils and paper, give me some of each, and I am a happy camper. OK. I am over the daydream of paper and pencils now. Back to the subject.

The answer to the question that was asked at the beginning is notes, lots of notes, drawings, lists, and measurements. When I want to start a new mini project I pull out a planning pad and go to it.

I start with a page that is the outside of the structure. This usually has a rough sketch of what I plan to do with the building. For example, when I did the Buttercup bookshop, this is where I decided how the two kits would be cut and reassembled into one.

Next I do some pages for each of the floors of the house or shop. This is where I decide what the rooms are going to be and how they will coordinate. I do a floor plan of each story.

From there I do each room. On these pages go a scale drawing of the room with windows and doors. Then I decide what furniture will fit, colors and accessories are listed. I also make a note of what I will need to finish that particular room.

Many times these note and lists change daily. They aren't written in stone. That's the reason for a pencil with an eraser.

Here you see one of the pages from the basket shop. The plan for the worktable is at the top. I used the actual measurements on the page for the construction. At the bottom, I started with a plan for a stool. That one never got built. It may come in handy for another project. It stays where it is just in case.

This last photo is of a list of all of the projects that I still have to do. This particular list was a mistake....At the bottom of this page is the number 21. I did not turn the page to let you see that it goes on.....and on......Maybe I will sometime, but not today. It is two days before Christmas and I don't want to depress you.

See you tomorrow. Merry Christmas Eve Eve.