Friday 20th August, 2010

More 1:12th scale revisited: Conservatory

I did have this conservatory assembled too, but dismantled it a couple of years ago and it has been in storage, then repacked by Mark and moved to the storage container for several months when my workroom was cleared out. I had never done the brick work on the walls but being on a roll after doing the Corner Toy Shop I went on with the walls for the conservatory. Believe it or not, this proved more tricky because the spaces were inset and quite small and the stencil didn’t want to bend at the edges.

Finally I cut a piece out of a smaller brick stencil I had and used that. I could then get it right up against the sides of the sections so there was no build-up underneath the stencil edges.


I also experimented with colours of the bricks a little bit, to see how it went. This project will be set in the present day and I want an aged brick appearance. So I added some of the grey/neutral compound I have to the red brick compound, to make a lighter colour.

Peter cut me a rear wall and a base for the setting. I plan to add other features around the conservatory itself, and have made the base and wall quite large – over 5 ¼” wider on each side than the building. Originally I wanted to put it on another base as well, to give it more dimension with steps leading down to a lower level, but I’ve put that part on hold just for now.

When I had nearly finished bricking that rear wall I realised that I had goofed – you are supposed to paint the timber first, to be the

grouting.  And I was doing the bricks on raw wood. I was really, really well and truly over it by the time I had finished bricking that large area. I made the mistake of doing too much – sticking to it for three days between both projects, well into the evening hours. Something to remember when I tackle the massive job of bricking my ‘Cadogan Gardens’ kit from Dollhouse Emporium.

I had to then undertake the extremely tedious task of going through and painting between the bricks with a dirty wash of different shades to cover that bare wood. It also got on to the bricks themselves no matter how careful I was but in the end I realised that it just added to the old, dirty brick effect of the wall that I wanted anyway. Some of the bricks have actually fallen off – they are really fragile at this stage. I will glue them back on and hope that once it is all varnished they will be more durable.

Back in February, when I unearthed the flowers and conservatory that I had previously had stored in Peter’s shed, I found that some of the flowers had disappeared – simply melted away. They must have been made of bread dough or something dissolvable, which wasn’t mentioned on the boxes that they were in when I bought them. I thought that they would have been properly made from clay or something lasting. How annoying when they weren’t cheap in the first place. I bought them online and the vendor is no longer in business. I have no clue about their maker.


Fortunately on our trip around Australia I bought some beautiful, beautiful, flowers from Kathy B in Western Australia so I have lovely things to put in there anyway. I will post photos of some of them another time.


Big decision – do I remove the bricks from inside the rear of the conservatory or do I leave them? Opinions please.