It's finished but I'm not really happy with it!

First of all - Welcome Beatrice!  How nice that you came to share my mini adventures.  I do hope you will visit regularly.  My family and friends look blankly at me as if considering whether I need to be committed when I talk miniatures so I truly love sharing with like-minded mini friends online.  Please feel free to comment and keep in touch!

To continue the story of the Corner Shop.  I showed you the walls glued and clamped.  Here it is without the clamps on.  Those front edges need retouching with paint, but I'm showing it warts and all.

Walls assembled

 

Saturday evening it was time to face up to the part I had been really, really nervous about doing: the clay on the exterior.  Not the clay itself, but marking the bricks onto the clay.  I do have a mould to use but it is at the house and inaccessible at the moment, not here at the caravan.  And I knew that doing them by hand I would not get them remotely even.  And sure enough I haven’t!  So they are rustic to say the least vbg.  I did one wall of the shop body and the front wall, and the pavement.  I left it to dry before I did the other side because I was squashing the first wall anyway just doing the different parts of it.

On Sunday  morning I did the second wall.  As you will see from the photo it has a fairly bumfly (uneven) surface, which I decided I liked and would leave there, because I felt it added to the character of the building.  The bricks aren’t even – again, I did them individually by hand.

The same morning I went over all the previous surfaces I had done with Paper Clay with a sort of slip of clay to fill it in a bit because as you can see from the photos a lot of the indentations are too deep.  That worked quite well, which was encouraging.  It is just a bit of Paper Clay mixed with water to make a very thin mixture and painted onto the surface.

Then it was on with the roof while those pieces dried again.  I am pleased with how the roof turned out.  In the heat of the day it dried quickly and by the time I did the second part of it I could paint the first part. 

I had another look at the first side of the house and decided that it wouldn’t do.  So I chiselled the clay off it and redid that side.  I am happier with the results now although again not altogether satisfied. And the bricks are a bit large.  With that it was time to go around to the house and babysit the boys while Kylie visited a school friend.  So I left it behind at the caravan.  At least it  gave it all a chance to dry thoroughly.

Still not happy with the bricks but I painted all the walls.  I’m quite pleased with the painted effects, just not the shape of the bricks themselves.  The photos don’t show the colour properly, it is more subtle in reality.  

Monday 10^th January

Tonight I was able to do the strips on the shop front and sides.  Thinking about the windows for the shop, I decided that I wanted to be able to display things on the window ledges on the ground floor.  So I put the plastic on the outside rather than the inside of the walls.  Then I did the strips of card over them.

And here are the front and sides of the shop, painted ready to distress.  I did the front door as well, it is the black rectangle at the right of the photo.

And here it is with the distressed finish added.  First of all a view of the front.

Now showing the side window.

Here it is with the front removed, so you can see the interior of the side window.  Won't it be a great spot to display things?

 It looks so much better with the distressing done.  It gives the shop real character. I want the inside to be pretty pristine, because it is a shop for baby wear and it needs to look clean and fresh and inviting.  But it is an ‘old’ shop and should show some wear and tear outside at least vbg.  Besides, shops are rarely spotless on the exterior so it makes it look more realistic.

I do keep looking at those walls though . I might even redo the entire brickwork yet – yes, I know I’m a fusspot but I like to do things the very best I can and I’m not totally happy with the brickwork on this shop. It deserves better.

I already have quite a few things to fill the shop, just have to decide for sure what to call it (I have some ideas but if you have a suggestion please offer it) and gather the bits together, finish making them and put them in place.  But for now I am on a roll constructing!

I just couldn't help myself!

Welcome Patty, from Mini Babies.  Your blog is beautiful and I hope you enjoy visiting mine as much as I enjoy visiting yours.


And yes, I couldn't help myself!  I started on the Corner Shop while I was in Toowoomba in September last year. I got as far as doing the ‘floorboards’ on the first floor and painting them black, ready for the brown to go over it, and doing the paperclay on the ground floor ready to paint. Then I became involved in doing minis with our grandchildren and one of their friends. After that I had pneumonia and I haven’t got back to the shop until now. I want to make it a Baby Shop. No, not where you buy babies–  a shop that sells goods for babies. On the ground floor I envisage nursery furniture and maybe some baby accessories. On the first floor I will have some baby and young children’s clothes and other accessories.


Now I have been able to make some more progress on it. The creative paperclay on the ground floor was well and truly dry by now vbg. I hadn’t been terribly happy with the evenness of the tiles I had marked out on the surface.  But a bit of sanding to clean out the grouting lines made a great difference, evening up the size of the tiles and smoothing things out and it looked really good. I did photograph it but the squares don’t show up, despite photos taken at night with the flash and during the day in natural light. I suppose I should have used the macro function but I didn’t think of that.


Because the paperclay dries stark white I first painted it with a wash of grey for the grouting. Not entirely the same colour, some areas I did slightly darker than others. When that dried, a coat of terracotta paint sponged over the tops of the tiles, a couple of different browns over that and a touch of black. I think it looks pretty good.


The first floor was also done as far as the floorboards being stuck on and painted black. So all I had to do was to sponge paint them in browns, and again with a touch of black.


So here they are:

Our youngest daughter Kirsten and her four children left to return home today, and it seems quiet without them. Kylie and the boys will be here for another week yet, which is great. Today Kylie and Peter were out shopping, along with Nathan and young Luke. It was just Cameron and me in the caravan. He was happy to play games on his mother's laptop so I had a quiet day too and did some more on the shop.



The next step is to work on the inside walls. I had already done the first part of this, which is to put strips of card backed by double-sided tape, across the two sides and the back wall, to form the cornice for the ground floor ceiling. Last night I did a couple of coats of antique white on the walls. Today I did the rest of the steps with the tape and here is a photo of the results:

It is amazing the great effect you can get with strips of card stuck to a flat surface! I haven’t added the handles or finger plates to the doors yet. And I haven’t put the Perspex on the window yet either because being me, I will wreck it when I do the paperclay on the exterior.


Next I painted the first floor with Sage Green mixed with Antique White. This gives a pretty, pale green, similar I realised to the colour we have painted our house. I am quite pleased with this colour and I think it will give a nice background to the things I want to put in there. I added slightly more Antique White to the mixture and painted the ground floor in a paler shade. I like the difference even if it isn’t very great. The colour doesn’t show up very well in the photo, the day was quite dull and the flash went off.

Once I started to glue the walls to the ground floor I found that there was a problem. In fact there were a couple of problems. Firstly, even though I had carefully measured the floor against the walls several times to mark its level so I could add the strip of card for the skirting board, it was too high.


Second, and probably the reason for the first, I already knew about but hadn’t realised that it would be a problem. The ground floor piece was slightly buckled – it probably happened when the paperclay was added to it because I had noticed it when I took it out yesterday to work on. When I measured the floor against the wall I must have held it slightly at an angle because of the curve.


So the walls came apart again, the skirting boards came off and new ones went on. They were painted and when dry the assembly started again.

I haven’t cropped this photo because I want to show you the nifty gluing box that Peter made me. Actually you have been seeing it for a long time now – I drape a pillowcase over it and use it as a background for photographing minis. So it serves a double purpose. It has a perfect right-angle corner to support taller s pieces as they dry. It can be used this way for taller walls or the other way around so that the side where the floor now is is uppermost, for shorter walls or larger floors. It’s great. He’s done a couple of variations on it for me but this one is the one I use the most for quarter scale.  Before I took this photo I sat holding the floor hard against the flat surface and hard up against the walls to try and flatten it and hold it in place as much as I could.

As you can see, I haven’t aged the interior of this one. I figured that a baby shop needed to be fresh and crisp inside. I did do the woodwork with dark brown in all the cracks to suggest shadow but except for the cracks around the door, it has all been painted out.

Now the walls are all in place, the first floor is in place as well to keep everything square, and I have left it to dry thoroughly.

 I used clamps since I don’t have any elastic bands here in the caravan. I am looking forward to the next part, which is to do the clay work on the exterior.  Excited and nervous as well.  I do have a rubber mould that I bought expecially to do this brickwork but being super organised I forgot that I had bought it for this purpose and put it away in the plastic tub in which I store the stencils and moulds!  It really doesn't pay to be organised vbg.

Stay tuned - we'll see how I go doing the bricks by hand.  Scary prospect.