Monday, 1st March 2010

It's ordered....

..... and paid for- yaaaaaaay! So today it’s big cleanup time after doing the MAK MAKE for Eva of GSOLFOT and then the start on the Sea Shanty. I have been neglecting my mini petitpoint lately because my vision is really blurry: waiting for my new glasses, have a bad headache – really a migraine that I am trying to control with tablets that sometimes take the worst of the edge off but it won’t go away, and I can’t concentrate. However as I learned with the Peter Rabbit Roombox, I can manage things in small steps. So hopefully soon I will be starting on this project too.  Overwhelmed with delicious things to choose from, and in which to escape from the family problems that are besetting us at the moment and causing the migraines!

As I think I said before, this one is a belated birthday present from my darling husband Peter, the TeaRose Cottage is an indulgence to myself and the Toadstool Cottage is an experiment to see what you get for so much less cost than the other projects - and a happy experiment too.  So as we say in Australia, I am a very happy little Vegemite at the moment!

Thursday 4th March, 2010

TeaRose has arrived – yaaaaay!

Now that’s excellent delivery time, I must say. It wasn’t even 8am when the courier arrived with the Tea Rose Cottage parcel. Soooo exciting – I couldn’t wait to open it up to see the contents. I was a bit surprised when I did open it for what first met my eyes was a piece of felt and a hank of what looked like human hair lol!

Further investigation revealed the laser-cut timber pieces for the walls, flooring, doors, windows (hooray - not plastic ones) as well as the landscaping kit, base, and that mysterious piece of felt and hank of hair-like stuff that I presumed was for the thatch.

The instructions are  detailed and beautifully clear, with illustrations, and the mystery of the felt soon became clear. This house is more demanding than the first quarter scale house I did, and indeed than the Sea Shanty that I am currently doing, in that not everything is provided and you do your own plastering of the outside. I am looking forward to the challenge that presents even though it is a bit – well, challenging! Not only the walls, and getting the plaster to do what the plaster is supposed to do, but the ‘thatching’ part as well, which is not going to be a quick process from the look of it. However I am not looking for ’quick’, I am looking for something that is an opportunity to learn new skills but which will still come out at a good standard. I tend to expect a lot of myself and even when learning new things want the end product to look good. Perfectionist, me? You bet your boots I am. It drives me crazy vbg!


I don’t have a ‘story’ for the cottage as yet, but I do like having furniture that is ’cottagy’ and classic or old fashioned, and I can’t bring myself to furnish this style of cottage in a modern style. So once I start on it, the cottage itself will ‘tell’ me what it wants its story to be.

Monday, 8th March 2010

I have eyes! - and the Toadstool has arrived

I picked up my new specs today and boy what a difference they make! I can actually see 40hpi silk gauze to stitch with just my multifocals in daylight (will have to check it out tonight once it gets dark) - and wearing my new close-work specs I can see the 50 or 60hpi being a possibility, so I might even attempt that in the future.

And this morning my delivery from The Quarter Source arrived by courier, with several lots of fabric, some turntables and some scribed wooden flooring. Unfortunately I had ordered the wrong flooring thinking it was the thickness of the wood, not the width of the scribing. But it's okay - I will use it for some 1/144th scale structures I have put away to do. Yes, I have some of those too! And now I need to order some more flooring.

After that delivery, I was surprised this afternoon when another package was delivered - this time by the postie. It was from Petite Properties, and had the Toadstool Cottage kit and book in it. The kit is a good sturdy laser-cut timber one, and the book has in-depth instructions for making the house and personalising it. I was quite right, the kit is just the basic walls. You add the beams yourself, and use air-drying clay for the walls, floor and roof so that will be an exciting challenge. I haven't decided yet whether to use the Creative Paper Clay or to use the ordinary airdrying clay. I have several packets of Paper Clay, so I feel I will probably use it. It is really nice to work with, and even though it lasts for a long time I don't want it to go off in our heat here.

Tonight all work on the 'Sea Shanty' was put to one side while I enjoyed having good 'eyes' with my new specs and spent heaps of time checking out the Toadstool Cottage kit, reading through the instructions a couple of times and working out any pre-preparation steps I need to take before I start doing it. then I checked out the TeaRose kit again, comparing the work they each require. It is nice to have kits that are rather more challenging - or at least involve different skills and steps than the ones I have done so far.

And I also explored the difference the new specs made doing some mini petitpoint - lately it has been a real strain trying to stitch and my vision has been quite blurry so I really enjoyed being able to see clearly and without extra magnification.

Of course now I have a decision to make: which of the three cottages will I start next? I have taken delivery of TeaRose Cottage and Toadstool Cottage and Miss Marple's Cottage should surely arrive any day now since they were all ordered within a day of each other. Eeny, meeny, miney, mo...................which way shall I go? I have no idea at this time! So watch this space vbg. But first of course I want to go as far as I can with the Sea Shanty.

Monday 1st March 2010

1:48 scale Toadstool Cottage

Getting a bit carried away here, I think. I found Fiona Broadwood’s site, Petite Properties, again today. It was one of my Favourites on my old laptop and it was great to find it again. And I went ahead and ordered Toadstool Cottage.


It will be interesting to see what is included in the kit for this house. It comes with precision cut pieces for the kit, and a book with instructions on how to finish and personalize it all.  I've included photos from the site showing the book (and the front view) and one of the house with the front wall removed, showing the inside.

It is a very reasonable price, much cheaper than any of the other house kits I have bought. In fact it is only about a quarter of the cost of the other kits. So I have more than a passing suspicion that there isn’t much in the way of brickwork etc supplied. However if I am happy with this house I want to gradually build up the collection as they are released, and to get the previous two buildings that have already been released as well. And I think that Miss Marple’s Cottage and TeaRose Cottage will fit perfectly in with them too.

This cottage is full of character and I'm really looking forward to adding it to my collection.  Have no clue what era I'll set it in as yet, just want to build it!

Sunday 7th March 2010

Feeling virtuous tonight - and deserve a treat!

Most of the day I was at our house packing up my mini workroom, to put the containers in storage. When the house is finally empty we will paint it, clean the carpets throughout and rearrange some of the rooms. Then as things are put back in the house I will be sorting and de-cluttering as much as I can – even my minis. They are okay as far as de-cluttering goes. And they were organised until my nephew and brother started packing it all up while we were away, and my nephew decided it was a better use of space to combine things into the plastic containers to fill them all right up! So now things are not stored in their nicely labelled - and categorised - plastic boxes any more, and I will have to go through and re-sort and re-pack everything. While I am doing that I will make sure that they have been photographed for the inventory I have of each of the items I buy.

So after seven hours of that, so stiff and sore I could hardly move I was glad to have a lovely warm shower and relax with the Sea Shanty. All the preparation last night paid off - the dado was ready to glue in place and the trim is ready to put on when I get some flooring for the bedroom and downstairs. I was going to put the trim on the ground floor ceiling too, but did the wallpapering in the bedroom instead. It looks really nice with all three rooms papered. The only trouble is that I had to join the paper because it was really meant for the bathroom and when I joined it I made the mistake of overlapping it from back to front instead of front over back so it is more obvious. Drat! But at least it is in a position where it is not too noticeable – and I will put a picture there if it shows when the roof goes on.

The dado looks crooked in the photo – but it’s not. I like the effect of the bedroom wallpaper: it has a pale yellow background, with just a very tiny blue design on it. So even though it continues the blue theme, there is also a brightening from the yellow. That yellow is also echoed with just a touch of the same colour in the downstairs paper. So it all ties together without being repetitive.

The bedroom furniture also looks really nice painted too – I’ve done it a medium brown colour, to simulate a timber effect. I also did the steps and handrail on the stairs the same colour. That looks really nice too, with the balusters and risers in the pale grey-blue. Now I have to find some fabric for the bed cover – I’m thinking of a simple patchwork quilt, in squares, so it’s finding nice fine fabrics that are in the right colours.

And to top it off my darling brother came over to the caravan and massaged my poor sore feet for over an hour, bless him!  Not only did it help the feet but because it massaged the trigger points in the feet as well I am now headache free - what bliss!  It cut my mini-ing time short but it was worth every second of it vbg!  Now are you jealous?!

Saturday 6th March 2010

More preparation and fiddly Details....

I’ve decided to go ahead with the dado, and to paint the bath blue on the bottom. The shelves (I really am quite pleased with those) will have towels etc on them in blue and white so it doesn’t matter that they are white. But I have shortened them, taking off the lowest shelf instead of putting a door on there as I had planned. And I made a clothes hamper from some embroidery canvas. I’ll see in the morning how that has held together – I painted it as I made it rather than gluing it and it seemed to hold.


So tonight seemed really fiddly, all preparation work: making the hamper, painting windows and doors, painting strips for window and door trim, ceiling and floor trim. And Peter had a look at the house that inspired my colour scheme (it’s just a few houses further around the cul-de-sac where we are staying at my brother’s) and I mixed up a new batch of paint until we both felt it was somewhat closer to what I wanted. So I’ve re-painted the shingles and they were nice and dry until I accidentally dripped some water on them and had to repaint!


I wanted to wallpaper the bedroom tonight too, but didn’t get that far. The second wallpaper that Claire kindly gave me is actually the one provided for the bathroom. I am going to use it in the bedroom, I think, but it is not quite long enough to go all the way around. So it will take a bit of thought as to where I am going to cut it for the join. But I ran out of time tonight.


However I have actually left the work area (caravan table) nice and organised for the next time I do work on it -I’m trying to get back into the habit. We’ll see how long it lasts – I do like to sit down to an organised work space and I’ve been slack about that over the last couple of years or so, once the illness became bad. I would work until I was overtired and then not have the energy or concentration to pack up properly. So now it is a nice fresh new start.

Friday 5th March 2010

Exactly whose stupid idea was it....

to paint the doors and woodwork white anyway?! I forgot how hard it is to get a nice coverage with craft paint on those plastic window and doors – especially doors. But I really like the mid blue and white colour scheme I have chosen, so am persevering. Fortunately I don’t want a pristine effect. Not too dilapidated, but not pristine either.

But it was far more rewarding to wallpaper the ground floor. The wallpaper ran a bit in the corner where some glue oozed out where I had to join two pieces, even though I (fortunately) took the precaution of spraying it with preserver first. I wasn't going to wallpaper the kitchen but couldn't find anything I liked for there. And I wanted to get the floor/ceiling in, so went ahead and did it and I’m pleased that I did.

Apart from that it's been a frustrating couple of days here! I spent a LOT of yesterday fiddling with free printable wallpapers from QC - the flooring ones are too small and none of them print out well. So I tried designing my own. The trouble is that the colours change as you make them smaller. So a couple of trees later I settled for what you see here for the bathroom. Except that they weren't tall enough to do the whole wall on the two taller walls. So smartie thinks - I know, I'll do a dado, or whatever you call it. So I spent ages cutting up balsa wood and making a dado, then cut the rear part too short so I'll have to put in a corner moulding - if I use it. Because after all that work I realised that the white bath doesn't really show up that well against the white dado! But I think the blue stripes all the way down are quite strong. Though I know the kit from England does have striped wallpaper supplied with the kit for the bedroom, and that is much bigger.

So my options are:
1. The walls with the white dado/wainscotting or whatever it is.
2. The walls with just the blue stripes

Again, the colours aren't quite the same in reality as they seem in the photos - they actually are a much better match. What will I choose? White woodwork dado or not? Decisions, decisions......

So now I have to decide about the bathroom and find something for the bedroom! Since there is a Mrs McGregor as well as a Captn McGregor I might even have to resort to a floral for that, though I'd prefer not to.

Thursday 4th March 2010

Well, so much for getting such a lot done yesterday! Apart from constructing the Captain's desk and getting the Sea Shanty to this stage (with 3 coats of white craft paint on the inside and I’m still not really satisfied) I spent the most of the time printing out the free wallpapers from QC, and trying to make my own flooring for the bathroom. Wasted a lot of ink and I'm not happy with any of them :-( So I guess I wait until I can order some flooring from overseas and that means I've pretty well come to a dead stop as far as the interior goes. I'll paint the bedroom furniture today and dress the bed up to the quilt stage - I don't have the fabric I have in mind to hand - and that will be it I think



Anyway after wasting a lot of ink and time, I came up with various tiles for the bathroom and settled on a mid blue. I did it as a table in Word, experimented with shading in different colours and made the cells as small as I could. Did the borders in white. Then I scanned the table and saved it as a JPEG file. Printed it out as a photo but on plain paper, in a smaller size.

Then I did another table, did just columns in shading to form stripes and then chose 'no borders' so it would be nice stripes. The trouble is that each time you make it smaller it gets darker. So I chose the lightest shading I could in that colourway of blue - and wouldn't you know it, instead of getting darker it got lighter! Grrrrrr! In the end though I think I have some striped wallpaper. Now I’m going to think about it overnight.

Wednesday 3rd March 2010

Exactly one month later, and today I actually did make a start. And it was a productive day too. I like to have a plan for each day – and all my years of teaching have reinforced that liking, because it was of course a necessity. Today my plan was to finish clearing up all the craft things from Sunday , organising some shelves in my brother’s garage to accommodate more efficiently my ever-increasing supply of mini stuff, do a scrapbook layout on the Peter Rabbit and Friends Roombox (bought the supplies yesterday then get stuck into the Sea Shanty.



Well, when I was teaching we were always being told that we had to be flexible and indeed it was a very rare day indeed that things went according to plan. And today was the same vbg. Not that it mattered – I had decided to treat myself to a day of self-indulgence and that’s what it was anyway. The sorting out went well, then following up something in an email I spent time on different mini sites and reading other emails.

Then I put the pieces of the Sea Shanty together in a preliminary 'dry run' with masking tape to see how they look. I tried out a few pieces of furniture to see how they fitted, and was pleased to see there was plenty of room for them. I also needed to make decisions about the stairway. I like stairways but in a lot of the photos it seems to obscure the view into the house. But in actual fact they don't block it all that much - so I went ahead and cut out the notch where indicated and have made the staircase.

It was exciting to actually start gluing the pieces together, as it always is, and while the glue was drying for each stage there was a lot of preparation I could do, painting the cladding, doing the grooved timber and stairs for the wharf with a grey/brown wash, and also doing all the lobster traps and the barrels I bought with the same. There’s lots of lobster traps. I bought five packets – (okay, so I got a bit carried away; I didn’t realize that there were 3 in each packet lol!). So they are spread out all over the caravan table at the moment, drying.

Then I started painting furniture for the Sea Shanty. The corner cupboard I did white a while ago hadn’t covered well at all so I did the inside in a deeper blue and the outside in a light grey-blue. When the outside was dry I gave it a bit of a dry brush with white, then added a bit of water to smudge it a bit. I also gave the settle the same treatment. I really like the results too.

I've made up a rocking chair and painted it dark brown, and assembled a hutch for the kitchen as well. I was on a roll and went ahead and also assembled some of the Captain's bedroom furniture while I watched another tele show - then of course was halfway through the kits so had to watch another show while I did the rest lol! When Peter is on night duty I am often rather naughty that way and stay up quite late. Yes, I suffer the next day but when the TeaRose Cottage arrived this morning I got a second wind again!

I decided to do one side of the timber bits with sanding sealer so that the surface is nice and smooth when I sand it. Tomorrow I will paint it all white before I wallpaper it. One of the first things I read ages ago when I started making minis was that if you paint a wall white before you paper it, the colour shows up better.

The table and chairs that I did before will go in the kitchen and the hutch will go in it too. I need a sink for in there, and a stove. I have to decide whether to use the ice box I got in the Pam Junk Old Fashioned Kitchen kit or to buy a fridge kit. And I might convert the old fashioned stove from that kit into an Aga stove - still thinking about that. I have one of the plastic bathroom kits and might use that for the bathroom, The pilings were mailed yesterday so they will take a while to arrive.

After a lot of thought I’ve decided on the colour scheme for the Shanty: I want it to be a mid to dark blue with white trim. I hope it will look nice and be different from the others I’ve seen. I’ve added a bit of dark grey to the blue I had to make the colour I wanted, inspired by a house in the cul-de-sac my brother lives in. I’ll weather the shingles that cover it with a dark wash too, because I don’t want it to be pristine. To me this effect is nice and ‘beachy’ and ties in with the blues used in the house really well.

But guess what? I never did get that scrap page on the Peter Rabbit Roombox done!

Wednesday 3rd February 2010

We have been back from our trip for six days now; Kylie and the boys went home Monday and yesterday we had time to get ourselves a bit more organized. It’s my birthday today, so what better day to start on the Sea Shanty adventure! It’s raining quite solidly on and off (a flow-on from cyclone Olga up in northern Queensland) so I am limited to what I can do in Terry’s huge carport or in the caravan, but that’s fine.


I have already taken everything out and checked the kit. The pylons are missing so when I have sorted out my computer and email problems I will contact Karen Cary and let her know. This first photo shows the contents of the kit. I am worried that paint won’t dry easily in this humid and wet weather so I’m trying to figure out what to work on first.