At last some photos to share with you...

It has taken me over a week to get to the stage where it is worth taking any photos of my progress with Bella Rustica, the quarter scale kit from Suzanne & Andrew.  It is one of three buildings, described as 'A Quarter Scale Shop and Pension'.  I have finished Vignettes, another of the trio, and will also share photos of that soon - I just need to make sure all the pieces are together where I packed them away so long ago :(.

Here is a photo of Bella Rustica, from Suzanne & Andrew's site:

Photo from Suzanne & Andrews Miniatures

The whole ground floor of the main section of 'Bella' is a shop, full of miscellaneous items with a French twist: a fabric and ribbon cabinet, French chair, Rose floor clock, Bench with French pillows, store cabinet full of accessories, and 'Ode to Paris' corner cabinet and so on.

There is a wing that goes off the main section.  The ground floor in the wing is the guest lounge and check-in area.  The first floor has guest accommodation in the main part,  and the guest dining area in the wing while the second floor has the owner's suite in the main section and another tiny guest room in the wing.

The first step in construction is to prepare and paint all the windows and doors - and there are quite a few of these - plus the stairs and railings.  So the first day was taken up with doing the primer coat on these, and a coat of flat white spray as suggested.

The second step is to paint the ceilings, which I did while the coats of primer and spray paint were drying.  The third step is to wallpaper the building.  Now I know a lot of people do wallpaper quarter scale buildings before construction but I've always preferred to build first and wallpaper afterwards except for bits that absolutely have to be done as you go because you won't be able to reach them later.  However for this kit I decided to follow the instructions and wallpaper first.  But when I first began doing minis I was taught to always give at least one coat of white paint over all the areas that are going to be wallpapered and this is a habit that has stuck with me, so after sanding everything thoroughly I gave all the areas to be papered a coat of sanding sealer and then a coat of white paint.  I do feel that the white paint underneath makes the colours in the wallpaper show up better.  But even if it doesn't, that's the way I was taught and I find it impossible to shake the habit.   that's what I did to the walls that would be papered.  That and painting the ceilings and the plastic pieces with their final coats of paint took all the time I had on the second through the fourth day.

On Sunday I finally had almost a full day to work on it and I finally got to Step 2 - wallpapering.  That felt like progress!  It's still only the end of spring here but we've had some warm weather: Friday reached 38deg C, in the studio which was a bit cooler than outside because it's so well insulated.  Sunday was 30degC in the studio but was humid because we had had lots of rain on Saturday night.  I also had to keep the door open because the smell of the paint was a bit strong in there after it being shut up all Saturday.

However with the heat the glue on the wallpaper certainly dried well and by the afternoon I was able to start putting the pieces together.  Here are some pictures of it at that stage:

Overview looking at open side of main structure

Main back, with open side of wing

Main front, entrance to wing can be seen on left

Wing side, looking towards the shop door on right

View of interior of shop, which takes up the whole ground floor of the main buildin

Interior of first floor of main building - guest bedroom on left, bathroom and stairway on right

So is this what a normal routine is like - finally?

I notice that the last time I posted was in May, but that was about something I did even earlier in the year.  The last time I posted about actually mini-ing was in March, when I was doing Woodnook Cottage.  Well some advice: do not leave your nearly completed cottage on a worktable for your darling husband to accidentally knock off and dislodge all the wiring connections or you will be faced with the prospect of having to dig out all the wiring and re-do it!  Not a happy prospect I can tell you :(.  But that is what I am faced with, unless the fates decide that the lights and the fires are going to work after all now I have left them to sulk all this time.  Not likely I have to admit.

After that little episode I had to put Woodnook away while I 'helped' our son Nathan with his half scale cottage, and spent a bit of time doing some of the shingling on the roof trying unsuccessfully to complete it in time for him to display it at our Sydney Fair on the first weekend in May.  Then we went away to a long-anticipated stay at our yearly Grey Nomads Camp on the north coast of New South Wales.  We arrived and set up our caravan the day before camp was due to start, and we really enjoyed the first two days of camp.  The third day I felt unwell and the next day I was really ill - I had come down with viral bronchitis and it was a doozy.  Fortunately this time it didn't go to the chest and become pneumonia thanks to the pneumonia vaccination I have and to some strong antibiotics but I was very ill for a long time.  All of our winter in fact.

I had just begun to recover from this when our son became ill, with headaches, vomiting, dizziness and falling over.  At first he was diagnosed with a severe ear and throat infection and some heavy-hitting antibiotics cleared that up in about 10 days.  However the symptoms continued and my husband Peter and I feared that his CV shunt might be blocked again.  This is a special device that goes into the brain and drains csf from the brain to the abdominal cavity, because of complications from a bleed he had in the brain at 3 days old after his premature birth (27 weeks gestation).  He has had over 20 operations on his brain over the years and the symptoms suggested to us that the shunt might be blocked again.  The GP, who is new to us and doesn't know Nathan, said no it wasn't the shunt but after several days when he was getting worse we took him to emergency for him to be seen by a neurosurgeon.

Sure enough, his shunt was blocked and he underwent surgery again.  This time however it was not as straightforward as it has been before and he had complications, with pressure on the rear of his brain from the way it settled as the fluid drained off.  There were further complications that I won't go into but everything resolved over the next few weeks and Nathan is now home after nearly 8 weeks in hospital, with his skills all back to the pre-operation level.  He does have cerebral palsy, intellectual disability and visual problems because of all the operations and meningitis (a post-operative infection from his first shunt) but at least he has not lost further skills this time like he has from previous operations.

So now he has returned home, and returned to work albeit for only half a day at the moment - he works 3 days a week at a sheltered workshop -  and I am well also. So after all these months we are returning to a normal life.  Or re-creating a normal routine lol.  It feels strange I have to admit but very enjoyable.

I am celebrating by embarking on a complete reorganization of the mess that is my studio.  It was very crowded and I had taken to working in the house, which meant moving tools and supplies to the house for different projects, then packing it all up into containers and putting them back into the studio.  As a result I can't find anything and the whole place is totally full and unworkable.  So I've put tarpaulins up to close in the verandah, put some tables in there and moved some of the containers out there to make room inside.  There are still lots more to move out too.  And I've cleared off my work table, cleaned it thoroughly and have a fresh work surface.  So now I am celebrating by starting to work on Bella Rustica.  At least I know I have everything I need for that in one place!

Each day I am going through the containers, sorting and putting things away or putting them together with other parts of the same project.  That way when I tackle my UFOs I hope to have all the bits I need to work on each project instead of finding halfway through that I can't find a vital piece because I don't know where I've put it.  Then I can reward myself by doing some mini-ing.  First I constructed a kit for a bookcase for Robin Betterley's Teeny Tiny Books, then I began work on Bella Rustica.

It's a huge job, and won't be done quickly.  In fact I don't know how I'm going to fit everything in there at all!  But the joke goes: how does one eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  And that's my motto for organizing the studio.  One bite at a time and it will get done.

So there it is.  Life has been very dramatic for the last couple of months, but I much prefer boring! 😍  And I'm extremely pleased that it has returned to normal - or the new normal.  I hope to have some progress photos for you very soon.

Lighting a quarter scale house with LEDs and flickering fireplaces

There have been questions asked about how to light a quarter scale cottage and I’ve had a page in progress for some time now, describing how I do it but I thought I'd start again and do a post on it.  I have lit several of my quarter scale buildings and doing so certainly gives a lovely effect.  I didn’t blog in detail all the steps I took to light Woodnook Cottage but did in fact take step-by-step photos to show a friend how I was doing it, so will use them here with a description of the process.  First, here is a photo I posted in January of Woodnook with all the lights and both fireplaces working, before I finished the roof and put the furniture in.  As I said in the blog, I regret using nano chips in the lights instead of the slightly larger ones but apart from that I was really pleased with the effect.

First of all, lets deal with a flickering fireplace, which often needs to be done quite early on in the process of construction.   Read through the lighting instructions and decide when you want to do the fireplace.  I can't stress that enough - read through all the instructions first!  They might not make a lot of sense until you do this a couple of times, hopefully the photos will help, but if you just start straight in without reading through first, there's sure to be a step that needed to be done before and you'll be in trouble.  

You will need to have your fireplace pre-prepared.  That is, if you want a brick surface inside, do it now.  Also remember that fires blacken the bricks with soot so do some blackening now.  Most of it will be covered with logs etc but it does add to the effect.  I personally like to spread a very, very thin layer of interior filler over the entire surface and scribe the bricks into it when it’s dry.  Then  I paint the ‘grout’ colour, sponge on the ‘brick’ colours then distress with dark brown or black.  I tend to overdo the black but hey! - it's a very sooty fire perhaps.  It’s up to you.  Now you’re ready to go.

Step 1: Drill a hole in the bottom of the fireplace or chimney for the wires to go out.  If you did this before you did the ‘bricks’ with filler, you might need to clean up the hole a bit in case you got some filler in it.  If you are using the three wires that come in the flickering fire kit, the hole  will need to be wide enough to accommodate all three wires.  Because the kit now comes pre-assembled, you need to feed the chip lights up through this hole into the fireplace so it also needs to be wide enough to feed the chips through one at a time remembering that after the first one, there will be a wire or two wires already in the hole.  This sounds obvious but we are so used to making holes as small and inconspicuous as possible that it is easily overlooked.  Don’t worry, it will be covered by the logs in the fire later on.

Showing hole in bottom of chimney

Step 2: Feed the chip lights one at a time through that hole.

Those 3 white rectangular bits in a clump at the bottom are the fire chips.  You can also see where I scratched the black paint at the back when drilling the hole through so that had to be touched up.

Step 3: Hold the ends of the wires to the ends of the wires on the battery to check that the chips are all working.  You might need to twist them a bit to make sure they connect properly.  Don’t forget to press the on/off switch if it doesn’t work straight away.   There, isn’t that pretty?

If the lights aren’t working, twist the wires more securely.  Still not working? Might need a new battery.

Step 4:  Now carefully untwist the wires again – I stress carefully because these wires are fragile and too much twisting and untwisting and they snap off.   You were supplied with two thin rubber tubes in your kit.  These are shrink tubes.  Slide one on each of the wires. 

Step 5: This time you will twist the wires together again permanently. I like to check them again at this time.  Bend the wires flat against themselves

Optional for step 5:  I like to solder the wires together before I fold them flat.  This is not essential according to the instructions because the shrink tube holds them together but it gives me a bit of extra peace of mind.

Step 6: And slide the shrink tube over the tube.  Now you need a heat gun or something similar to heat the shrink tube so that it shrinks tight against the wires and holds the join secure.  Be very careful with this step not to overheat the insulation on the rest of the wires.

Step 7:  Now you can attach the wires from the fire to the battery and  ……

Step 8: Sit back and enjoy your flickering fire for a while!  Good job!  Put the battery aside for now though, so it doesn’t get in the way while you are working on the rest of the house. 

I like to add either a fireplace front or andirons to my fireplace, then place logs so that the flickering lights can be seen through them.  The glow does shine through it all and the overall effect is really pretty.  You’ll note in this photo that the spot where the wires go through the chimney floor is visible but since in real life the fireplace is much smaller and much further away, it is not noticeable in reality.  Of course if it was a problem, a few ‘ashes’ on the base of the fireplace would add a nice touch.

I find it handy to tape the wires in a coil underneath the base of the house to keep them neat and out of the way.

And just for the heck of it, here's a photo of the completed fireplace, all alight.

By the way, the andirons and the fireplace tools are from Gayle Baillargeon (petworthminiatures.com).  Grace Shaw (Virtual Dollhouse) also has some good fireplace tools etc.

LIGHTING THE HOUSE:

Step 1:  Is to work out during a dry fit of the house where the lights need to be, not forgetting a light over the staircase so your mini people don't fall down the stairs in the dark - we can't have any accidents during the night.  Mark the positions of the ground floor lights on the first floor floor/ground floor ceiling.  Since the first floor usually has a sloping roof, the roof needs to go on temporarily to mark where the lights for this level will go.  It also means that care needs to be taken that the roof is actually sitting correctly in place so that the marks can be accurate especially for the light above the staircase.  One solution for other rooms on the first floor is to put the lights in the join between the front and back roofs, and drill a hole there.  I did this for Woodnook.  If you do this, you don't actually need a lightshade if you don't want one, unless you have the light hanging down a bit.

Doing this during the dry fit also makes it possible to work out where the wires will leave the house and go down the exterior.  If there is a chimney that is a good place to take the wires down.  You could make a groove down the interior of the chimney and take the wires all together down between the house and the chimney; or you could take the wires down the exterior of the chimney and cover them with the same surface as the rest of the chimney; or down the side of the chimney and cover them with greenery afterwards.  One of the suggestions that Jennifer made on the Beehive forum was to use a fine tube and take them down that, turning the tube into a downpipe afterwards – great idea.  Decide now what you want to do, because you need to know where you will be taking the wires. 

Also mark the place where the wires will leave the house, level with the floor so that they can be hidden.  In the photo for step 2 of the lit fireplace above, you can just see a tiny bit of the hole in the wall above the fireplace where the lights for the ground floor will leave to go down the chimney for this house.

Step 2:  Once this is done  drill the holes for the lighting wires to go through.  Keep these quite small because most of them will only need one set of thin wires threaded through.  The exception of course is the hole where all the wires will leave each floor of the house – this needs to be large enough for all the wires from that floor to fit.  Mind you, that’s still not huge!  Sand off so that the top and bottom edges are smooth then remove any slivers that have got into the hole while sanding, it needs to be nice and clear.

Step 3.  Then make a channel or groove in the surface of the floor or roof, to take the wires from the holes to the point at which they will leave the building.  This is quite easily done by using a metal ruler and a craft knife, making two parallel lines then gouging out a v-shape between them and rounding it off with a craft knife, finishing it off with a piece of rounded sandpaper. 

After this you can go forward and permanently construct the ground floor of the cottage, painting and wallpapering etc and doing the floor on that level.  

Then you are ready to put in the ceiling of the ground floor (which is also the floor of the first floor). 

If you want to do a flickering fire in the fireplace, this is also be a good time to do that (see above) - before you add that ceiling and make it difficult to reach inside.

Step 4.  Thread the wires of each light through the bead that will be the lampshade, then feed it up from the ceiling side through the hole in the floor.

Step 5: The wires are taken along the groove in the floor towards the exit hole.  I like to cover the groove with a bit of masking tape or painter’s blue tape, to provide a bit of protection for it.  Don’t worry, it doesn’t interfere with the flooring that will sit over it.

In this photo you can see how I've worked out the centre of  each of the rooms in order to determine where to put the light hole and can also see the grooves from the holes to the exit point.

Step 6:  Check that the lights are working by gently twisting the wires from the lights one by one to the wires from the battery.  Do this one by one so that you can easily locate any areas of difficulty.

Step 7:  I use commercial scribed wooden flooring for my houses usually, but very thin balsa wood that you have scribed and stained works fine too.  So does a sheet of cardstock that you have painted and marked floorboards on to.  Or individual ‘boards’ made from cardstock that you have painted and done yourself.  If you just wanted to have a painted floor, then it’s a bit trickier to hide the wiring but possible by running around under furniture and rugs and along walls, I guess.

Now cover the whole floor with your chosen flooring, clamp it and weight it so that it dries flat, and leave to dry.  Be patient – that’s hard for me!  Do lay it on the table with the floor face down, don't make the mistake of laying the ceiling flat on the table and weighting the floor with the lightshades between it and the table.  Ask me why I say that too!

Step 8: Insert the floor into the house, feeding the wires from the lights through the holes in the rear wall carefully and being careful not to get them caught between the floor and the wall while you are placing the floor.  Glue in place.

Step 9: check that the lights still work!

Step 10: take all the red wires from the lights and twist them together.  Take all the green  wires from the lights and twist these together.  This will involve carefully untwisting the ends of the wires a bit to allow enough free wire to do this.

Step 11: Take the wires down through whatever method you have chosen to hide your wires on the outside of the house.  For Woodnook I chose to take mine down the outside of the chimney and to then later go over it with the finish to match the rest of the chimney.

Wires going down the exterior of the chimney

For now, coil and tape the wire under the house to keep it neat and out of the way.

Now there is a bit of a hiatus while you complete the rest of the house to the stage where you are ready to install it onto the base.  Once you have finished the house and are ready to put attach it to the base, proceed as follows:

Step 12: Take the wires  through the holes in the base and work on them threaded through.   If you are not using a base of any sort, you will need to work out another way of hiding that battery/batteries.

Step 13: You were supplied with two thin rubber tubes in your light kit.  These are shrink tubes.  Keep any spares for further use.  Slip one of the shrink tubes over the red wire from the battery, and one over the black wire and slide up out of the way for now.

Step 14: Join the red wires from the lights to the red wire from the coin battery by twisting well together.  Be careful, as I said above, these wires are fragile and do break if twisted too vigorously too often.  Ask me how I know!

Step 15:  Do the same with the green wires from the lights to the black wire from the battery.

Step 16: Solder these with a drop of solder if that is your preference.  As I said before, the instructions say that the shrink tubes will hold it securely enough.  I'm just super cautious.   Fold the wires flat and slide the shrink tube over the join.  Heat with a heat gun and shrink the tube securely over the join.  This takes only a couple of seconds.

Step 17: Attach the leads to the battery and turn on.

Woodnook sitting on the base.  Note the blue painter's tape over the wires in the roof and chimney

Another view of the house with the painter's tape covering the wires, sitting on base and lights on

Step 18: Admire the effect of your house all lit up and looking lovely!  Congratulations, you are a pro!

This photo shows a standard lamp in the sitting room.  Since I did this as an afterthought because the nano chips were not as bright as the chip lights for quarter scale (much better for micro or 1:144th scale I think) my mini person wasn't happy with the amount of light in there.  I converted a non-working light kit to a working light and drilled a hole through from the underside of the cottage to take the wires.  This meant that a groove needed to be made in the base from the hole in the floor to the hole in the base to accommodate the wires so that the cottage would sit flat on the base.  Now my mini people are happy that they can read or do hand crafts in comfort!

Step 19: Attach the battery to the underside of your base with double-sided tape to keep it secure but available for when you need to change the battery.  Coil the excess wire and tape that also to the underside to keep it from getting in the way. 

I hope this helps, if you have any questions please feel free to email me and I will try to clarify the matter if I can.  Or I am sure that others on the forums will be able to assist too.

Wow! I actually completed something in one go!!

I am really impressed - I've done an Easter project and actually completed it - yes, completed it!! And not only that but completed it for Easter ;)  Of course it's around 3 years since I bought the kit, which is for an online class, but nevertheless I did it (finally) and actually completed it - a rarity for me lol.

It's an Easter egg preparation roombox from Luci Hanson of Cascade Miniatures.  And here is the completed roombox, with the built-in lighting on.

 Isn't it pretty?  The roombox has a slide-out interior, which makes it easy to decorate.  In fact this particular roombox exterior came with two slide-out parts, so I can change the interior for different displays.  The lighting is built into the ceiling of the box itself.

With these classes, everything you need to complete the project is supplied which is great.  The instructions are really clear too, with detailed step-by-step guidance.  Here's a view of the insert part, showing how the rear wall sits inside a bit to give a dimensional effect for the scenery through the door.

And looking straight on to the room

 I really like the little basket with the 'grass' in it, ready for the dyed eggs to be added, and the chocolate bunny on the side bench.

Here's another view, looking to the right where the dresser is.

When I find the second set of dish artwork I will replace the dishes on the top shelf,  The set I should have used just disappeared into thin air - one day I will complete something without losing bits!  Maybe.

Looking to the left.

 What's this?  Naughty kitty - taking advantage of everyone's absence to investigate what is going on here.  If he's not careful he'll get a burnt nose!

Mind you, it's quite a sparse kitchen - much tidier than most real life ones, so more could be added in the way of accessories.  Maybe one day, but the essentials are all there now.

And I am still really impressed with myself that I actually finished something lol!!

Wishing you a happy Easter.

Wishing you and yours a very happy Easter.

Not here at the moment....

We are away for a short holiday.  If you'd like to see more about what we are doing and where we are visit here and see.

Working on the roof and the landscaping

I still haven't located my book on Exterior Finishes by Bea Broadwood, so I am doing the roof the best I can remember from reading it..  I showed you the clay on the roof in the last post.  We went to see our daughter the next day and brought our grandsons back to Sydney a day or so later.  So the roof was quite dry when we came back.  But it was also very cracked.  I've not used this brand of air-drying clay before (Boyle), I usually use Creative PaperClay and although that cracks it doesn't crack like this.

A lot of those cracks go right down to the wood, so they took quite a bit of filling with Polyfilla, an interior filler.

Once that was dry I could do the second step and here are some photos of that stage:

 As you can see, I started to landscape while the glue on this layer dried.

 I've finally decided on an autumn theme for the landscaping, but still have to get some tree frames - or make some - and do them with autumn foliage.

 The colours in these photos aren't wonderful, sorry about that but the flash kept working and changing the colours.

I really must get some sort of background too, to show up the house properly without the background clutter.

I left that layer to dry overnight and then gave it the first coat of paint.  Bea says in her book that it takes quite a while for the paint to dry because of the fibrous nature of that second layer. But it is 38deg C here today (100.4 degF) so that has helped despite the air-conditioning being on this afternoon.

 So that's the progress for now.  I need to find my flowersoft or else buy some more which is a pain, to add some colour to the shrubs.    And of course the roof needs at least one more coat of paint because there are some spots that have been missed.

I am really looking forward to seeing it finished now.  Isn't it amazing how every step makes such a difference?

Slowly but surely.....

It's been a rather stressful week since we've been home, due to some health issues with our oldest daughter.  Fortunately she seems to be improving now so we are really relieved.  But I have managed to get a bit done on Woodnook cottage.

First of all I assembled a little dresser (from Templewood Miniatures) for the kitchen, and added some decals to crockery (both decals and crockery are from True2Scale Miniatures) to add to the shelves.  I'm pleased with the way they've come out.

The drawer is filled with extra 'teatowels', and the lower cupboard door is open to give a glimpse of the extra 'dishes' and baking dishes that are stacked in there.  Annoyingly, there are only three cups to hang on the shelf, because one of them went flipping off on its own adventure, not to be found again.  Hope it doesn't get too lonely - if it does, perhaps it will come home again ;)

I also have two darling candles with flowers around their bases (from BJ Miniatures) to go on the mantlepiece in the sitting room.  You can't really see them in place so here they are before they are glued into position.

Aren't they tiny and perfect?  Just beautiful.

But the biggest progress is adding the first layer of the 'thatched' roof, which is air-dry clay.

 As you can see above, I have done the paving for the front of the house as well, so that my mini people won't get such wet feet getting the wood or going to the little seat to rest.  Or to the stairs that lead to the lower level.

 Here is the rear view, with all the lights and both fires turned on.

 There needs to be more added to the woodchopping area, and to the wood store.

 The clay is drying at the moment, and is starting to develop a couple of cracks which will need to be filled before the next layer is added to look more like thatch.

But I'm happy with the difference it makes to the appearance to have the roof even this far.  I'm looking forward to finishing that and starting the landscaping.  When I can decide between a summer or an autumn look that is!  Summer or autumn?  Autumn or summer?  Hmmmmn................