Off to Philadelphia Miniaturia I GO (6 Word Saturday)

Off to Philadelphia Miniaturia I GO

I am up very early this morning, getting ready to go to the biggest Miniature Show I have ever attended.  I can hardly wait.  

I know I will be tempted to spend a lot of money but am hopeful I will mostly bring home inspiration and enthusiasm to get back to some of the projects I have already started!

I will have pictures and stories to tell when I get back.  Please check here Monday for all the details.

Getting inventory for my mini bookshop

Because a good bookshop must have lots of books I have started to collect them and preparing to make some.
       Here are a couple of pictures I took. The first is the collection of books I have purchased already made up and the second is some printie sheets I have made up, to use for covers for a lot of looks.  I don't know if I will use all the ones I printed out but time will tell.

I found these on eBay and on line.

These are from a couple of printie locations on line.

Now for the real fun.  Tomorrow a few friends and I will be going to the Philadelphia Miniaturia, a HUGE show in Cherry Hill, NJ.  It will have the best of the best of mini things to see and buy.  I hope to find a few things for my shop and also to find a LOT of inspiration.   I will try to report in on Monday on all that I saw.
This is a show I have wanted to attend for years now and so happy I can finally go.

Up Date Friday

For the foreseeable future I will be showing my progress on my miniature bookshop on Fridays. I will also try to update other things that I may have mentions and not followed up on.  Maybe.........

Today I opened the box of parts for my new miniature bookshop.  AND I started to put it together.

      I stopped though, after putting up the floor, back and side walls.  I am now debating whether to put on the top (roof) right away.  I think it would be too hard to decorate with it on so am thinking I should hold off.  Meanwhile I have started gathering up items for the shop.

Here are a couple chairs I have found and a table I may decorate to use as well.  I am waiting for the arrival of the bookcases I have ordered and a few books as well.  AND I hope to get to make some of my own as well.  You are welcome to leave any comments.

I have often thought it would be fun to own a bookstore

So now I shall.  Albeit in miniature.

I know, lately I have spent a lot of time talking about tea cups, dolls, outdoors and campers.  But as the weather cools off it is time to get back to making miniatures.

My local Miniature club is taking on a rather large project  for the new year.  We will be making a mall and apartment house complex.  Each member is making up a room box in some sort of shop or apartment.  Loving bookstores as I do I have decided that I will turn my room box into just such a store.  But not just any book store.  I want to make it with an EDGE.  Perhaps steampunk, or at least industrial looking.

At this point it is merely in the planning stage.

I know I have to obtain a LOT of books.  I have ordered some and will make a lot more.  I had a lesson once on making mini books from old leather books.  Hope I still remember how.

Anyone with suggestions on how or what I should include let me know in the comments.

The Shoppe fills up

I visited my local Doll House Shop and found a few things to put in my Hat Shop. I found some shelving, a chevel mirror, a wall shelf and an easel for a picture frame. They are in the roombox now. I will have some "refining to do and my husband is going to spray paint all the white items a solfter ivory color to look better with the trim on the top of the wall.

I am going to let the room box rest now while I think over what I will do next. And while I wait for my husband to spray paint the furniture I want done. Meanwhile I plan to work on a quilt that needs mending and get back to my journal. So probably I won't be doing any talking about doing any doll house fixing up or artwork for awhile.

Mini Monday

Trying to get better organized with blogging..... So will "try" to do something about Miniatures and Dollhouses every Monday.

Today I am going to show off a gift I just received. I belong to a group called GSOLFOT and every so often our illustrious leader says we must sign up for a "MAKE" It is usually dreaded at first cause we never know what we will be told to make but we sign up anyway and are always glad we did. The Autumn Make 2009 was to be a "character" not made of doll parts.

At first most of us were a little leary but things have come together. My very good friend Sally Watson (from the UK) got my name and I just received her "character" It is THE GREEN MAN. I love it. He is presently sitting outside a little woodland house project I have "sort of" started.

Here is the Green Man

Come by next Monday to see the "character" I made for my MAKE. I am just mailing it off today so need to give Gail time to receive it.

Gerome comes for a visit

I belong to GSOLFOT......... We are an international group of miniature makers, collectors and enthusiasts with a bit of insanity thrown in. If you click on the link you can learn about us, even more perhaps than you wish.... We have daily chats and I am often sitting here chatting with folks from UK, Netherlands, Germany, Australia and all over the US including Hawaii.

One of the special "members" of our group is Gerome, a gnome, who travels round the world visiting the members and joining in their lives for a week. Instead of using the TARDIS like they did in Doctor Who, the British TV show, Gerome comes from our printer................ and proceeds to change our lives.

Over the next week I will share with you his adventures

Gerome arrived at my house yesterday. He got here just in time for dinner naturally. Here he is checking out the menu. .

We had oven roasted chicken, homemade potato salad and a veggie melange of zucchini, mushrooms and red peppers, sauteed greek dressing.

After dinner Gerome claimed he needed to chat with the other gnomes that live here so a meeting was held.

And next he visited my very messy GSOLFOT office. I think he wanted to know why I didn't straighten it up before his arrival. Well, I imagine I had better do that pretty soon. A number of the items in the office were made by other members of GSOLFOT in our occasional "makes. " A Makes is a project that we sign up to complete without knowing what we will be making nor to whom it will go..... Our illustrious leader, Noni the Oz, makes up the rules and we must follow. Usually it is quite a challenge. But oh so worth it.

My "GSOLFOT" Official Title is called the Keeper Of Antiquities and Other Old Junque. This came about because I run an antique shop in real life. So a lot of the items in the "office" represent my title.

WE are in the midst of a "MAKE" period so I can't talk about what I am doing but will document it and show all once it is allowed.

The Tea Shop is farther along

Today it continues to be rainy and overcast here. I NEED sunshine. But I didn't have to feel guilty about staying inside and working on my minis. Aftergoing to exercise early this morning and doing laundry and some vacuuming I felt like it was time to PLAY.

I first sorted through all the quarter scale swap items I have received over the years to find things to use in my little projects. Then I began to choose things to go in my little tea shop. Here are a couple of pictures of the updated look. There are still things to be done on both floors but it is beginning to look better.


The upper floor will be a powder room for customers that visit the teashop. Their is a Victorian toilet behind the pink screen. I still need to find some kind of a sink.

And on the first floor you will see the silver tea set I bought a while ago.... it is actually a charm. And is just the right size for quarter scale. It is sitting on top of a little green table. I added carpeting for both floors too. Things I printed out from on line.

So I am happy so far.

Sealed and soon to be sanded

I continued with my doll house project yesterday and managed to get all the pieces coated with sanding sealer so that today I can sand. I will be painting not wallpapering the rooms so need to get everything ready.

Meanwhile, my hubby did a bit of work for me. I will not be including the stairs in this house. Since it is make believe anyway we can imagine the stairs must be elsewhere......

So he filled in the hole in the upstairs floor and sanded it so that is ready to take paint and stain. I know the area where he filled in will be a bit different looking but that will be in the bathroom area so I will cover that floor with "tile" instead of staining like a wood floor. I wouldn't want a wood floor in a bathroom anyway. (LOL)

The weather here today is awful.... with icy walkways and roads. So I will stay in side and sand... and maybe start on the painting if I get the other done.

I hope tomorrow to actually have something worth looking at.

A Mini Change of Plans

As I mentioned a bit ago I had planned to make the Heritage doll house, by Dura Craft during January. But I changed my mind. Instead, I will be making another doll house that I happen to have in kit form. I bought it a while ago and had forgotten it. It is by Read Good Toys.
It will be easier to make I think as it is a better quality kit and some of the work is already done. The siding and the floors are already milled and there won't be near as much sanding and mess either.
So I have started staining the roof shingles. I am using a blue grey paint wash instead of stain. It will give me more of the color I want. Yesterday I got about half of the shingles stained. Today I plan to finish the second half. The picture below is the first half of the shingles I did yesterday. I have a long way to go. I like the way each shingle is a bit of a different shade. That will look more natural I think than if they were all the same. Shingles do age differently over time.

A New House For Me

Here are a couple of pictures of the doll house I plan to start building in January.
I would love to start now but way too much on my plate at the moment.
I have lots of furnishing ready to put in it and some ideas for other things that I don't have already.

More work on shop

I managed to "take the day off" from the house and my real shop and do some things for dress shoppe.
I drove over to the next town and visited the Mini shop.... Wee Home Shoppe It is such a great shop because the owner is a wonderful lady and a friend. She carries all scales.
It is the place where we hold our monthly meetings of the Susquehanna Mini Makers, a N.A.M.E
mini club. I managed to spend quite a bit of money while I was there and here is what I bought.After shopping I rushed home to do some more work on the dress shoppe. I pulled out the counter I was going to use and filled it with the bolts of fabric and laces. Then On top I put a little hat I had made from a kit that I bought from someone who's name I can't find at the moment .... and a vase (a bead actually) filled with feathers. I imagine there will be a few more things on the top of the counter. Just not sure what yet.
Next I pulled out a couple of kits I had recently put together. One is boots in a shoe box, the other is slippers in a shoe box. They were both from Ann Vanture's Paper Minis She is a great source for paper printie kits for doll houses and dolls as well.






The final thing I added to today's work is a small
display I got in a swap or exchange.... I don't remember which. It is a cute display of hat and dressing table items. I just loved it and decided I would find a place in the shop. I think the shop is changing from a dress shop to a ladies modiste... where she can buy a variety of items for herself.

OUCH!!!

I had some time yesterday so I headed up to my studio to work on my UFO (miniature shop).
I set out to make shelves to hold all the hat boxes I had made..... Somewhere along the way I managed to try to slice the top of my pointer finger..... thankfully it wasn't too bad. I still managed to get them cut out and painted. But it needed a bandage for awhile which was too bad because shortly after this happened I had a violin lesson. It made handling the bow a bit awkward...... but hey, I probably still handle the bow a bit awkwardly anyway... it was only my fourth lesson.

I shall live though.

I plan to finish the shelving today and get it into the shop. That will feel good to have that done.

A few things are added

Over the weekend I did find a bit of time to work on few of the little items for the shop. The dress shop may now become a hat shoppe as well. I found some little kits to make hats and I finished off these little hat boxes and some items to make hats are now on little bolts, ready to be used by the shop owners. And I made up these dress forms too. They were from a kit I have had for a long time.

I hope I can get going on the hat kits soon.

Day 2 of Back to Miniatures

Last night I went up into my art and crafting studio and pulled out all the things that I have collected for this new shop..... What a mess....

So today my project will be to sort it all out and perhaps even begin to finish up some of the items. I know there are hats to be made, hat boxes to finish, fabric to put on cards and some mannequins to make. That should actually take up the next two days.

Meanwhile though I have to tend to my Real Life antique shop today. Perhaps I can do this between customers....

I have worked on projects like that before. Some of my customers ask me about the minis if I am not working on anything while they are there.

Back to Miniatures

I belong to a fun miniature and doll house group called GSOLFOT.... We have just been issued a challenge to FINISH a project that has been sitting around unfinished for awhile. WELL, I have a LOT of those.

The first one I thought of was a Doll House Dress Shop which I started several years ago. Actually most of the stuff to go inside is in bags here and there.... so I have dug it all out and starting tonight I plan to FINISH it. We shall see if I really do but since I am putting it here perhaps it will encourage me to really do it.
This picture shows how far I have gotten, better than nothing I guess.

This evening I will take a picture of all the "stuff" and add it here.... and then attempt to show the progress.

I am definitely a proud Sockee.

I actually finished a miniature project

I have finally finished a project I started a couple of years ago. It is a scene of the exterior of a Southwestern style house. I had been collecting a lot of different pieces of pottery, most from Dusty Acres Trading Post. I had wanted to find a way to display them The actual box was started by a mini friend Peg while we attended a Miniature workshop. She gave it to me cause I knew what I wanted to do with it. And because she is a GREAT friend.
Inside the window frames is a picture of the inside of a SW style house. Unfortunately I could not get a good picture of it. There is a picture frame that goes with this but it looked better to show on line without the frame. The framed room box will hang on a wall.

My little story book cottage doll house is nearly done.

I managed to find some time this past weekend to work on the front of the house and even started on the inside. I will have pictures of that part tomorrow. I still have to make a bench for the front yard. In the meantime I think you can see a difference from the last pictures I posted.

One problem with the work is that I am so busy watching baseball I don't get much done. I have a bit of a breather now. Go Red Sox!!!!

Working off and on all day yesterday I really moved along on the landscaping. Still plenty to do but it is looking better. I can see, from the pictures, that I need touching up on some things. But that is the fun part anyway.
In these pictures you will see more of the detail. The close up shows a gazing ball I received from someone in a 1/4 scale swap. If the person who made it (or knows who made it) would let me know I will give credit. I plan on using more plants in pots and such as I move along.

Don't know that I will get so much done today. But keep checking in.

My little cottage begins landscaping.

I have finished adding the windows and doors and I have started working on the landscaping of my little cottage. So far it is going VERY SLOW. Making all those tiny little stones and working them into a stone wall and sidewalk. I am really only about half way done. But at least it is on its way. I still have to finish up painting the chimney but I will work on that when I am painting the stone walls. I have learned so many new techniques making this little house. Slowly but surely seems to be getting the job done.