A Close Shave

This is the latest doll Mom has dressed. A few years ago, my brother became interested in the 1930s. An offshoot of that was that he started dressing in 1930s style clothing.  He began shaving with a straight razor, wearing suspenders, and learned to tie a bow tie. Needless to say, he had a lot of input in this doll!

Though Mom usually makes her own leather shoes, but this time she bought them from the Doll's Cobbler. The rug is a leftover from a bunch Mom made for her cottage, using upholstery fabric samples.

Mom used a pair of my brother's fishtail back trousers to draft her mini pattern.

The Bespaq shaving stand came from my dollhouse. It was one of the first "adult quality" miniatures I received in my early teenage years, when my miniatures were transitioning from toy to collection. An irresistible deal on a stunning shaving set by St. Leger made this stand redundant in my dollhouse, so I was happy for Mom to give it purpose again!

5 Tricks and Supplies* Every Miniaturist Should Know

1. Get the gunk out of paintbrushes with rubbing alcohol.
This is a trick that I learned from Casey. Just dip those crusty old paintbrushes in rubbing alcohol, and the paint will come right out. It seems to soften some of my brush bristles slightly as well, though this could be my imagination!

I used a hairdryer to take apart this bespaq love seat  for reupholstering.

2. Use heat to soften the glue on commercial furniture. Just use a hair dryer to heat whatever you are trying to remove/take apart.  I don't recall where I first learned this trick, but it really gets those stubborn pieces unstuck without breaking.

I used the microwave method to stiffen the crown for this pirate's hat. 

3. Dry leather in a microwave. If you need leather to hold a specific shape really well, get it wet/damp, stretch it into the right shape, then microwave it dry. The microwave "cooks" the leather into a hard shell. It will also change the texture of the leather, into a smaller, more pebbled surface. I wouldn't recommend doing this in a microwave that you use for food, since I have no idea what toxins might be in the leather.

4.Printable Scale Rulers
I can't tell you how many times these accurate miniature rulers have come in handy. I tend to convert measurements to fractions of an inch when I need to reduce them precisely. But if I've eyeballed something and just want to confirm that it's approximately the right size, I love the 1/12th and 1/144th scale rulers from Jim's printables.

5. Use Zip Kick to instantly dry Zap-a-Gap glue.
I first heard of this stuff in a "behind the scenes" interview with a movie prop master. Then, I used it for the first time with Nell Corkin at the Guild School. Zip Kick dries Zap-a-Gap glues instantly. I always tend to underestimate the amount of time it takes for super glues to dry, and for a while I gave up on using super glues, since my glued joins never seemed to hold, and I was constantly having to
unstick my fingers! It comes in spray or liquid form. Just be aware that the spray form smells terrible.

Disclaimer: I am making no money from promoting any products mentioned in this post. All opinions are my own, based on the products I have purchased.

A Cat Painting

 Yesterday the weather was so sunny and beautiful, it was the perfect day to dig out my watercolors, which I hadn't touched in far too long. In rearranging my bookshelves, I'd come across an old planner illustrated with antique watercolors. One of the paintings which caught my eye was of a sitting cat (you can see it here.)

 

 Here, I've lightly traced the frame I plan to use on the finished painting, and masked off space for the painting. I love the extra thin masking tape from model railroad shops because it has a very tight seal. I've never had a problem with it leaking. I sketched the cat and shadow freehand, adjusting a little as I went to compensate for my slightly wider frame.

My laptop is acting up, and won't let me upload the other photos, but here it is afterwards. The black frame just has an undercoat at the moment. I'll be drybrushing it to lighten it up.

Guess What I Did Last Night?

The nonfiction sections of my (real life) bookshelves were completely out of order, and a quick straightening job turned into a full scale project! My books are in several bookcases spread all over the house, so it took a few trips with a laundry basket full of books to get everything in the right room, let alone on the right shelf.

Victorian books above, miniature books below

 



The reason I'm posting about it here is that I finally got all my dollhouse books together. They've been spread out for so long, I was a little shocked to see how many I had accumulated. The bottom shelf is miniature books- histories on the left, guides to specific houses/collections (e.g. Queen Mary's dollhouse, and the Thorne rooms) in the center, and how-to books on the right. As I was going through, I noticed I had duplicate copies of a couple books, and many similar books on certain topics. I'm planning to go through them at some point more carefully, narrow them down, and offer the duplicates to anyone who is interested.

I decided to separate out all my Victorian reference books as well, since I mostly pull them out to figure out what my dollhouse should look like. They ended up on the shelf above the miniature books. You can see two of my favorites on this shelf. Antiques from the Victorian Home, by Bea Howe, is an older book that gives a great overview of Victorian crafts and tchotchkes. There are a few crafts discussed in this book that I've never/rarely seen mentioned anywhere else! Inside the Victorian Home, by Judith Flanders, is another favorite. It's the thick cream book on the shelf above.  While it's not the most relevant book if you are looking for information about decorating a Victorian period dollhouse,  it has tons of interesting information on everything from the release of the drug aspirin to the invention of the S-bend!

More books on a variety of topics

 

My favorite resource for books are the local library book fairs. I go to several every summer and come away with boxes of used books on the most random topics. In fact, the more quirky the topic the better, since these books often have more specific information about minutiae than brief web articles! Some of my favorite finds: an entire book about Cotswold privies, another about the history of valentines, and a guide to framing paintings which has a great section on antique frames.

Sorry for the tangential post. I'll be back to miniatures next time!

A Little Life in a Dark Corner

I've had an orange tree in my parlor for years.  Mom made it from twisted wire and laser cut rose leaves, and planted it in one of the wonderful old mossy pots from Clive Brooker. But it took up a lot of space. I was wondering where to put it when I thought of the empty dining room corner. 

The underside of the stairs runs through the dining room, creating a dark, difficult to see corner that nonetheless looked odd when it was empty.  I'd considered putting a tea cart  under the stairs, with a mirror on the opposite wall to show it more clearly. But when I experimented with a mirror, I couldn't get it to show the right spot, so I never bought the tea cart. The orange tree ended up being the perfect thing to bring a little life to the underside of the stairs.

 

Lottie's Bedroom Makeover

Lottie's bedroom is one of the rooms I've always struggled with. Since I love miniature dolls, tea sets, paper dolls, etc, I'm constantly having to edit this room. The other problem was that the furniture nearly hid some of my favorite miniatures. Last year, I did some re-arranging and added the carpet which definitely helped, but there were still a lot of awkward areas. This time, I ended up taking out the Bespaq desk, and moved around every piece of furniture except the bed. I think it's the first time those hats have been visible since I put them up seven years ago!

This little chest used to be wedged in the back corner of the room. I like it much better out in front, especially since it allows my silver chocolate pot and Lucy Coles wash set to be seen. It also reminded me that the chocolate pot is on a truly awful metal tray. I don't object to fake silver, but I can't forgive how chunky that tray is! The Monet and Renoir paintings were half scale  paintings done by Josephine Meyer. The two porcelain dolls were made by Lucy Coles.
With the chest in such a visible spot now, I've started wondering what can be done about its finish. I have a love/hate relationship with Bespaq. I bought/was given quite a bit of Bespaq when I first started collecting. When I started collecting artisan made furniture, I noticed that the Bespaq finishes all started to look flat and a bit plastic next to the beautifully polished woodgrains of the hand made pieces.  I'm toying with the idea of painting or faux finishing this chest, since I do really like the scale of it..

The painted doll bed was one of the first "good" miniatures I bought, over a decade ago. It is still one of the most delicately painted pieces in my collection. Considering the way the paper backing on the mattress has yellowed, and that the dealer who sold it to me specialized in estate miniatures, I'm guessing it's a bit older than that.  The signature on the bottom says  S. Hoeltge(?). Does anyone know who that might be?

April Showers Bring May Flowers

I spent all of last Sunday working on this iris kit from MJ Miniatures. Of all the iris kits I'd seen, this one looked the most realistic.   I quickly realized I'd gotten in a little over my head.

Flower making is one of my least favorite projects to begin with, and this iris kit was easily the most finicky flower kit I've ever attempted. The petal paper was thin and easily soaked  up my purple wash of paint. But because the paper was so thin, I accidently ripped/mangled quite a few of the damp petals, even using my softest paintbrush. I ended up with enough petals to make 12 big blossoms, which wasn't bad considering the number I had to throw away!

I "planted" the iris in this painted wooden vase. I didn't want to make the flowers permanant, so I just stuck the flowers in a piece of styrofoam. I painted the top of the foam brown to simulate dirt.

My favorite detail of the finished flowers (and also the step that nearly drove me over the edge) was the snippet of tan tissue arournd the base of each blossom and bud.

Here are the irises in place in the music room. The pink and white flowers are all from SDK kits. The SDK kits are punched from pre-colored paper, so they looked a bit flat next to the irises. I gave the pink flowers a quick, uneven wash using pink and orange tones to make them look varigated. They were cut for a much smaller vase originally, so I had a little trouble aranging the short stems.