Nearly Finished!

I posted about this rug kit from Joan Grimord I was working on about a month ago. Right after I posted, I lost my last threader, and lost some steam. I finally remembered the other day that I had some hair-thin wire tucked away. With a homemade threader, I was able to finish the design today!

All that's left is to finish the back. I've volunteered mom for that task. I quickly stuck it into Pheobe's room with the extra fabric tucked under to get an idea of how it will look in the room when everything's done. I'm not sure that I should have used quite so much orange and I definitely made a lot of mistakes, but overall I'm happy with it.

White Christmas

Woke up this morning, and this is what I saw:I love the view from our kitchen after a good snow fall! Hope everyone has a good holiday. We've certainly started celebrating around here!

Cheers!

P.S. Mom made the maid a few months ago. She's one of my favorites.

Another Micro Roombox

Here's a tiny room box that I whipped out a few weekends ago, when I had a bit of time. Most of the pieces were already made, so it came together much quicker than it would have normally.

The room box is about 1" wide, and 3/4" deep.


I've been playing with different ways to make small-scale plaster. In this box, I tried a putty that I had lying around. I like the effect, but it was a bit difficult to work with.

I tried to do a bit of aging on the tapestry and carpet. The book on the table has a real leather cover, though it can't be seen now that the book is glued down. I make a whole bunch at once, and then use them as needed. I'm unhappy with the tapestry rod. I'll probably replace it with something a bit thinner and older looking.

The Tiniest Chateau in the World?

Those little paper dollhouses I posted a while ago made me remember the most challenging project I've ever done in paper. I found this paper chateau online last year and couldn't resist trying my hand! However the graphics were a bit blocky so I decided to scale it down a little, so that everything would look better. Somehow, the palm sized model I was going to make shrank quite a bit...
The picture above shows the chateau in progress, before I'd started the dormers or chimneys.

Here it is with all but the right-most chimney. See how crooked the chimneys are? Next time I try something like this, I'll just use scraps of wood or styrene. The chimneys were the hardest part, far harder than the dormers. I had to print out many copies, because I kept squashing the chimneys and yes, dropping dormer parts.

I normally prefer to design my own really tiny paper houses, because I can make allowances for the thickness of the paper. However, considering that this was intended to be built much larger, it had surprisingly few problem areas. There were only four really tricky folds in the wall construction, and then those dratted chimneys!

It's been sitting on my crafting table for the last year, high up where I can see it, but it can't come to harm. Lately I've been thinking about doing something else with it, either adding it to a mini scene, or using it to make a Christmas ornament, but I can't decide. Does anyone else have an idea?