Under a blue moon

A little book review

I paint doll furniture about as well as I do full sized furniture.  Not well at all.  I always miss a spot.  

I follow a very creative woman on YouTube who has a channel and accompanying blog called Thicketworks where she features mixed media art projects.  She has been on a miniature kick lately and just featured a tutorial on making miniature books.  Her blog has downloads so you can easily recreate them yourself.  

The books are very detailed and realistic.  She has a great trick of using embossing powder on the book covers to mimic leather which really adds to the realism.  And the pages really turn and if you had super power eyesight you could actually read them.   I can't tell if I even got them the right side up or not.  

I won't detail how to make them because her tutorial and blog post have all the steps.   I will say it was a relatively quick project.  I printed everything up and cut them to size and got the covers embellished the way I wanted.  Then the next morning I assembled the pages into book blocks, applied the end papers and put it all together.  I would say the entire project took about three or four hours total.

One slight modification I made was rather than printing the PDF files as is I copied the image of the page from her blog and plopped it into a Word document.  That way I could size it down slightly to be closer to 1:12 scale.  

I printed the covers on Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Matte rather than the recommended card stock because the colors are more vibrant with my inkjet printer.  It's pricey but the results are so much better.  It's the same paper I use when making cards.  

I have made zero progress on the dollhouse restoration but at least now the inhabitant is well read!

 

Small things

As I mentioned in Monday's post, since I am all caught up with my projects, I want to start refocusing some attention to the dollhouse.  I thought I would use this post to share some things I have created.  

While I am procrastinating on the actual restoration of the house I've been creating the furnishings and belongings of the house's occupant.  I didn't intend for this to happen but as I began acquiring and making things for the house a story began to emerge on who actually lives there.  I can't adequately explain it.  It's like I have a muse.  She is an elderly woman who has had a rich and intriguing past.  

She is very creative, as evidenced by the paint supplies and she may have been a circus horseback rider back in the day.  She has many mementos from her days traveling across the county with the circus.  Puppet theater inspired by Guignol.  

Most of the furnishings I've made are actually for the attic.  To me that is far the most interesting space to furnish.

Most of what I make is from bass wood I get at the craft store or local hardware store.  It's a little less soft than balsa wood and I just find it easier to work with.  I will also employ Popsicle sticks in my creations.  I have a box of Popsicle sticks that Rick bought when he was 9 or 10 years old.  They are a much better quality of wood than the Popsicle sticks you can buy today.  

The attic space is divided into two rooms.  The main room with all the stored mementos and cast-off furniture and another room that will be like a dressing room with all her old costumes and vestiges from her life as an entertainer.  

Yes that is the Ikea Bekvam stool, painted in my signature shade of green.  It was quicker and easier to put together the real size version!  

You know I have to replicate some of my own furnishings if you recall the bed, dining set and stove I shared previously.  The stool will be in the kitchen next to the Wedgewood.  Just as it is in my kitchen.

I fully admit to being intimidated by some of the masterpiece dollhouses out there.  There are so many miniature artists that I admire so much but if I try to live up to their standards I will never finish the thing.  I want the house to tell a story more than I want it to be perfectly to scale and accurate.  So I am going to forge ahead and I'll share as I go along.  Believe me I am completely new to this so I'll be sharing what I learn along the way.

Also - I just noticed, looking at the above picture, that the oven door handles on my Wedgewood aren't lined up.  They must have replaced one of the doors during the restoration process.  So - I'm thinking perfect really isn't all that realistic anyway.

Art imitates life

I think I've mentioned that I have a rescue doll house.  I bought it off of Craigslist and the thing is enormous and in much need of restoration (mostly of the decorative kind).  I haven't made much progress on it because, truth be told, the work is daunting.  The interior walls all need a good skim coat of plaster and sanding, the floors need replacing and, well, we just won't talk about the staircases at the moment.  

At first I was very inspired and then very intimidated by all the very realistic, authentic looking dollhouses out there and it kind of paralyzed me.  So I started working on the furnishings as a way to distract myself. 

Now the little details I can wrap my  mind around.  So I started making the odd bit here and there.  After making a few pieces I realized that I was essentially replicating my own decor.

I tend to buy dollhouse furniture and then modify it to suit my taste.  The bed, for example, was an orangy wood stain and I immediately painted it white and added some crystal finials.  Much like my own bed. 

The table and chair are actually plastic, assemble yourself pieces that I also painted white.  

I guess what works for me will work for the dollhouse (which I keep saying I'm doing for my granddaughter but we all know I'm really doing it for me.  I will share though...).  

I did create the stove myself out of scrap bass wood and lots of sanding and coats of paint.  I even made a little Wedgewood emblem like our stove has.  I followed a couple of tutorials to come up with my version.  I have a Pinterest board full of inspiration.   

I'll feature more things I've made and my progress (slow as it may be...) over the next few months.  It's such a fun little hobby and I love how creative I can get with it. You should see all the stuff I've made for the attic space.  I wanted it to tell a story of the person that lives in the house and what an interesting life they have led. 

P.S.  Sorry about the lack of post on Monday.  The weekend just flat out wore me out.  We had my mother in law visiting and a birthday celebrations and I just ran out of hours.   Here's a picture of the finished doll bed.  It was a hit!