Kits & Miss Nilsson

I have been working on some kits today and yesterday. The sewing table is from Mini Mundus, the rest are House of Miniatures. Kits are wonderful! I used a kind of vax called "georgian mahogony" to get the look I wanted. Never used vax before so I quite liked it.

Little Dagmar liked the furniture too, and she has, according to Gertrude, been playing (jumping) on them while I have been at work. She has been trying to pacify the girl and when she was about to fall of the Hepplewhite Huntboard, she had had enough. "GET ME A GOVERNESS OR SELL THIS CHILD ON EBAY." Ok...

So she was introduced to Miss Nilsson, a very sober but kind young lady with a strange hairdo. Gertrude was quite taken by her, asked her down to sit on the Lyre Back Chairs with her. Florence came as well, and Dagmar offered her some cabbage (that she probably stole somewhere).

General progress 2

It took a night for yesterdays plaster to dry. Fine. But it said one hour on the tube. Today I finished the floor, and started work on one of the panels, three more to go! I think it looks spectacular!

Possible plaster panic?

I feel like I have been cutting 300000 coffee stirrers, a work that would not have been possible without my new xacto saw :) But I needed a break from the floor so I started work on the ceiling. Thoose plaster ornaments that can be bought in miniature shops can be expensive. But also, I dont want to order any since I want it done NOW and not wait for weeks until my order arrives. So instead of using some fancy plaster I took four wooden decorations I picked of an old project before I sold it... But it needed something more than a total of five pieces glued to the ceiling. Plaster! Lovely thick plaster thats easy to apply and just heaven to work with! But no.

Yesterday I went to the store and bought a filler of a brand I have never used before. Right now I want to jump in a time machine and tell myself to stop being so impulsive! After I took the picture, it started cracking. Sure, I wished for some of that effect. But not like this! The filler is also lumpy, and dripping. I hope that some paint can save it. If not, I have to take my broken knife, remove it and make my boyfriend send me some of the good old filler on the mail.

And, I just stained the floor.

General progress 1

I started work on the salon today.

Dagmar

Gertrude has now a second daughter named Dagmar, age eight. Now Gertrude has said she wants no more children but please find them a governess asap so she does not have to bother too much about the two.

Demolishion?

I present to you... The Yellow House! It was a gift from my parents when I was twelve and it's gone through many different stages. But it's time for a proper make over. So today I stripped the floors, removed wallpaper, the inner walls and removed the stairs. The house is so small and the stairs take up too much space. So gone they went. The spaces where they went is now covered with cardboard.

I broke my knife, but in it's broken state it is a very good tool for removing floorboards.

Gertrude shows her colours!

Gertrude was very severe when she told me that the wallpaper in the servants quarter would not do, too dreadfully boring. She is the mistress of the house and responsible for the welfare of the people employed. Lucky for me, I went shopping yesterday and found a striped paper intended for scrapbooks. Gertrude approved. And she was right, it looked a bit more cheerful now. Gertrude reminded me that the servants were not slaves, they could very well murder their masters in the beds if they were not happy about terms of conditions. Oh dear!

And here is another bad picture of more bricks. Funny, I had never done any bricks before I started this project, and now bricks seems to be everything I do. The bricks on this particular picture is darker, I forgot to add orange when I painted the cartons... Or I can say that the clay they used for building this wall was different from the rest, from up north or something.

This is the last work I will do on my basement for a very long time. I will go work in my home town as a museum guide, living at my parents house. I have my two houses there. The yellow house, where the basement belongs to. And the the red cottage. I will bring my tools along with me and intend to do a lot of work. It's been ages since I did anything on them and I have lots of plans! Until Sunday, happy midsummer!

Plank away!

Work started today with cutting coffee stirrers with a scissor. And voilà!

Some green paint and I finally had my plank. Second picture is a blurry image of the finished result. The stairs down to the basement from the street were originally wooden, but I covered the steps with egg carton that was painted to resemble stone. I then continued the plank to cover up the empty space underneath. The edges though are a bit rough. When I find proper material I will make some bannister, don't want the servants and tradespeople falling down and breaking all kinds of limbs.

I like how the sun shines on the stairs on the third picture, so I wanted to share it.

I have to use my camera on my phone, since my digital camera distorts the colours...

Construction craze!

The construction worker strikes again! The basement is semi-assembled. It's wallpapered with some simple, yet structured, paper. Nothing too fancy for the poor servants. White, with a hint of grey, for the kitchen area and light yellow for the servants room.

Work on the patio is slowly progressing. I am not pleased the stones, yes I have never painted stones before so it's quite the challenge. The wooden bar (behind the empty space where the stairs will be placed) is the base I will use to make a green plank. Later I will hang out the washing and let ivy climb over my bricks.

Bricks and stones

The dressing of my basement is almost done! My first attempt making bricks from eggcarton. It was quite fun, I've started asking my friends to save their cartons for me so I am expecting to be the owner of quite a large stock in a few weeks. For grout I used a filler that I mixed with colour, a very very messy but satisfying process. So the façade is almost done, windows need to be painted - again. Sticky fingers covered in paint need to stay away from nicely painted windows! More grey "stone" is going to be added, to create a base. I only had enough eggcartons left for the big piece...

I started work on the patio as well, plain stones that I painted using my fingers.

Finally a basement!

Today my basement from England arrived! For more than ten years I wished for a basement to my house, and now it's finally here. Even though the rest of the house is 300 km away... I have been looking at different basement before I decided on this model. It is a few cm wider than my house, but I don't think it will show. That much. But I was surprised about the size of the actual basement. Sure, I measured the width, but not the depth of my house. I am determined it will work. My boyfriend was quite curious about the size of the package I brought home from the post and was keen to know how it worked out. So since, he is an engineer I let him help out to construct the front part. "But isn't this your hobby?" he asked.

Chippendale sofa, take 1

I received a package from USA on Friday, with three bargain House of Miniatures kits. I imminently started building the Chippendale sofa, even though my boyfriend reminded me that we were going to a dinner party in an hour. Maybe that's why I didn't think things over and used the light blue fabric that came with the kit. Yesterday I came to the conclusion that I would not stand the colour for a longer time. It reminded me of an highlighter. So... this happened.



I wanted to give the sofa another chance, the alternative was to bid on another one on ebay and hope for the best. So, I took an old dark blue shirt. The resurrected sofa can be seen below. Eh, the horror of glue stains...



The problem, that my boyfriend pointed out to me is that it feels high. He suggested that I cut the legs a few millimetres.

Gertrude!

From another victorian housemaid came Gertrude, an edwardian woman. Before I pinned her hair up she looked like Botticellis Venus with her wonderful curls. Was truly tempted to let her remain a free spirited venus, but that would not be very decent in my dollshouse...



And here she is with her daughter Florence, still not wearing stockings...