Go Ahead... Raid His Closet. He won't miss it.

William Morris Wing Chair

I have wanted to try to make a chair for a long time. Mostly because I wanted to try to upholster something. Sadly, this city has horrible fabric shops! As many times as I have looked, I have always come home empty handed.

When I was doing a William Morris search and found the acorn wallpaper, I also found a man's William Morris (used) silk tie on Ebay. It was in pristine condition and I loved the colors and the pattern.

When it arrived I was shocked by the exceptional quality of the silk. I took the tie apart and realized the fabric was so flimsy I would have to use iron on interfacing to stabilize it. I made the rope twisted cord trim out of cotton embroidery floss. The chair seemed to need a pillow so I decided to use 1/2 mm no hole glass beads to fill it. I thought the beads would give it weight and allow it to look like someone had just gotten up and left it rumpled in the chair.

I have a whole new respect for the prices people ask for handmade upholstered chairs! It took me all of a 3 day weekend just to upholster it.

PS.... We cannot accept liability or complaints from irate husbands about missing ties.



Updated on September 6, 2012

With everything else being symmetrical... The band on the pillow of the seat was driving me mad. I had to fix it! I am much happier now!

Writing Letters

Today's mail brought another wonderful piece by Linda Master. http://miraclechicken.blogspot.com/ It is a gorgeous brass ink well and carved wood stand. The wood has been routered to insure the well doesn't turn over. I have raised the ink well so you can see how pretty it is. She also sent perfect white and a brown quill feathers.

OOPS! I neglected to say Linda turned the brass ink well. That was her first attempted at turning metal on a lathe.

Thank you so much Linda!!!

Someone Has Been Out Shopping In the Rain

That someone is me. And yes, thankfully we are getting some badly needed rain today.



I was wandering around Michael's craft store and found these tiny purple flowers. When I saw them I thought they had been dried. No! Instead they have been preserved by some method that makes them feel like you just picked them. I decided to add them to some peonies I made.

I also couldn't resist the William Morris acorn wallpaper I found. I guess I have had acorns on the brain lately ;-) The umbrella was a ETSY find. It is just perfect. http://www.etsy.com/shop/FranMadeMinis The the fabric has wonderful fluffy folds at the top.

The Egg's Nest (Nutshell Cottage)

The Egg's Nest features a second floor furnished bedroom that can be seen through the surround windows. Those windows were made from 8 double windows, four of which had to be cut in half to make this octagon shape. There is a cup and a vase of flowers on the night stand next to the bed. There is also a chair in the room. I am afraid you cannot see that in these photos.


It is a gift for a special friend, Linda Master http://miraclechicken.blogspot.com/ . Linda has made so many beautiful miniatures for me in the past year. I wanted to make her a house that would reflect her love of birds. She gave up sitting out on her porch this spring / summer because several robins and barn swallows kept deciding build nests there.


All the "timbers" are made of real twigs and the 'daub' is opaque embossing powder. Filling the areas between the twigs with glue and powder is a very tedious proposition. It requires several careful fills to bring the 'daub' up to level with the 'timbers'. I think filling those spaces gives a much more realistic appearance then paint would. The twigs insure I do not have uniform looking timbers.The nests are made of the tiniest acorn caps I have ever seen. I made polymer eggs to put in them.

When I posted that I was totally out of acorn caps, it was Linda who went out and searched for early falling ones and mailed them to me. I couldn't believe it because unbeknownst to her, I was already working on her house and I had to have more caps to finish it.




Thanks also to Tom, who provided the big acorn caps from his yard in Parma, Ohio. "Kilimanjaro"(AKA Kilmouski) and I look forward to your fall crop!



The village is growing!

I Want Him So Bad I Can Taste It

He'd be soooo delicious with a little garlic butter.

Waiting For The Trees

I have been busy making another nutshell cottage. Cutting the braces for the roof (over the front door) was a bit tricky. They are about 6 mm long and had to have a 45 degree angle cut on both ends.

This house will have a furnished bedroom on the second floor. Visible through the octagon 360 degree surround windows. Just one problem... I am totally out of acorn caps in all sizes.

While I wait for supplies to fall, I thought I would make some stick pins using the front entrance of this cottage design. They will be just over one inch tall. I thought it would be fun to wear on the lapel of a wool jacket with jeans.

The Winner Of The Walnut House Is....

I want to thank all of you who entered the Nutshell cottage Give Away. It was great fun to read all the fabulous names you thought of for it. I was really surprised at the number of entries since the piece is not a 1: 12 dollhouse miniature. ;-)


This morning I used the random number generator to select a winner from my 594 eligible followers who named the house and left a comment.

Congratulations Debora!!! http://petitpunt.blogspot.com/ Who named the house Nutty's Observatory. I will email you through your blog for your address details.