For The Fairies?

Isn't this wonderful! I found it while I was doing a Google search. I wish I could tell you who made it so I could give them credit for their talent. I have seen these tiny outdoor cottages before but they are usually made out of stone.

There is a perfect spot for one of these at my house. I have a big court yard surrounded by high brick walls. It really is a secret garden with a locked iron door. This idea has to be added to my growing to do list.

Spring is in the air

I ordered this peony kit from VariAatje. Ria's kits are just beautiful! I still have a hydrangea kit to do but that will have to wait a while. PHEW! No one told me how much time some of the flower kits take to put together.

The hat and purse are made of congress cloth I dipped in strong tea. I didn't want to use the paper flowers for a hat so I stitched them out of 2mm and 4mm silk ribbon on gauze. Then they were glued on.

Maybe some of you remember Penny Weight Press. Barbara Raheb made such beautiful books. I am lucky to have several of them. The unabridged (fully readable) Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is on the table and E. B Browning is in the purse.

The lemons are polymer clay. My first attempt at making any sort of food.

Olszewski

I have had my first auction win on Ebay. It is a lovely Olszewski miniature from the woman's series titled Hunt and Hounds. When I first saw it I couldn't figure out what she was holding. It is a Falcon and she is wearing a leather glove on her hand.

Francis Whittemore blew the glass pitcher for me and I made the sterling silver pour spout and the silver tankards.

Spatula

I hope you won't mind an occasional post about bigger pieces of my metal work.

This is a spatula I have wanted to make for a long time to use in my kitchen. It is made of steel, with a African Blackwood handle.

I had to find a special type of steel for this project. I finally found it at an elevator company. The steel is almost as hard as the saw blades I used to cut out the house fly design. Because of that, it took forever to cut out my design and my blades kept breaking. I used 144 of them to cut it out, a gross of saw blades!!! I suppose I could have had it water cut rather than doing it by hand. I'm just stubborn I suppose. If I decide to make them to sell, I will have them cut.

The stem is all file work. The design in it is created by twisting the metal. When I turned the Blackwood I decided to turn it in the shape of the handle on my jewelers saw frame. A little private joke to remind me what a nightmare I had cutting out the fly.

I will never use Ebony again now that I have used African Blackwood, particularly in my miniature work. It is not brittle and the grain is just as fine. All I had to do was oil it after the sanding was finished.

Slippers!

I am a bit overwhelmed thinking about all the things I want and need for the inside of my dollhouse.

So... I have been exploring making new things out of other materials. Here are my first pair of slippers. I sculpted a right and left (interior sized) shoe shape out of polymer clay to form over. The off white slippers are leather, the green ones are made of Ultrasuede. I am not totally pleased yet. Maybe the next pair will be better.

Chandelier

This chandelier will be in the kitchen of the house I am planning to build. It is made of brass and oxidized black, hopefully it looks aged. The four arms were pierced out of brass and the center was turned on a Unimat. Yes, I can wire it.

Francis Whittemore blew the white shade and chimney for me. Thankfully, I still have a lot of the glass he made for me.

Extreme Kit Bashing

I like so many things about the Chrysnbon kits, apart from the fact they are not wood or metal. They are very believable when photographed. I have never seen better scaled bathroom fixtures. I see many of those bathroom kits in the dollhouse blogs I read.

I brought this stove home with the intention of making some design changes and casting it in bronze. I wanted to get rid of the faux nickle bling for one thing. I didn't want it to become the focal point of a room. I also wanted to make the stove fuctional. To do that I had to buy several stove kits and cut them apart with a jewelers saw before they could be cast.

I had a few brass ornamental findings that I pulled molds off of. Into those molds molten casting wax was poured. Those wax embelishments were added to different pieces of the kit. It is a labourious process because they all had to be fused to the plastic by carefully melting the wax on to the plastic. It was done with a hot needle around the edge of each wax ornamental piece. They had to be sucure or they might break free during the vaccum investment process.

I won't bore you with the details of the lost wax casting process, except to say most polystyrene's will burn out of investment clean.

Finally, all of the bronze kit pieces were silver soldered together (with a torch), The finished stove was oxidized and and given a coat of Renaiassance Wax.