Beach House

These are some porcelain fairies that I made some time ago.  I am planning on having a "Beach House" giveaway at the end of the summer.  I will include a tiny fairy and a fairy -house made of tiny shells.  The bellow picture is of some printed fabric that I have made for pillows and cloth napkins.  I have made far too many and will include some of them in the giveaway as well.  

I am working on my chimney right now.
  First I cut a piece of foam  roughly into the shape of a chimney, and glued it onto the side  of the house.
 I am experimenting with papiermache to form my bricks because it comes in a much larger amount than Paperclay,and coast less.  So far it seems to work.
 I will cover the whole chimney with Papiermache in stages .   I am encasing the top of the chimney where it meets the roof line so that  the roof will look like  it is cut out and not part of the chimney.
  I made one mistake: I made the first batch too moist and it was hard to mark the bricks, so they are a bit large.  The mermaid tile was stuck on with siliconized acrylic caulk which is what I have used for most of my gluing.  Siliconized  acrylic caulk  is a great adhesive  it's thick and you can paint over it easily.  

 

I have used the same taupe acrylic paint to paint some of my foundation stones and the roof shingles to tie the house together visually.

I have a love hate relation ship with porcelain.  I love the finish that I can get, the colors of china paint, the glaze and the gold.  I love the details and the fact that it shrinks a little when it is fired.  But it is brittle, not easy to model and is very messy plus the physical discomfort that I have mentioned in the past, but  I just adore French and British porcelain figurines and have spent a lot of my past trying to reproduce them.  What should I do?  An ongoing question.  I have been unpacking my  miniatures and found these tucked into a little box.  the largest one is one inch.     

I am experimenting with crochet...I am using Gutermann's 100 cotton and a .5 crochet hook. Also I am testing the Burmilana wool thread, it is the peach and green fiber and it is knit.  I am very happy with the results and if anyone is interested please tell me and I will add a post all about it's qualities to my Knitting page.  I almost forgot...the bumilana works well in #40 silk gauze with a #10 needle.  It is for machine embroidery and comes in many colors.

Annabelle wanted a picture of her puppy to appear on the blog. This is Percy, he was too quick to get a good picture of him

A porcelain garden angel that I sculpted many years ago.  I think that I will keep her where she is, in Gwendolyn and Joseph's bed room.

Have a lovely week,

Summer Fun

     I have been trying out different types of clay.  In the past I have worked in porcelain,but found it too abrasive for my system.  I found some La Doll at Amazon and spent a little time with it today.  The chimney tile is a quick piece of work.  I didn't spend much time refining it, but I can tell that it will be beautiful to work with.  It has many of the same qualities of porcelain but it is more malleable.  One of the things that I like about porcelain is that you can paint fine details on with slip...La Doll allows for this technique also.

       I can,t wait to have more time to work with this clay. I think it will allow me to make great details in my work, but for now, my children and I are  off to Boston to visit my mother and the museums.

Tile for beach house chimney (2 3/4 x 2 3/4 inches)

 Normally, I would knit or embroider my own window treatments , but summer's end is close, and Annabelle's house needs to be finished.   I have a nice collection of  of vintage lace, and have used some  of it  for the beach house windows.

I have used some roses made from cold porcelain to tie back the bedroom curtains. 

I made this  blue wicker Chaise longue this week.  I used directions in  the book Wicker Furniture by Sheila Smith to get a basic idea, but changed it to suit my needs.  The lounge will go o he porch.

I need to make one more chair, a bench and two little tables, and the porch will have all of it's furniture.

Details of Gwendolyn's dresser.  I painted the china with china paints about eight years ago. The blank pieces were from Avon miniatures of the UK http://www.avonminiatures.com/  .   I plan on working on my flowers at some point, but for now they are just balancing in the vase.  The wall paper is from Itsy Bitsy Mini, and is described in an older post.

Annabelle solved our cat-in-the-house problem.  She made Bella a cardboard house which I put on top of a china cabinet.  She loves to sleep in it and to look down on all of us.   

We are planning to do a lot of mini baking.  We made these whipped cream dollops out of silicone caulking that I put in a disposable plastic pastry bag fitted with my smallest star tip.  The clean-up was easy, as the caulk cleans with soap and water until it dries.  Once  they dried I was able to store them in a little plastic container.

I finally got the nerve up to use liquid resin.   I  used Easy Cast, and it was easy. My biggest fear was that it would harden all over the place, but it takes a few hours to set, giving you plenty of time to add color, mix with tiny fruits, drop into jars and clean up.  If you are afraid to try this project, don't be.

Have a wonderful week,
Lucy Coles

My Mother turns 87

  My mother,my three children and I  go to Rockport MA to celebrate her birthday every year.  This year she turned 87 while we were there. 

      I have been very indulgent and added quite a few pictures of my children.  I have promised them that this will not be a habit, and I ask for you forgiveness in advance...I will not make a habit of including my personal life too often. 

     I have made some progress on the beach house.  My trip to Rockport has given me many new ideas, and some miniature materials that I will share with you in the future.  Annabelle and  I are now calling the beach house our Rockport house.  Rockport is a small seaside town on the north shore of  Massachusetts.  There are many houses both large and small,  my favorite are from the 1780's.  Some of the smaller homes are painted in wild combinations of orange and blue, aqua and peach, lime green and pale blue.  It is an artist's community, with many beautiful shops and settings.  I have included a few pictures of details that I think are worth making in miniature.

Happy birthday Mom

Gwendolyn tries out two new granddaughters.  They are dolls that I made in the past .  Annabelle wants to name them Clair  and Amelia. 

some progress in the bathroom.  I am making a tile floor out of Paper clay  The wall paper is from Itsy Bitsy Mini and looks beautiful with the bed room wall paper.  The name of the bathroom wall paper is Starfish and Seahorses in aqua.  It is so perfect for a beach house.

We still are working on the canned goods.  It takes a lot of tiny  foods to fill a jar.  If you click on my images they will get bigger and the collages look better.

Joseph and Gwendolyn's bed room is coming along.  I have just put some vintage laces on the bed for  now.  I plan on making a mattress and bedding  I have since added pink crystal knobs to the dresser.  I painted the bed and and dresser green and added a simple landscape to tie them together.  I am planning on making a upholstered chair to set by the window, for now I am playing with the wicker chair that I made for the porch .  I love the wall paper from Itsy Bitsy Mini (Stripe Dark Toil, peach).

I have finished the" f"lag stone" kitchen floor.  I used a cereal box for the base and covered it with Paperclay.  I am very happy with the results, but have no idea how we will finish the kitchen.  I like the English and European kitchens That I am seeing and may just mix cultures.

Some pretty details from Rockport.  I am adding a chimney to our Rockport/Beach house.  I was going to put a  sculpted sail-ship tile in the center of  the chimney, but now I think that I will make a mermaid.  I love the seashells in the urns. 

Too beautiful to leave out.

Flowers  all around.

For Susan.
 I finished Anna's dress early this year.  I am usually hemming her smocked dress the night before we leave for Rockport.

James
I am not used to having a 16 year old, and I did not think to remind him to bring a razor.

William

It is not easy to get three children to pose in unison. 

Final product...a Christmas card

Have A lovely week,
Lucy Coles

progress on Gwendolyn and Joseph's home

Bella, our cat, feels the need to try out every room in the house.

Annabelle chose the above perfume bottles and corgi pillow from Gillian at Make it Small.  She then  used these items to choose the wallpapers .  The top one is Cottage Rose and the bottom is Fifi and Friends , both are from Itsy Bitsy Mini.

When Annabelle was sick, my mother bought her the puppy in the previous picture.  Using    Wicker Furniture For The Doll's House , by Sheila Smith, Annabelle and I constructed this little dog bed.  Anna did much of the weaving, the braid, her first embroidery and sewed and stuffed the little pillow.

Fifi enjoys the porch.

Gwendolyn tries out her new chair.  She is going to spoil that baby if she doesn't stop holding her!

Have a Wonderful week ,
Lucy Coles

A Quick Hello

     I am going to spend much of this week finishing a hand smocked dress for Annabelle to wear for my mother's 87th birthday.  I have only to construct it, as I have finished the smocking during my son's baseball practices.  I will quickly show you what I have been duing in the mini-world and then I'm off to sew.

I have been playing with the computer.  Little girls like things that look like they came from the store, and Annabelle is no different.  She appreciates what I make, put these computer images look real to her. 

We are planning on fillings these bottles as a little project together.  I will do a posting on  these projects

I have started to sew Annabelle some pillows for our little girls room.

this is a sheet of plate decals.  I will do a posting on decals and plates for novices when I have time.  For now...Avon miniatures in the UK is a great source for fine miniature porcelain blanks.

     I have no pictures of the beach house, but it now has a wrap around porch that took a lot of firm talking to to get straight...but it looks good.  I have had to use a lot of filler and a lot of sanding to make this house sturdy.  I will wallpaper it and add a Paperclay  stone foundation and chimney next.
     I have put up two rooms of wallpaper in Honeysuckle Cottage.

the blue room is the living room, I am building a full wall fire place with shelving to fit in-between the two windows.  The pale pink room is the bathroom/dressing room.  Both wallpapers are from Itsy Bitsy Mini and are half scale.

Have a lovely week,

Happy Fourth of July

My newest  bear has no name, but he is almost ready for the Fourth of July.   I did not sew his  collar down in  time for photo.

Happy Fourth of July!   Have you ever exercised with weights on your legs?  Well I have, and when you take them off, it feels like you are flying.  Such is the case with moving from half scale to one-inch scale...every thing seems so big and my hands feel as though they have shrunk.  I have spent the last week getting our Beach House ready while Annabelle attended Ballet camp.  Today I will add the porch roof and we will start applying the wallpaper.  I am going to put flagstone down on the bottom floors with Paperclay, make tiles for the bathroom floor and am undecided on the bed rooms.  

Here are the wallpapers form Itsy Bitsy Mini.  The sea horses are for the bathroom, the dogs for the living room, the roses for the girl's attic room and the pink Toile for the grandparent's bed room.  I absolutely adore them.  Annabelle picked all but the Toile.  Here is a link to wallpaper   http://dollhouse-miniature-wallpaper.com/shop/

I have not forgotten about Honeysuckle cottage.  Though, I am thinking of renaming it because I realize that if I am going to name it after a flower, I should have that flower be a main part of the garden.  I am not sure I can make half scale  honeysuckle.

Have a wonderful day,

A Crazy Week

Save me!

Just so you know what kind of person I really am...I often find myself doing really terrible things to my creations in the name of realism.  In order for such a tiny bear/ dog 's cloths to hang correctly, I had to do this to him.--I am truly sorry.  I once tried to needle felt a nativity--I stopped at jabbing the baby Jesus.  I just couldn't do it.
.

I think Pie might be a puppy.  Anyway he and Humble  are central to the Evalina stories.

     It has been a while since I have had any time to post.  We have been dealing with, the end of school, packing and sending off boys for a big camping trip, a visit from my mother and a pretty sick little girl.  Well, the boys are back, my mother has gone and our little girl has antibiotics. 

      I have not been idle all of this time, just unable to sit alone.  So I will spend some time catching up.

I have finished knitting the doily and hand towel for the wash stand.  I added a row of purple button -hole stitch to the edge to give the effect of a crocheted edge.  I love the colorful edgings  on vintage linens.  The doily is lavender.

This is a new Cassidy Creation kit awaiting pink bead knobs.

The bathroom of honeysuckle cottage is going to have a dressing room combined with the bathroom, .  It is still waiting for me to hang the wall paper.  The wall paper is above, under poor Pie.  I made the sink, and am trying to figure out a way to make a toilet and a tub.

      One of my original ideas for this blog was to have some projects for children, and to include my 7 year old daughter Annabelle as much as possible...she will out grow me soon enough.  We decided to make a beach house together.  It is meant to be a cottage, which I think should be both whimsical and elegant and of course diminutive.  So we have chosen some very beautiful wallpaper from Itsy Bitsy Mini,   http://dollhouse-miniature-wallpaper.com/shop/ , that will make the inside fun and pretty.   I will show you when it comes. 

      The inhabitants are Grandmother (who I've named Gwendolyn and Grandfather who is named Joseph after my father).   There are pictures of them in earlier posts.  The top floor will house their granddaughters who do not exist yet and have no names.  We do know that there are two of them  and there are no boys.  The girls will visit often.  The baby, who is their little sister, will stay home with Mommy.

     We chose pool blue, hydrangea green and cream for the exterior paint.  To my great surprise, pink is not Annabelle's favorite color; she likes teal, blue and green.  I like pink.  So the house will be a combination of those colors inside and out.  I am trying really hard to let Anna make decisions with me, instead of my taking over the whole project.  I do not want her to remember this summer as the summer that"Mommy wouldn't let me make the dollhouse the way I wanted it".  I would love some suggestions on projects that children can do.  She loves to make food and luckily there are a lot of Youtube videos for us to watch together.

This little shell collection is the reason that we decided to make a beach -house.  Isn't it great?  They are real.

We chose the  Laurel by Greencraft because of it's "ease" in assembly and the wrap around porch.  A beach house should have a lot of outdoor living space.  We will have double the foot print for it's base , so.that we can have a garden, lots of flowers and a patio.

I have decided to work with what we have, so that means a lot of prep work.  I have rubbed  a slurry of  wood putty into all of the trim pieces so that they won't splinter when I sand them.  I think the bay window will be the center piece of the tiny kitchen, so I am putting a lot of work into  it.  On the inside I have smeared a watery paste of paper clay and sanded it smooth-ish.

The doors and windows have been wood puttied, sanded and await their place on the house

These flowers are  from my garden and I think the colors will go nicely with the blue and green of the house .  I plan on using these colors for the window boxes plus lavender-pink and candy red.
I have been rambling on...this is what happens if I have too much time to sit alone.

Have a wonderful week,