An afternoon of miniatures

It is a long time since I've been able to create anything really miniatures-related, as so much of my creative time recently has been concentrated on making clothes for play dolls and a baby's quilt.  Additionally, since July my Westville Greenleaf dollshouse has been in storage while we had our house on the market for a while, so my miniatures are out of reach.  Fortunately however my elder daughter's 3 storey shop is still very much accessible at home and today I got a chance to play with it!

We collected a few things from storage this morning, including a few of my tools (just in case), though in fact so far I haven't needed to use them.  More about what we collected in another posting this week.  After lunch we cleared the kitchen table (actually a breakfast bar, a good height for working at because you can stand or sit without breaking your back) and got the much used cutting mat out.  At Miniatura about 18 months ago we had bought some cut-out your own board games and my daughter set to work with a scalpel and ruler after I showed her what to do.  She got a bit confused at one point with the folding and gluing corner tabs instructions (the diagram was good for someone who had done these things before, but not so clear for a beginner) but ultimately did a very good job of the two boxes.

 

 My daughter cutting out miniature boxes

Miniature Snakes & Ladders

Her two boxes of games, with a 50 pence piece

Whilst she was cutting and gluing, I borrowed my husband's humbrol enamel paints and painted the fire iron set and the cuckoo clock white metal kits from Phoenix Models.  I had made up one of their cooking range kits in the past, so it was familiar territory for me.  This was a cheap way of providing her with a set of fireplace accessories which, if made by a professional miniaturist using the proper materials, would have been 10 times as expensive, so although the bronze paint isn't really like the real thing, it is okay.  We had looked at cheap ready made sets, but none of them looked authentic enough, whereas the Phoenix Models look right if painted correctly.

I needed my set of needle files to tidy up the metal on the clock before painting, but fortunately these were easily to hand in my husband's small workshop.  The cuckoo clock is still work in progress, my husband's collection of paints are for his aeroplane models, and I need some brigher colours to finish it off, especially as we've got a Phoenix Model set of toys to paint, so I think a trip to Hobbycraft tomorrow is a must.

Work in progress on the fire iron set

 

Painting work in progress on the cuckoo clock

For a while this evening we dusted and tidied the dollshouse starting with the attic bedroom, working down to the kitchen followed by the shop on the ground floor.  However the shop part isn't yet completely tidy, as we want to make some Christmas boxes and bags from the latest issue of Dollshouse and Miniature Scene, and a container is required for those skittles...

Hopefully we'll get some more mini making done tomorrow.  The weather is awful at the moment, so spending time indoors making things is one good way to pass the weekend.