Mosaic table

I have recently invested in another huge bundle of Chippendale/House of Miniatures kits, 35 pieces all in all. I still had some from previous purchases, but it was a good deal, and who knows how much longer these kits are available since they were discontinued since 1980s. I wonder how many of each kit was produced and how many can still be in circulation. It is expensive to get them over from the USA, but it's the only way, and if you split shipping costs by the number of kits, it's tolerable. I have only bought kits I know I want to make again - I am never again in my life making the breakfront or wardrobe. Or maybe I will some time in the future. What I am saying is that, once I have made all existing kits and have now started on duplicates, I want to experiment with different finishes and decorations, and I will also be bold.

While I was waiting for my parcels from the US, I kept thinking of possible variations of kits I had made before, like I have already done with Adam furniture. One idea I had was to make a table with mosaic tabletop, and the best kit for this was doubtless Queen Anne tea table. When I first made it, I failed spectacularly with mouldings, so this time I was very careful. I am worthless at mitring mouldings, even after all these years.

I will not show the project step by step, because it was exactly like the previous one (except that I did somewhat better with moulding). I used three coats of stain: brown mahogany, red mahogany and more brown mahogany until I was happy with the tone.

Before I glued on the legs, I made the mosaic tabletop. I learned to make egg-shell mosaic some years ago,  and I also made a tabletop then, although it doesn't feel as perfect as I thought then. But the technique is the same, and I again used two paints, gold and bronze. They are only slightly different, but the two shades create a nice effect.

 

Yes, I glued every single bit separately, no cheating. Tweezers and toothpicks and patience. I didn't clock the work, but estimate two to two and a half hours. I certainly feel it was worth the trouble. It's definitely OOAK, and while it probably is not good enough for Kensington Dollhouse Festival, I am really proud of it.

Chair disasters

Of all miniature furniture, chairs are my least favourite. I am simply not good at chairs. I bought several sets of chairs for my early project because I didn't believe I would ever be able to make them myself. I did change the fabric.

That said, I made a very clumsy kitchen chair within the first month after I started miniature-making, when I had neither proper tools nor skills. I used lolly sticks, toothpicks and chopsticks.

Like many of my earliest pieces, this one has sentimental value, so I have kept it, and it is now in my van Hoogstraten room box.

Of course I made champagne chairs at one point. 

I was quite pleased with my cabriole leg chairs, and perhaps because they somehow turned out well I thought it would always go well. Hubris. From there, it went downward all the way. The lyre-back chairs were a pain and didn't look nice. I have problems with tucking in and gluing fabric, it just never looks neat. I showed two more chairs in a recent post that I am totally unhappy with. I will work further on them soon.

Meanwhile, I wanted to make a slightly unusual chair, a slat back chair.

 

My miniature friends had warned me that it was tricky, and it isn't that I hadn't listened, but it felt it was time to tackle this kit.

 

It looked very straightforward. I used antique pine stain, and when it was dry, I enlarged the holes just a tiny bit with a pin vise and sanded the square pegs of the slats to make them round. Yes, you got it right, square pegs in round holes. Precision work.

 

The frame was relatively easy to assemble, although there were three different spreaders, with half a millimetre difference, I am still not sure I did it correctly. The layout sheet wasn't too helpful when the scale is so small. The spreaders did come off all the time, but it was just a matter of letting the glue set a little on one side before inserting the other, so I must admit that some bad language went through my mind if not my mouth.

The supplied cord was very white and new, so I dyed it with tea. My miniature group supported me whole-heartedly. I left the frame to dry overnight, anticipating tons of problems the next day.

But not THAT many problems.

To begin with, the cord was very, very long, and you cannot work with such a long thread as it will get tangled all the time. I cut a manageable length and started threading it according to instructions, praising myself for my patience. When I ran out of cord, I tied a neat knot on the bottom side that wouldn't be visible. Several times I had to go back, taking off the needle, upon which the cord kept untwining. But I persisted.

 

Yet deep inside I knew it was too good to be true. And it was.

My whole attention was on the cord, and I didn't notice when a spreader came off. I was almost finished, although I saw that something wasn't quite right with the pattern. I had very carefully sewn one of the spreaders inside the seat. As I tried to glue it back, several other spreaders came off.

 

Now what? It took me a couple of hours to get that far. I could try to mend the frame without ripping the seat - in the picture you see that I caught it with another thread. Or I could rip up the seat, re-glue the frame and start all over again. Usually, when things go epically wrong with a project, I put it aside for a while. I did something else that day and looked again the day after. I am sorry to admit that I gave up. The frame was pretty, and I knew that I would hate this chair unless I could think of another, easier way to finish it. I cut up the failed seat ruthlessly and threw it away, which is very unlike me. Luckily, I remembered that I has a piece of embroidery canvas that I had bought many years ago in a hobby shop and never used. I tested with a paper template and then made the seat, tucking flaps beneath. 

 

Isn't it lovely? I wish I had more of this kit. 

Adam furniture

Before I continue my tour of Womble Hall I will show how I made a couple of unusual miniatures and explain why.

In my report from Kensington dollhouse festival, I mentioned that I saw some magnificent tables with Robert Adam tops. I have used Adam wrapping paper for ceilings - if you haven't seen them look here. I have plenty of paper left, and I thought that it could possibly be used for table tops as well (although they were originally ceiling designs, never implemented).

Although I have now been experimenting with House of Miniatures kits for a while, I still felt reluctant to use a kit without having tried out first. It isn't a rare kit, and I had a duplicate, and yet I thought I would run a test. First, I found a pattern, semicircle, in more or less the right scale. It didn't quite fit, but it didn't matter for my specific purpose. For furniture I have made from scratch, I have used various kinds of wood: pieces of wooden venetian blinds (pretty, but hard to cut), balsa (easy to cut, but crumbly) and cheese boxes. Obviously, a cheesebox lid already has the suitable semicircular shape, so that was helpful, although it was slightly bigger than the HoM kit. I worked with the top first, sanding it smooth, painting gold and then gluing the paper semicircle onto the top and trimming carefully. I needed to seal the edge so that the seam between the wood and paper would be next to invisible, and the only way I could think of was decoupage - I am sure there are other and probably better ways. What I did was varnish the edges and then sand them, repeating a couple of times until the edge was smooth. You could still see the white edge of the paper, so I painted it over, very carefully. The paper is glossy so it did not need any further varnish.

Now the top was ready, and I started thinking about the base. Once upon a time I would probably just glue on the legs that would keep going off, to my irritation. But I had the HoM instruction sheet, and what I needed was a semicircle about half a centimetre thick, and this is not the kind of material I have easily available. I have no tool that can cut circles (wish list for next Christmas?), and when I tried to cut a trapeze it didn't look neat. Usually when I get into a dead end with a project, I put it aside and do something else. I was rummaging my stashes for something completely different when I saw a wooden circle that was a part of a kit to make a piglet. I hadn't bought it to make a piglet, but for all the parts and fabrics included (it was in a charity shop, for 30p). So I cut the circle in two, and then everything was straightforward. I used chopsticks for legs and managed to cut exactly the same length so the table was, to my amazement, absolutely steady.

Seeing that it worked as I had thought, I could now with confidence replicate the miniature with the Chippendale kit. I have promised some miniature friends to post a detailed description, so I took step by step pictures - feel free to skip them if you only want to see the result. 

This is the paper I used; as you see, I had just scraps of it. But then I only needed a semicircle.

Once again, I started by painting the parts with gold. Then I glued the paper onto the top, leaving a margin that I then trimmed carefully.

Then I sealed the edge with varnish.

When the varnish had dried, I sanded the edge. The white paper edge was clearly visible so I painted it very carefully. 

The tool I am using is called "a third hand". If you haven't got it, give yourself a belated Christmas gift. 

The rest was easy: first glue on the base and let it dry under press. The instruction said clamp, but I was anxious not to damage the paper so I just put a heavy box on top. Then glue on the legs. It is probably the easiest kit of all.

Here is the result. 

And here are both tables, for comparison.

Since the handmade table is slightly larger, it is really a semicircle that looks more natural in the middle, but there is not much I can do about it. I cannot put them together to make a round table, which would be fun. But there are two lessons learned. First, I need not be scared to do something radical with the kits. Second, I can make a nice miniature from scratch, particularly if I have a pattern. It means I can try more.

Meanwhile, I got so bold that I decided to try a more sophisticated kit. Again, I only used it because I had a duplicate, and the bold part was making the table top. This is the paper I used.

 

Obviously, I wanted the medallion in the centre, and the pattern is large so I could only use a bit of it. When it was done I of course saw that it wasn't very well centred, but it was too late.

The challenge was to mix a paint that would match as closely as possible. I am not good at mixing paint, and it is difficult to match perfectly, but close enough.

 

I am not showing step by step assembly, because I have made this or a very similar kit before. I also had trouble matching paint then.

To make it look more natural, I have "aged" it. And of course I have put some stuff in drawers.

I have no space for any of these pieces in Womble Hall, short of replacing something else, so at the moment I don't know what to do with them. Maybe I will make a special room box. Or maybe I can simply display them as they are. (Although they always look better in a proper environment). 

Dower chest

This is once again a project that I did with my miniature group. It was fun to make together, and there are always some small bits of advice you can share.

 

I will not show all the sixteen steps I shared with my group since they were mostly technical, but this was an interesting kit, not like any other I had made before.

I used the light teak stain that I had used on some other recent miniatures, and I stained all parts first. The front, back and sides then had trimming to be glued on, preferably aligned.

 

Assembling the chest itself was easy, and assembling the frame proved easier than I had anticipated.

 

Then I had to glue the chest onto the frame, and the frame had to go into the notches in the corners of the chest. I hadn't done anything like this before.

 

Up to this, it was smooth, and even though the drawer didn't fit and I had to sand it down, it all went well.

But then I had to make and hinge the lid, and for this I had recently bought a wonderful new tool:

 

Another tool I didn't know I needed badly. It is called pin vise, and it can drill the tiniest holes imaginable. Why didn't anyone introduce me to this marvel nine years ago!

With it, it was easy to drill holes for the hinge pins, and while I did make several mistakes, in the end it all went fine.

The final result was stunning, I think.

 

Then something went terribly wrong. When I varnished the chest it all went gray. Can varnish have a use-before-date? Or maybe I hadn't cleaned the brush properly. It took me hours to polish the gray away, and after that I took no further risks, so it is still unvarnished. 

I haven't yet decided where I will put it, because the house is getting crammed. So far I have put it into lower entrance. 

Chair table

When I share my blog posts on Facebook, once upon a time I could choose the image I wanted to be visible as a link, but now FB just picks the first image in the post, and it is not necessarily the most interesting or relevant. Therefore I begin with a image of the finished piece and then tell you how I made it.

 

This is a chair table, and as I now know, is also called hutch table. They were popular because they could be folded away to save space when not in use, but, I guess, easier to set when needed than earlier trestle tables with fully removable boards.

This is a difficult piece, with several aspects I hadn't done before so I was a bit intimidated, but I was making it together with a friend, somewhere over the ocean, but in real time.

The layout sheet was, as usual, helpful, for instance, to identify drawers, but this model has a drawer and a drawer case that is glued below the seat.

 

I used antique pine stain, but very light because I wanted this piece to match the furniture in my "best kitchen".

The instructions were good, at least for the first stage, but when I assembled the chair frame it was wobbly and not quite square.

I needed advice from more experiences people, and meanwhile I made the drawer and drawer case, which was straightforward, except of course the drawer did not fit. It was too deep. My friend had the same difficulty so it wasn't just me making a mistake.

Then I glued together the three bits of the table top. You would imagine that it was easy to cut a whole table top in miniature scale, but these kits are very particular about authenticity. In full scale, there wasn't a piece of timber large enough to make a table top. (I remember discovering this when I made a Tudor table).

I had sanded the surfaces nice and smooth. The grain came out pretty.

Then my miniature friend shared her experience of making the chair frame. The secret was, as I had suspected, to enlarge the pre-drilled holes. In addition, I used the seat - also made from two pieces - and the arms to align and square the whole assembly.

This was the end of day 1, and I left the assembly to dry overnight.

Next morning I glued on the drawer case, after having sanded away the back of the drawer to fit. As I always do, I attached the knob before gluing on the front. In this kit, the drawer front is twice the size of the drawer edges because it covers the drawer case as well. This is a very clever design!

The table top brackets had to be adjusted to the chair. It took me some time to figure out, and the brackets were longer than required and had to be sanded away. In fact, I bit off two centimeters with scissors and then sanded.

 

The next set of instructions was scary because it involved drilling holes in the frame. I don't understand why they couldn't have pre-drilled them as every other hole, but I guess there is a reason. The instruction was confusing, and I learned a new word, shim. You had to use shims to lift the frame a bit from the top. I am afraid I didn't do it quite right. And I didn't have the right tool to drill those holes (I have just ordered one, but it won't arrive until next week). So I had to use what was at hand.

It wasn't the most efficient way, but I did it, and the hinges fit into the holes, and the table really matched the environment in my best kitchen.

Here I just put in in front of the room, for display. But it will most probably be placed against a wall, folded.

I will have to re-organise some things in the kitchen, but this happens also in the 1:1 world when a new piece of furniture is added.

I am very pleased with this project. It was a challenge, because there was so much new and some tricky things. But I feel I getting more and more confident with these miniatures.

Dower chest

I was looking forward to making this kit, and this weekend our group made it together. I wanted it to go into the guest bedroom where the bed, the chest of drawers, the night stand stand and the mirror have red mahogany finish so I used it again. About ten coats before I was satisfied. But I wanted the inside of the chest to be dark green, so it took some time to figure out which would be inside and which outside. I made one mistake and had to paint over the green with a dark brown paint and then stain on top of that. As it turned out, it was unnecessary because this bit was later covered with moulding.

I will not show step-by-step pictures, but just as with the cellarette I didn't trust myself with hinges and used ribbon to hold the lid.

 

I like the piece, and it fits nicely in the guest bedroom. I will have to fill it with bed linen.

More candle stands

I have two more kits with Chippendale candle stands, and they are useful for various purposes. This is a quick project so I made a set when I just had a bit of time. However, I decided that I wanted two for the bathroom. I made a dressing table for the bathroom some time ago, and I thought that I would replace two pedestals I had since time immemorial, made from small candlesticks turned upside down. This is a big problem: the more elegant Chippendale furniture I add to the house, the more everything else starts looking crude and out of place. So I thought two elegant candle stands for the bathroom would be fine, to hold flowers or other items.

Of course I wanted a worn-out look so I used the same technique I discovered by serendipity when I made the table: stain first, paint on top of stain and then scratch the paint a bit.

They fit nicely in the bathroom. (Some objects have been removed for a better view).