Dealing with treasures

On my annual visit to Stockholm I spend incredible amount of money in a particular shop. It is only open a couple of hours on Saturdays so I always contact the owner in advance to make sure they are there. I plan to spend at least an hour in this teeny tiny shop because by now I know what I am looking for and how much it would cost, so I need careful inspection. First time I discovered this shop I was overwhelmed. I still get very excited going there.

Here is this year's catch:

It may seem unsystematic and eclectic, but it is fully consistent with my previous purchases. I buy things I cannot make myself; I buy things that match stuff that I have, I buy unusual things, and I buy things that are slightly broken and that I know I can mend. For instance, I managed to mend a brass chandelier (from the same shop) as well as pewter candlesticks and wooden wardrobes. Several things in this bundle (if it's appropriate to use "bundle" for expensive stuff) need mending.

The chest of drawers - I bought it because I have never seen anything like it, and I still need to find out where it comes from. If you know, please tell me. But one knob was missing. I added a bit of a chess piece.

It isn't a perfect match, but I have tried other options, and this was the best. I can always replace it if I find something better. I don't know where this chest goes, probably in the retro house. Or I may build a vignette around it, because it is really unique. 

The vintage telephone - we had one like this when I was a child - will obviously go to the retro house. I am in two minds whether to repaint it.

The clock was hopelessly broken: 

I managed to bend it back into shape and glue together with superglue. The pendulum can move, and I have added hands from my stash of watch parts. It will go into my clockmaker shop. (Scroll down a bit in the linked post to see it).

The lovely fruit bowl can go almost anywhere (except maybe Tudor), and I have filled it with apples. These are real berried and will probably wither, but right now they look perfect. 

I could not resist the cash register. I have been looking for it for a while. It is a pencil sharpener, and I have a number of miniatures in the same style, probably by the same manufacturer. Another thing to research.

 

I will try it in my yarn shop. (Again, scroll down; it's the same post). Wait, maybe the chest will look good in the yarn shop? This will need some testing, which involves taking off the glazing. Something for long autumn evenings.

The pewter teapot had no lid. I have exactly the same teapot from the same shop, with a lid and a pretty tripod. 

  

I know some people would make a lid from fimo or something like that, but I am not good at sculpting. I am good at saving things that can come handy. In this case I remembered metal buttons I got last year from a friend. One of those became a perfect lid.

The other pewter things I thought were straightforward - I also had some of these before - so I just put them randomly on a tray. 

But see, that was completely wrong. When I looked closer, they were two different designs. 

The sugar bowl on the left is smashed, and someone probably tried to mend it and broke it, so I will leave it as it is. After all things get broken in 1:1 world as well. I am not yet sure where these objects will go. They look great in glass cabinets. Or maybe the Tudor household needs more pewter.

 

The plates also turned out to be all different and not like any other pewter plates I have. One day I will do some proper research on these miniatures. Meanwhile, they are definitely going to the Tudor house.

The magnificent standing mirror has replaced the simple one in master bedroom. There was nothing wrong with that mirror, and I will use it elsewhere. But this looks really grand. In all confidence, it cost almost as much as everything else together. I couldn't resist it.

It now feels imperative to replace the chandelier with one to match the mirror. There will be a massive replacement of chandeliers following my new purchases. This chandelier has to go into the reception room.

Then the chandelier from the reception room can perhaps go to upper hall, and the chandelier from upper hall can move to the bedroom. To perform all these replacements, I will have to remove floors in rooms above, so it will take some time.

But I will start with this two-arm chandelier that will go into the working kitchen.

This will be a challenge because I cannot get the main house off the basement to use the drilled hole in the ceiling. (Sometimes I imagine the horror of having to move the house, and I stop quickly). I will have a think of some clever way to attach it neatly.

All in all, my annual miniature binge has resulted in many interesting objects most of which lead to new projects rather than just finding a place for them. Have I ever mentioned that a dollhouse or a room box is never finished?

Come back soon.

French cottage style bedroom

I am getting bolder and bolder with my Chippendale kits and want to try different techniques and finishes. I have several kits for chest of drawers, that are mostly similar, and my large house doesn't have room for more chests, so I decided to make a chest that didn't fit into any of my projects. The chest itself wasn't particularly interesting to make, exactly because they are more or less the same. I won't show it step by step, but what I did was paint it with antique white acrylic and then add decoupage decoration. I had never made proper decoupage, and I am not quite sure I made it correctly, but I was very pleased with the result.

The drawers are not glued yes, because I always insert drawer handles before I glue on the fronts. The kits comes with standard handles and plates, but I didn't think they were suitable for this style. I wanted something like I have on my 1:1 chest, metal rings. I have plenty of these from junk jewellery, but they must be attached to the drawer in some manner, and it took me some time to figure it out. As usual, I was just rummaging through my supplies when the solution jumped at me. 

 

These champagne wires are among the best and most versatile materials. Easy to work with too.


 

When I shared this picture in my Facebook groups, one friend commented: "Yes, this is what I always do". And I thought I had invented something remarkable.

Anyway, this piece did not fit with anything, but I wanted to make something to go with it and made a bed. Again, I won't show how I made it step by step, because it is exactly like other Chippendale beds, with stringed bottom. Like the chest, I decoupaged the headboard before assembly. 

 

Making the mattress was again straightforward when you have made it several times, but I have always had issues with bedding because it won't stay. Then I remembered a trick I have seen either in some book or on the web. If you want a piece of fabric to stay, glue it to aluminium foil. In this case, I didn't even have to glue, I simply sewed it inside the blanket.

 

Now I could tuck it in neatly. Mind, I would never ever have this pink in my own bedroom. But this seemed appropriate. And the two pieces went nice together.

 

Now, however, I had a dilemma. I already have a shelf full of single miniatures that do not fit in any existing projects. I put the chest and bed tentatively in a cardboard box, but realised I would have to make the whole environment: floor, ceiling, wallpaper, and the box was too small, and a larger box would be too large... So I made a compromise.

 

This is my first corner vignette, and next time I will do it better. When I asked advice of my miniature friends, they suggested foam board, mdf and other stuff, but I am a recycler, I don't want to buy materials unless absolutely necessary, and also I wanted to make the scene then and there. The wallpaper is a printie from the web, and I made the floor quickly (relatively, maybe two hours) from self-adhesive shelf lining, cutting 4 cm strips and gluing them in a pattern. I used 1:1 embossed wallpaper for mouldings.

The dressing table and the chair are temporarily borrowed from a different project. I have another table kit and may make it in the same style, or perhaps it's not necessary. Maybe sometime I will develop this project in a whole room box or even a small holiday cottage, but at the moment the two pieces are nicely displayed.  

By the way, the tea service comes from a set of earrings an American friend has given me.

Chippendale double chest

 

I didn't expect this kit to be different from other Chippendale chests, but it was, and therefore I will once again show a step-by-step project. It was easier than I had expected, but it was, because of this different technology, very interesting to work on.

Here are the chests I have made:

Chippendale 3-drawer chest, which was my very first, and which I later also made in another version

Chippendale chest on chest

Chippendale bachelor's chest

Chippendale serpentine chest that I apparently haven't shared before:

Chippendale chest of drawers that I haven't shared either (I wonder why).

So I am well-versed in the art of drawer-making, and I can recognise parts of drawers and don't panic when there are too many.

But I must admit that when I took the part out of the box it looked intimidating:

However, as I say, I now recognise a drawer when I see one, and since I didn't want to stain anything that would be on the inside I identified those parts and only stained what needed staining. I used light oak stain.

The reason I stained selectively is the dearly learned lesson from previous chest making. When you stain or paint before assembly the wood swells, and sometimes it gets next to impossible to fit shelves into grooves. So as you see I stained the top, the fronts of drawers, the front trimmings and the legs. I didn't at that point quite understand how the front trimmings worked, but I wasn't too worried about it.

I did what I have now learned to do, with chests and other pieces that have drawers, such as hutch cabinets, dressings tables and the wardrobe. Although the instructions say otherwise, I glue the drawers first of all. Exactly because it is then easier to identify other parts. But also because I have a couple of times used wrong parts.

In this kit, there are nine drawers of three different sizes, and it is crucial to use correct parts. So I played a little jigsaw with them:

This way I was confident that each drawer had the correct sides and back. Believe me, it's no fun to find out that you've done it wrong.

Now the drawers are done and drying, and I can start the main assembly.

As I said I had anticipated a very complicated structure like some other chests I had done. But this wasn't a problem at all. Could it be because I had not stained the shelves?

I didn't even have to hold the assembly together with rubber bands, although I did tape it after the final step: 

Now, the interesting thing about this chest, and the reason why there were so many parts hard to identify is that, unlike other chests, it has front trimmings. These have to be glued one at a time and carefully fitted. It may not be obvious in pictures, but in the left picture I have have glued on trimmings from the left central divider and further to the left, and on right picture I have glued on the rest.

And in this picture I have glued on the tiny columns on the sides. I didn't even notice them on the cover picture.

After this, I glued on the top and base, then glued on the feet.

 

All in all, it wasn't a lot of work, and there were no unforeseen problems. Until I started inserting the drawers, and they didn't even remotely fit. Maybe some of the trimmings sat a quarter of a millimetre too high or too low. Not much I could do about it now, other than sanding away a quarter of a millimitre of each drawer.   

Let me tell you sanding down nine drawers isn't a winner. It took me a week. (Okay, I didn't sand 24/7, but I sanded every now and then, a couple of hours a day, for a week). 

Drilling 36 holes for handles wasn't particularly exciting either. I started with a pushpin, but gave up after three fronts and used an electric drill. The holes are rather large, but when covered by plates it doesn't matter.

By the way, I don't know how much longer I will be able to do this kind of work. My sight is deteriorating. Better hurry before I get blind. 

 

In the end, I forced the drawers in. I will never be able to pull them out again. I could just as well glue drawer fronts direct onto the trimmings. Someone who inherits my dollhouse after I am gone will hate me for this. (Or maybe they will just throw it away so it wouldn't matter). 

The chest is going into the lower entrance. I will pretend the drawers are full of objects brought in by servants and delivery boys. 

  

Chippendale three-drawer chest

As I was writing the previous post I realised that I had only shared my three-drawer chest project in a closed FB group, a group specifically dedicated to Chippendale furniture kits from the House of Miniatures. Browsing through other people's pictures, I noticed that some imaginative people used the kits for making something other than conventional mahogany pieces, stained and polished. I guess I had never even contemplated the option because I was in awe of these kits and couldn't conceive of them being used for anything other than their original purpose. Maybe because they are rather expensive (for instance, as compared to Poundland furniture that I have happily upcycled). But maybe just because I lacked imagination.

However, in my two recent bundles I have a number of duplicates, and I am not particularly interested in making the same thing twice. I thought I could make a piece and give it away or even give away a kit, but the idea of making something less conventional was liberating. So I started with a nightstand.

 

It is a very straightforward piece that I had made before, but this time I assembled it first and then painted antique white and aged by painting brown and immediately wiping off the paint. I used to have a different night stand in this room that I won't even show because it was completely wrong style. It has now found a good home.

A couple of weeks ago, my Chippendale group decided to run a weekend challenge: we would all do the same piece.  Well, not all, but some of us. We decided on a piece that many people were likely to have, a three-drawer chest. I had made it before, and I had a duplicate which I wanted to do something different with.

In the group, I showed everything step by step, but here I will just share the interesting features I made when painting and decorating. For instance, because I didn't stain the parts before assembling, I had to consider whether the chest itself should be painted on the inside, so I had to go and check my 1:1 antique chests, and they are all unpainted. Which makes sense, because paint was expensive so why waste it on surfaces that won't be visible. Likewise, the outside of the drawers is unpainted. But the inside of drawers is painted - in a colour different from the outside of the chest! Imagine, I open these chests several times a day, and I had never noticed that they were painted inside!

So I painted the inside of my drawers. (Yes, I use a chopping board as work surface. It is good because I can just lift it and move elsewhere when I need my desk for my regular work).

 
The chest itself, I painted antique white.  I had to do three coats before I was satisfied. This wood just soaks up paint, as opposed to stain.

However, I wasn't happy with this plain look, so I wanted to distress it, and more radically than I did with the night stand. I rubbed the surface with a candle, then painted with brown acrylic and immediately wiped it off with a cloth. You can see the difference on a drawer front where I tested it first: 

This sequence explains it better. First paint over, on a completely dry previous coat, rubbed with a candle. Then wipe. The result is a much more natural-looking surface. 

 

For knobs, I used bead caps. 

Here it is in its room, the servants' room. It looks old and worn out, just as I wanted. I am very pleased with it and I glad I experimented.