Dealing with treasures, cont.

If you are curious about what I did with all the treasures I showed in my previous post, here are some reports.

I was right about the unusual chest of drawers: it looks great in the yarn shop. The old table was, like in so many projects, a temporary solution that just hanged on, until the right piece turns up. I have put some stuff in drawers.  The cash machine is probably slightly too big, but I don't think it matters. It looks much better than the old, modern one made from a printie.

Removing the glass and putting it back was easy, so my glazing solution works well. (You can see the before-image of the shop in the linked post).

Replacing the chandelier in the reception room was surprisingly painless. I didn't even have to remove the whole floor above, just lift it a bit. I think I did the same when I put up the current one. This is possible because I always assemble floors on card so they are relatively easy to remove or lift.

Since the new chandelier has a hanging hook rather than a ring, I thought about a new way of attaching it. Rather than using thin wine wire as before, I made a loop from champagne wire, put the ends through the hole and bent the ends. It is a stronger fixture; it looks both neater and more natural. The whole operation took me about five minutes. In case you wonder, the ceiling rose is made from a cheese box lid.

Obviously, I had to remove all objects from the drawing room above, and when I was putting them back I thought that the new clock would look nice on the chest. And more period-correct.

This is what happens: adding and replacing all the time. We do this in our 1:1 life as well, don't we?

I planned to move the chandelier from the reception room to the upper hall, but it proved next to impossible. The floor above is firmly attached, with a staircase glued on to it, so that would demand serious reconstruction I am not prepared for.

 

After trying the chandelier here and there, I have decided to replace the one in the music room. I am doing it reluctantly and with a strong sense of guilt because this chandelier was among the very, very first objects I made, more than ten years ago. I still like it and will use it in another project. But at the moment this feels the right thing to do.

Again, I didn't have to remove the whole floor, and I used my newly acquired technique, although this chandelier has a ring rather than hook. So this time I did the opposite: made a hook out of wire, ran it through the whole and bent, then hung the chandelier on it. This way, next time I want to change the light, I won't have to remove floors. Why haven't I thought about it before? Seems elementary now.

So the music room now looks like this (I see I need to adjust the candles - they keep falling off). 

Wait a minute, you are probably saying now, what about the master bedroom that was supposed to get one of those grand chandeliers to match the mirror? Ah, do you remember the two-arm chandelier I was planning to put into the working kitchen? It is now going into the master bedroom. The room above is nursery which doesn't even have a hardwood floor (reminder to improve this!) so it was as easy as it can be. And here we are. Yes, the ceiling rose is a yogurt lid. 

Full view of the room:

I am sooooo pleased with all these changes, not least because they turned out to be significantly less arduous than anticipated. And as I am looking at the rooms, it feels they have always been like this. A good sign.

I now have two nice lights to use somewhere else. I am sure I will think of the right place for them.

The outcome of this exercise is that I have discovered carefully suppressed flaws that need attention (not just the nursery floor), and I am looking forward to returning to Womble Hall after a long pause while I was occupied with other projects.

Come back soon.

Funkis shop

The renovation of the ground floor in the funkis house was undramatic. The before and after pictures show a clear improvement:

The shop itself was easily moved into its new quarters:

Since I first made the shop a year ago, I have added quite a few things, such as the Udd sofa, and a set of art deco table and chairs. It has become very eclectic as compared to its original, but I like it this way.

Modern sofa

For my yarn shop I wanted an interesting sofa. It is important to have a sofa in a yarn shop so that people accompanying crazy yarn shoppers can sit down and browse magazines. I have made several sofas for my various projects, and from making the Chippendale sofa I learned some useful tricks. I made the frame from cardboard, and I had nice flowery fabric. Rather than glueing on the fabric, as I did with the Chippendale sofa, I fixed it with tape, as many dollhouse books recommend. I used doublesided tape to fix the fabric to the surfaces.

 

However, I could not think of an interesting, unusual way to make arms and legs. I could simply make padded arms with fabric, and I could use beads for legs. And then I had an idea. I have this set of wooden blocks that I have already used for all kinds of purposes. They would make perfect arms and legs. I just had to glue them in pairs.

I made the seat and back cushions from corrugated paper, the kind you find in boxes of chocolates. I wish I could say it was my own invention, but it wasn't. I found it in a book. It's much easier to cut and trim to the necessary size than foam, and you can make it as thick as you want.

 I am glad to be able to use what I learned from making the Chippendale sofa with this one. 

For the back and bottom, I photocopied the fabric and glued on the paper. Fabric would have been intidy.

Here is the sofa in the shop. Now I must make a coffee table to put in front of it.

Yarn winder

Do you remember me saying that a yarn shop was boring to make because there is not much more than yarn? How silly of me. Here is what you can do that is indispensable in a yarn shop. There are many different models of yarn winders, and I am not yet prepared to make the most complicated ones. So I took two pieces of a wooden puzzle (which I have been using for all kinds of things) and drilled small holes in them. Yes, I know, they are not quite concentric, but it's almost impossible to do it without precision tools, which I don't have.

Then I drilled a hole in the middle of each piece and in a tiny wooden block from another set. I put a wooden stick through all the three pieces. Then I put matches into the drilled holes. I have a pile of matches in different colours from long time ago when I collected match boxes. I thought it would look nice with four colours. You can rotate the winder, and you can also fold it and store away.

Miniature knitting

I used to knit a lot, but stopped at some point when the kids grew up and I got busy with other things. However, a yarn shop must naturally offer knitwear. I remember my great-grandmother had the smallest knitting needles (for socks and stockings) and a tiny crochet needle (for lace), but they have perished in my numerous moves, and probably I didn't see any value in them at the time. I would need those neenles now! I know I can buy some from ebay or perhaps even find them in the nearest supermarket, but for the time being I have to do with what I have. What I have is a bit of yarn that Julia has left behind and a pair of needles far too large for mini-knitting. I did try, but what looked like miniature while I was doing it looked gigantic when I put it into the room box. So I had to start all over again, split the yarn (and wow! I remembered the trick. It's easiest if there are two of you, but I only had myself) and use toothpicks for needles.

Did I swear over it? Yes, I did. Did I wish I had proper needles? Yes, I did. But I am too stubborn and too impatient to wait until I maybe have time to get proper needles. What was funny was that at one point I just could not remember how to close a row. If you have even done some knitting, can you imagine forgetting how to close a row? I was sitting there, staring at my work and wondering whether I was getting senile or whether it is indeed possible to forget how to do an elementary thing. Then my fingers remembered. Not the brain - it was all in the body.

After that, it was child's play to crochet a hat.

Yarn shop

I have already shared my project with a yarn display cabinet, and it is of course a part of a room box that will be a yarn shop. Even though it is not finished yet, I'd like to show the first steps. My first reaction when my daughter suggested a yarn shop project was: no, this will be very boring, what can you have in a yarn shop other than lots of yarn? But of course there are so many other things to do, like in any miniature project.

To begin with, the wine box I got for this project is a bit different from most other I have because it's broader which is good for a shop. If you have displays at the back of the shop you cannot place a lot of other stuff in front. Julia suggested that the walls should be painted white since it would be a good background for colour display. So I started by painting the walls and ceiling white, and then I put in some random boxes I had, as well as an old bathroom cabinet from the Victorian house that has now been replaced by a better one.

I have already explained how I made the yarn balls and skeins. A lot of work, but very relaxing. I took the basket from another house, while the bucket, too large otherwise, fit nicely here. The two glass bowls are for mixing sushi sauce. The knitting needles are of course toothpicks, and Julia and I did a piece of mini-knitting each.

 

It so happened that I started this project at the same time I got a new printer, and as I was exploring sites with mini-printies I found some flooring and wallpaper borders that I thought would go perfect with the shop. I find it remarkable how small details make a huge difference. Just compare before and after.

 

Among the many things a yarn shop would have are knitting books, and again I have already shown how I made some. Although I haven't bought any books, Amazon is pitching knitting books to me, so I have made some more. 

 

I need to make more shelves for all these books. I made one from a plastic container lid, with bits of foil glued on. Note some features in this photo. There is a till on the table, made from a printie. The paper bag on the floor is from the same site. The wool in the transparent box is real wool. The tiny lamb comes from a Nativity set.

This is work in progress. Please come back. 

Another use of printer

Apart from printing out miniatures from printie sites, you can print other things, for instance specific book covers. I have made books with covers I found in magazines and catalogues, but I have always chosen books that I would have in 1:1. Still, there are lots of books I own and like that I haven't found covers for, so the books I have in my various houses and room boxes do not quite reflect my book preferences.

For my yarn shop project I need knitting books. I tried to save images from amazon, but when I resized them they became blurred. I tried to print out direct from amazon page, but the images were too large. I then took the page with "Recently seen" where images are smaller. It worked well. I printed out the covers and made fake books in the usual way.

Then I made something I had wanted to make for a long time: miniatures of some of my own books.

Making a display cabinet

Our youngest daughter came to stay over Christmas, and of all places in and around Cambridge she wanted to visit a yarn shop. I used to knit a lot so I understand the passion. She, on the other hand, understands my miniature passion, and suddenly it conflated into an idea for a new room box: a miniature yarn shop. By coincidence, we passed the wine store where my husband sometimes gets wine boxes for me, and see, they did have one nobody yet had claimed (they are in demand!), so fate would have it that the same day I started a new room box. So far there is little to share, but I made a display cabinet exactly like the one they had in the 1:1 shop. Frankly, until then I had never noticed how yarn is displayed in shops.

I rummaged through my collection of recyclables and found a cigar box. My daughter suggested that I paint it white, but I thought there was a nice old wooden feel to it.

 To insert shelves, I used craft sticks as runners.

I cut the shelves from my indispensable venetian blinds. In the middle of each shelf, I glued small craft sticks (of the kind that pretend to be matches). Then I put in diagonal shelves. I didn't even have to glue them.

When I put in yarn, colour-sorted, it looked very natural. It is embroidery yarn which my daughter showed me how to twist, just as they do with wool skeins. I then used the original paper bands to wrap around small balls which I made from loose yarn and wool threads.The knitting needles are toothpicks.