Junk jewellery clock

As the last project of this rainy weekend I made a clock from one of the many junk bits of my treasure chest. I was looking for something else when this piece caught my attention:

Of course it was a clock! I removed the stone - good jewellery-making tools are essential for this kind of work.

Then I cut a clock face to fit into the frame and attached it to the wire with masking tape. I cut the chains to have two open chains rather than two loops and added two beads for weights. Finally I glued a tiny ornament on top. Of course, mechanically it wouldn't work, but I think it was fun to use the original shape.

This will be a good addition to my clockmaker's shop.

Sofa makeover

You can tell it is Saturday and raining because I am finishing some of the projects I started a while ago. I bought this sofa in a charity shop, together with some other furniture.

I don't need another sofa; in fact, I have no space for another sofa, but I had to buy it of course. It had no legs, and I think the fabric is wrong: far too large pattern for a miniature. So the first thing I did was to strip it off.

I had a piece of fabric that I had bought several years ago in a hobbyshop in Norway. All these years I couldn't find a way to use it, but it was just perfect for this sofa.

Now, I have made several sofas in different techniques. My very first sofa was also one of my very first miniatures, and as I look at it now, I am still pleased with it. I have refurbished a modern sofa by simply glueing fabric onto it. I made a sofa from cardboard (now discarded). I made a wooden kitchen sofa from kit. I pained a plastic sofa to make it look nice. And I also made the Chippendale sofa. You would think that I was well equipped to make another one, but each miniature is unique (unless you mass-produce them of course). Therefore I made all the mistakes I possibly could.

I started by making the seat as the least complicated, but of course I should have started with the arms. I considered making padded arms, but gave up, since by that time I had made both the seat and the back, and there was no room for padded arms. I read my description of the Chippendale sofa carefully, and I had the sofa in front of me, even though it wasn't particularly helpful.

I took no more pictures of the process because it was all straightforward so I will just show the final result. I have nice wooden beads that would make good legs, but I decided that you cannot see the legs anyway so I just took small wooden blocks.

To compare, side by side, before and after:

Candles

It has occurred to me that I have never shown how I make candles, and since I was improving a candlestick I thought I'd share it. Some miniaturists make real candles according to the rules, which is fun, but too messy. You cannot light them in a dollhouse anyway. I make candles from dowel and candleholders mostly from buttons.

I cut a piece of dowel about 2cm and paint it antique white. For wick, I take a tiny bit of black string. Then I light a real candle and hold it over my minicandle letting small drops of stearine run down. It looks quite realistic. You can also let some glue run down the candle, but then you have to paint it over. My improvement of the old candleholders is that I have made handles from bits of broken jewellery.

Fan fun

Patricia King calls herself a fan fan, and I am becoming one too. Here is what I made from the rest of the fan that I used for the cradle:

It took me some time to figure out how to make it. King has a pattern for a hexagonal heater where she glues the fan bits onto card. I tried, and it wasn't neat, and also I wanted to keep the lattice transparent. Finally, I simply stuck it together with tape. The fourth corner was hard! The top is of course a button.

While I was at it, I improved my old fan palm (sorry, unintended pun) that now goes better with the pedestal.

 

Portable heater

Here are some materials I used for this project, once again inspired by Patricia King, but modified:

A cylinder match-box that I have been keeping for the past twenty years (I used to collect match-boxes, and when I started making miniatures I thought it might come handy one day). It is much easier to work with than metal cigar cases or lipstick tubes that Patricia King suggests. A link from a massacred fan. Two buttons. Beads and bead caps. A bit of caviar tube for door. Two bits of champagne wire for hinges. I also used lace from the massacred fan rather than junk jewellery. And I don't spray paint because I find it messy. Maybe I don't get as smooth surfaces as with spray paint, but I am still pleased. 

Victorians used portable heaters because their houses were cold, and coal was expensive. You brought the heater with you as you moved from room to room.

Servants' bells

A tiny - literally -  project, inspired by Patricia King, but actually something I had wanted to do for a while and that I did using bits of my treasure trove. 

 

The bells come from a hobby shop, the strip is a lolly stick, champange wire and bead caps.

I have seen in a 1:1 manor house a particularly clever kind of bell pulls which I am going to make for the drawing room.

More junk jewellery

Here are some more things I made from the heap of junk.

A brooch, turned upside down, with two handles glued on, became a tea tray.

 

A funny little triangular three-legged table. And, as promised, a tea pot, spout made of air-drying clay.

And finally, a piece I am really proud of:

 

Inspired by Patricia King, but my own design. She has a cradle made of fan blades. But as I was about to cut them I realised that they had holes at the ends, just waiting for a pole. So this is a different model, and although you cannot actually rock the cradle it look as if you can. And I used lace from the fan.