Plants and flowers

I made my first miniature plants many years ago, when I first started miniature-making, and as with most other early endeavours, I cannot but find them pathetic although I was quite proud at the time. I have since made various flowers and plants, including a florist shop, which I still have although there is little left of the original flowers. I also once shared a long blog post about how it took me eight hours to make a geranium, which I carelessly titled "Why are handmade miniatures so ridiculously expensive?" One harsh comment to that post was: "If you ask this question there is no point explaining". Me: "Well, that's the point of my blog post". Opponent: "I don't read blogs" (that is, they only read the title). My point was that even with the minimum hourly wage and not even taking supplies into consideration, the true value of a miniature is far above the price you can ask for it. Unless, of course, you are Very Famous. 

I have made many geraniums since then; they do take a lot of time and effort, but it's fun and highly satisfactory, if you don't have to make a living out of them. 

I made many different flowers recently, and I will show some, explaining how I made them. I won't explain the geraniums again - read the old post, linked above. 

I also made some hydrangeas: the technique is more or less the same, although the flowers and the leaves are slightly different. 

Around Christmas, I made an amaryllis, which was a lot of work, but I was pleased with the result. 

I also made cyclamens and poinsettias, using my new set of punches, which of course makes life easier. 

That said, even with punches, it is a lot of work, because, as I explained in the geranium blog, each petal and leaf has to be moistered and crunched, otherwise they don't look natural, and some need a touch of paint to look real. 

For flower pots I mostly use recycled materials, such as bottle and toothpaste tube caps that I sometimes paint to resemble terracotta or whatever. Occasionally I have used wooden candle holders from hobby shops. 

I made some generic daisies, using sewing pins for stems, with the head painted yellow. 

I made quite a few generic plants out of various artificial flowers from thrift shops. They always have to be trimmed and painted, otherwise they don't look natural. (Perhaps they still don't look natural, but at least approximating natural). 

I made several bonsai trees, following a tutorial on YouTube. It is a lot of work. Wire for branches, covered with polymer clay and baked; then small ovals of organdy (I cut up a souvenir bag) covered, in this case, with moss cuttings, but you can also use shredded paper or thread. 

My son-in-law 3-D printed tiniest flower pots for me, just 1 cm tall, that I painted in terracotta and made teeny-tiny generic flowers as well as spider plants.

You need very small punches for this scale, and the leaves for spider plants I cut manually from coloured paper. 

My most recent horticultural achievement is a buxbom topiary. For it, as for some other plants, I made planters from egg cartons

It's fun making plants, and there is no limit for what you can make. I know I need to learn to make everything smaller still, so there is room for improvement. 

Recreating a painting in 3D

Last autumn I was looking for a theme for a longer project, like a room box. Typically I build room boxes around a particular miniature, for instance, a piece of furniture, or a category of miniatures, such as clocks, shoes, bread, vegetables or flowers. But a theme can also be a starting point, for instance, a wedding.  

One day as I was having dinner, I looked at a painting I have on my kitchen wall, and suddenly I saw my new project. I would make a room box based on the painting. 

It is a gouache painting, titled appropriately "Found on the Beach" by the Swedish artist Lars Norrman,  and I have always been fond of it, but now I saw a completely new potential in it, with its array of weird objects. And it is obviously a painting emulating depth. 

I once made a room box inspired by a painting, and it was a challenge. I like challenges. 

I had a small box that I won in a lottery at the Swedish Miniature Association's Christmas meeting the year before (the first and only time I ever won anything in a lottery). I had been saving it for the right occasion, and here it was. I painted the box very dark blue on the inside and started thinking about making all those interesting details. Some were more straightforward than other, and some gave me trouble. It would be boring to take step-by-step pictures, so I will just show a couple of pictures and explain how I made the objects. 

The focal point of the painting is the blue washing basin, and it was also the first object I made from card and fixed provisionally to place the other objects around it. The painting is dark, and it isn't always easy to discern exactly what is hidden in the background, but the foreground was easier. I used real dried plants and a real conch shell. I painted a plastic bottle dark green and covered a wooden barrel with dirt. The pots in the front are bottle caps. I made the crate from an egg carton, and I cut a pill bottle in half and painted it for rusty effect. I added a rod and a rope, and I put a glass marble in a fruit net. So far so good. 

I made a half-decayed wooden boat with a mast and a torn sail. The sail was probably the most difficult thing to do as it had to be fixed in appropriate folds. I also added some random bits of wood here and there, for depth. Some details aren't even visible, but they contribute to the whole. I had to shift the objects several times before I was happy.

I glued on everything carefully before I inserted glass and added the provided frame. 

I am really pleased with this project, and it was fun to make. I will definitely be looking for more paintings to turn into a three-dimensional scene. 

Recycling and upcycling

I haven't been good at blogging in the recent months; I have hardly blogged at all, and one reason is that I have been very busy making miniatures! In the past, I used to make stuff to be used in various projects: furniture and accessories for dollhouses and room boxes, fruit and vegetables for a market stall, bread for the bakery, messy stuff for the messy kitchen, books for the library, and so on. I have seldom, if ever, made anything for the sake of making it, without having any special project in mind. Partly this was because I started attending a miniature club where you could do a larger project or just do whatever you wanted inspired by what other people were doing. I wanted to try various materials and techniques, to learn new skills. It was also liberating to be able to finish something at one go. 

In this post, I will share some things I have made recently, mostly my own design and mostly made from rubbish. I have already shared many of these small projects in various groups, but here they are all in the same place, in no particular order. 

I will start with something that has received much praise and that I am really proud of because I have never seen anything like this. 

I had been saving these boxes from interdental brushes for years, knowing that one day I would come up with something ingenious, and that day eventually arrived. As we all know, painting plastic is a h-ll of a job, but thanks to chalk paint it has become easier and neater. When I paint with chalk paint I use a hair dryer which not only makes the paint dry quicker but also makes it dry smooth. The keyboard is a printie, and I also printed out a nice screen saver, covering it with transparent plastic, recycled of course. The laptop can be opened and closed, and there is also a printie on the bottom. I made five laptops with different screens. 

Another project that I am quite pleased with is rusty objects: buckets, milk canisters, tubs and such. 

For canisters, I use eyedrop dispensers. I made a few in zink look, but I wanted to practice making things rusty, and miniature friends seem to be more enthusiastic abiout them, possibly because they need more effort and patience. The lids are metal buttons. The rectangular tubs are butter containers you get at hotels, the round one, if I am not mistaken, clotted cream, and the bath tub is cut from a shampoo bottle. The handles are paper clips. To create the rusty effect, I first paint with ochre chalk paint, then rub with various shades of chalk pastels. 

Kitchen scales was a challenge: I saw one on the web and thought: I can make it! A small wooden cube, four tiny beads for legs, metal eyelet, metal button frame and a face printed from the web. The most difficult thing was to resize the face to fit exactly on the cube. 

This was another challenge I saw on the web, but I used a full-size cat gym as a model. It was great fun to make, but you should have heard all the swearing when the bits kept falling apart.

 

For Easter, I made Easter decorations, making eggs from polymer clay and using bottle caps for plates and some other rubbish for wreaths. 

A ridiculously easy project is pencils and crayons made from toothpicks. 

Another easy one was bars of chocolate cut from a catalogue page I had been saving for years. I photocopied the images on a black background and wrapped around pieces of cardboard. 

I believe I have shared rugs made with embroidery thread before. Somebody gave me a band the true purpose of which is unclear to me, but it has a perfect width for rugs, and I am amused by inventing interesting designs. 

 

Round mats can be made with twine. 

Golf pegs can be used for many things, for instance, pretty decorative lamps with thimbles for shades. I bought a dozen or so thimbles some time ago in a charity shop. 

Roll-up curtains are easy to make with a square of fabric, skewers, thread and beads. 

Venetian blinds are cut from bamboo place mats and glued onto craft sticks. 

A stool made from that famous pizza holder, with a seat made from floor protection pad - the kind you glue onto table and chair legs. 

The plates are cut from egg cartons, painted and decorated with decoupage - I used paper napkins with floral patterns. 

Last but not least, a few things I have upcycled. You can - or could once, before they raised prices - buy inexpensive miniatures at the Danish chain shops Tiger. They are good quality, but far too new and shiny. I like things to look natural and well used. Compare the before and after picture. 

 

I also painted shiny metal pots and pans set from Tiger to resemble the traditional Swedish enamel kitchenware Kockums. Authentic Kockums miniatures cost a fortune, but I am pleased with my imitation. 

I will stop for now, but I have more to show, including a range of plants and flowers so come back soon. I promise it won't be another year! 

Dark academia

 

When my daughter suggested that I make a Dark Academia room box, I had no idea what she was talking about, but after some research on the web I thought it was an interesting challenge. And of course the suitable format was a book nook rather than a room box. I had only made one book nook before, and I find it a fascinating format, but it has its special demands. A scholar's study would be just right. 

I made the crime scene book nook in a large cat sand box, but this project would be smaller, so a cat food box felt the right size. I covered it with wrapping paper. 

 

I wanted the front of the box to be a french window, and I had a frame from another project. I added a valve extending from the roof. 

I cut off a small bit of the beautiful floor I had from an earlier, dismantled project, and I printed out an old-fashioned wallpaper from the web. In accordance with the style, I made dark wooden wainscoting. For the ceiling, I used some leftovers of the magnificent Robert Adam paper.  Obviously, a book nook like this needs display lights, and it took me some time to figure out how to make and hide them. 

All the time I was testing different furniture and accessories. Some things I tried proved too bulky; some didn't quite fit in. I played with it for some time. But here is what it looked like just before I inserted the window: 

The writing desk is a Chippendale piece made from kit, with plenty of correct and interesting details that will never be seen in the final project. There are for instance small objects hidden in drawers. The armchair is likewise a Chippendale kit. I made the books from cardboard using book spine printies, but recombining them for individual look. Books on the floor are also made with printies, as are newspapers and maps. The chandelier is a fishing hook with some jewellery bits - I made it many years ago for my very first dollhouse. The clock comes from my clockmaker's room box; it's a large button with a printed clock face (I tried a grandfather clock, but it was too large). Just a couple of commercial minis: wine jar and glass, a candlestick, and of course a cat. A few more, and it would feel cluttered. 

Here is the finished nook. As I always do, I left my secret signature, like Hitchcock has a vignette of himself in all his movies. But I am not telling you where it is. 

 

Ceramic studio

I haven't posted anything for a long time, but not because I haven't done anything new. It just didn't happen. Catching up now, I will start with a project that I did in early autumn, when it was still possible to move around, and I did it in my miniature club. In this club, that meets once a week, everyone makes what they want; single objects or a larger project or anything. We have a guru who has an answer to every inquiry and a solution to every problem. We also support and encourage each other.

When we got together after summer I decided to make a room box, and I wanted to make a ceramic studio to give my daughter for her birthday - she is a ceramic artist. There are some rather specific elements necessary in a ceramic studio, and it was a challenge I so much enjoy. I browsed through many pictures of studios on the web, also recalling the time, long ago, when I attended pottery classes. A pottery wheel was the obvious start, and that's what I made first. 

I wasn't sure how to organise the room box, but the guru happened to have a wine box she didn't want - wine boxes are otherwise hard to come by these days. I painted the walls and ceiling white and made tile floor from egg cartons. A studio would of course have shelves, and rummaging through supplies I found a lampshade, exactly the same I once used, inspired by the very same guru, in my first dollhouse. I trimmed it to measure and inserted into the box. 

The doll is for size only. Since I was making everything from scratch, scale was essential. A table has to be higher than the wheel. 

Of course I needed a kiln, and there are two types of potter's kilns: front-opening and top-opening. My daugher has the latter, but for a room box a front-opening kiln is much more grateful because you can display pots when the front is open. I tried all kinds of boxes available in the workshop, but then remembered a tin box that I many years ago used as a refrigerator. I am glad I didn't throw it away because it was perfect for my purpose here. I painted it on the inside and put in wire shelves. Obviously a kiln cannot stand on the floor so I made a base. I also added some tiny watch parts for knobs.  

The guru gave me a small sink left over from some other project, and I added taps, splash board and sewage. I was now in the third or fourth week of the project and started finding small items to serve as various jars and containers. I also made two ceiling lamps.  

But of course ceiling lamps would not work for a potter: you need strong, focused light right over the wheel. I looked around in the workshop. Making a proper workbench lamp would be a challenge. I like challenges. It took several attempts and many dirty words, but I did it. I also wanted an iconic Swedish wall shelf, and I had actually made one some months before, without any project in mind, but it went well scale-wise. 

This picture is from a later stage of the project when shelves were filled, but before that there were some other things to make. Paint and glaze jars, for instance. 

I needed lots of finished and unfinished pots. I needed tools. And I needed chaos. Even the tidiest potter cannot keep the studio tidy. 

Here is the completed project. I always say that a miniature project is never completed, as you can always add and improve, but in this case it had to be completed by my daughter's birthday, and I wouldn't be able to change anything once it was gone. 

So let's have a closer look at different angles. 

On the table there are various tools, jars - one is spilling paint, which is fun to make - kitchen towel, coffee mug, a half-eaten sandwich; the table is smeared with dried clay. On the stool, you see scales, which is a Barbie item painted in more appropriate colours.

The corner with the lamp and the shelf. Paint jars are mostly radio or computer parts. The ceramic items are beads, candle holders, buttons. The lump of clay on the wheel is... clay. 

My pride - the kiln. I used the same kinds of beads and other vessels and painted them with chalk paint to resemble unglazed ceramics. And the fact that the kiln can be opened to display its content is a bonus. 

There was an issue of getting the room box to my daughter during the pandemic, but we managed it, and I think she was glad. She did point out, as I had anticipated, that she would never allow cats in the studio, but I told her it was poetic licence. 

As with all giveaway projects, I felt separation anxiety for a while. But I was and still am pleased with it because I managed to make it just as I had imagined. 

This was two months ago, and I have done lots of other stuff since then so come back soon.