Half-scale kitchen

For the half-scale kitchen, I made a stove of the same model as in my Victorian house, just half the size.

The body of the stove is made from cardboard, simply painted black. The doors are bits of cardboard glued to the front. You cannot have as much detail in half scale because they become too conspicuous, so I just made simple handles from wire. The pipe is of course a drinking straw. The pots and the kettle came in some large lot, and strangely they fit perfectly in scale. I will make some utensils to hang on the rack.

Next I made a butler's sink with instructions in Vivienne Boulton's book, only she makes everything from clay, while I found an old butter container, the kind you get in hotels. I think I have had this container ever since I started making miniatures, just waiting for the right occasion. I wanted a butler's sink rather than a more modern sink like I have in the Victorian house simply because I wanted to make something new. Let's agree that this kitchen hasn't been modernised yet.

The room is very small so I cannot put as much in it as a typical kitchen would have. But at least a table is necessary. It is very easy to make a simple table: take a wooden strip and attach legs with blue tack...

However, this feels highly unsatisfactory for a furniture maker with self respect. Instead, I made it using my experience from making the Tudor and the Georgian tables - very difference experiences, but both proved useful. I also studied carefully the very first kitchen table I had in my very first kitchen. And this is what I did:

First, glued a smaller strip (a domino piece) on the underside. Cut four legs and the bars. Glued the legs at the corners of the smaller strip and glued on the bars - I promise, that took some time!

This feels much better. I had some half-scale dishes and food, but I will make more. And add more details. But so far, this is what the kitchen looks like. A bit crammed for a Victorian kitchen, but will have to do.

For a comparison, I took a picture of a full-scale and a half-scale table. It gives you a good sense of scale.

Further half-scale development

As I mentioned in the previous post, there are three shelves on he inside of the cabinet door, and although they are shallow, they provide some additional space. I have made an attic and a bathroom.

I only made the attic because I have these Avon miniatures, and they are sweet. I have borrowed the maps from another house, but I am not sure they fit. There must be something on the wall. I will also add more objects that belong in the attic.

The bathroom appliances, possibly Mattel, came with another lot, and I have saved them until now. I will add more things here as well: towels, toiletries, maybe a shelf.

It is beginning to look really nice. Next, I will do the dining room and the kitchen.  

Half-scale development

I am going on with the half-scale house, and I have now put wallpaper in most of the rooms. The floors are tentative, and the bedroom floor needs to be replaced (the cardboard has bent, so the whole room is lopsided). The table in the future dining room is wrong scale, but I put it in because the room does not look natural otherwise. The same about the adjacent room which I am not sure yet what it will be.

On the inside of the cabinet door, I have made a fake entrance door, and I wll also make two fake windows. The two shelves above will be bathroom and attic.

I am excited about this project: it is becoming so much more than just displaying existing miniatures. Because I have given away the plastic house and Helen Hall, I can use some of the same wallpaper and flooring. And I know how to print them in half scale.

I will not get another half-scale furniture kit because I wasn't satisfied with it, but I will make some furniture myself now that I have better skills.

Come back soon.

Half-scale fireplace

The fireplace I had in my old half-scale study roombox, now moved into the new half-scale house, was rather primitive, but I didn't have a chance to do anything about it until now. As I was rummaging through my useful rubbish I found the last few half-scale kits that I never thought I would want to use again. But among them was a fireplace, and I thought that with my recent furniture-making skills I might be able to turn it into something nice. I had nothing to lose. So I assembled it.

 Like the other furniture from this set, it looked crude. But it was a nice shape - it just needed some trimming. I glued bits of embossed 1:1 wallpaper onto the front, to imitate marble carving. I used some marble paper on the top, painted everything white, except the back wall of course, that I painted black. I made the fire from bits of yarn. The fireguard is a clothes hook. Unlike the old one, this fireplace has depth and therefore looks more natural.

Half-scale house

For some time I have been thinking about an interesting way of displaying my Avon miniatures and other half-scale stuff. I have tried to divide a standard roombox into four compartments, and I have tried to build something with cardboard, but it didn't really work. So I have these three small rooms, one a wine box, one a cheese box and one just a cardboard box. It looks untidy and unfinished. Today, as I was rummaging in the garage, I found an old bathroom cabinet that we had intended to throw away five years ago when we renovated the bathroom. And suddenly I saw a possibility. I took it inside, cleaned it from cobwebs and tried to put in some furniture, just to see whether the scale was right.

I thought it probably was, and I experimented with some odd bits of wallpaper I had, to see whether it made a difference. It did. 

 

I started thinking about floors and wallpaper, but my printer had chosen this day to strike, which significantly limited my choice. Therefore I merely moved the study from the wine box into the upper floor of the new house. 

I coudn't do much more with the malfunctioning printer so I made a half-scale four-poster bed.

I used the same instructions as with my very first bed, only half the size. It was both easier and not. It was easier because I knew how to do it and knew some shortcuts. But everything in half scale is more difficult because it is snaller. I cheated a bit and used paper rather than fabric for the headboard and the canopy. I glued the lace onto the paper, but you cannot tell it, can you? Even the bedding is paper. 

So here is the beginning of the half-scale house. 

 

There are shallow shelves in the cabinet door, but enough to make some half-flat rooms. On the outside, there is a mirror, but I will make a proper facade, with a front door and windows. This will be an interesting and challenging project. Come back soon.

Plastic house: finishing touches

I am not going to spend much more time on this house because from the point of view of what I wanted to do with this project - make something ugly into something pretty - it's done. I am sure I will be adding to it just as I keep adding to all my houses and room boxes, but for the time being it's finished. I have added some details  as final touches. I will describe them room by room.

In the bedroom, there is a lamp on the wall over the bed which is a button. The vase on the chest is a bead, and flowers are real. The heater is a stray Lego bit.

In the bathroom, the toilet is from kit, but the bath tub and the washbasin are plastic things of forgotten origin. They have identical taps that are parts of tiny water pistols from Chrismas crackers. The ceiling lamp is cut from a medicine card. The curtains are made from a ribbon.

The drawing room has a standard lamp made from kit and a table lamp made from a chess piece and a toothpaste lid. The fruit bowl is another medicine container, and the fruit are beads. The painting on the wall has a frame which is a button. The curtains are ribbon here as well.

The utensils in the kitchen are wrong scale, but I will find something better later. The bucket feels right, and I made the broom in the way all miniature maker are familiar with, from a piece of string and a toothpick. The clock is a button with a face cut from a catalogue.

On the whole, I am very pleased with this project. I have learned how to improve kit furniture, and I have trained my half-scale eye.

Another firescreen

While I was at it, I made another firescreen, from the 1:24 kit. It was supposed to be a modesty screen but it made an excellent fire screen in 1:12 scale.

I painted and varnished it, and the "silk" is Japanese handmade paper. Here it is in its environment, the Georgian house. I am not quite sure it fits so it may move to the Victorian house that can be eclectic.

Avon collectibles

Yet another thing I bought during my flea market spree was this set

I recognised it immediately because I have two similar sets that I bought some time ago in a charity shop.

I have built two room boxes around these, a study and a spa. I have tried to find out something about these miniatures, but there were few clues. This time, however, there was the original box, so here we are

From this, I went to ebay, and there were these miniatures, produced by the cosmetics company Avon, yet god knows when and why - I will make further investigations. I was not far from truth in my previous projects: the blue and wooden set is a library, and there is a bookshelf missing that I think I have made much better; and the white set is a conservatory. On ebay you can get a bedroom set, a kitchen set and some other stuff.

Now of course I am thinking whether it's worth the trouble to make a whole house with these sets. I must say that I didn't like them at first, but they are rather cute, and with proper environment they look nice. So this may become a new large project in the future.

Filling the shelves

Meanwhile, I filled the kitchen cupboard with some utensils.

The mugs or tankards on the upper shelf are pieces from a charm bracelet. The green jars on the next shelf are bits I retrived from a broken electronic device, possibly a printer. The blue and white pots are plastic beads. The yellow pot is a tiny bottle cap, and the frying pan comes from an ebay lot.

This is the most recent view of the kitchen, with the living room in the background. 

More furniture improvements

Now that I have figured out how to make the kit furniture nicer it's just a matter of patience. I made a table for the drawing room

A bookshelf

with book rows cut from a magazine

An armchair

 

After which I gained so much confidence that I decided I could make something that was missing from the kit. I took the side pieces from another armchair and used the empty template to make the seat and the back. I used a cheesebox, and because I don't have any elaborate tools I simply cut it with scissors.

 I don't think my sofa is significantly inferior to the one mising from the kit.

 Of course it still looks more like a park bench than a sofa, but wait...

Here is the whole set. I stained and varnished the furniture, and unfortunately the stain didn't stick where there was some glue left on the sofa: there is an ugly patch that I will do something about. The ceiling lamp is a toy from a Christmas cracker, and the table lamp is a chess piece with a plastic tube cap. The carpet is paper, cut from a catalogue and fringed all round
 

Improving kit furniture

While I was pleased with my bedroom furniture, I kept thinking that there must be a way of using the bits from the kit to make something less clumsy. I consulted my miniature group, and they confirmed: it was fully possible to get rid of the ugly tabs. I started with a chair because I had lots of them and could afford a failure. I glued the pieces together with the strongest glue I had and left it overnight. Then I cut off the tabs and sandpapered until the surface was smooth. It is still not as elegant as more expensive kits, but it looks much better.

I made the cupboard in the same way.

I found it quite remarkable that you could see the improvement so clearly. And when I painted it, the difference was still more striking.

 Last of all, I made the table. When I first assembled it, I thought it looked ok. But after I had improved the cupboard it didn't feel satisfactory at all:

Therefore I cut off the tabs (the frame broke in the process, but I managed to glue it back), and again the paint did the trick.

Here is the whole kitchen set:

And here it is in he room. Now I need to make some utensils.

More kit furniture

Here are some more things I have managed to salvage from the sheets. They are just tentatively assembled, not properly fitted, not sandpapered, not glued. It was sometimes hard to figure out which piece I was doing. I was simply trying to see what I had, since about half of the bits were missing.

Then I tried to make something nice. As I have already observed, sandpapering is everything. I worked very thoroughly on this piece. You can still see numbers penciled on the bits - that was very helpful to see how bits fit together. I almost forgot to take the before picture before I started painting.

And the chest joined the bedroom furniture set, and, amazingly, it went just right onto the funny half-circle, as if it had been specially made for it. I still think this furniture is clumsy, but it looks much better when painted.