Weekend green thumb

This was the view of my poor long-ignored ivy kit yesterday evening:

late this morning: 

 and, finally, this evening:

I still need to arrange the stems a bit but am happy with the general end result, and even more happy with the fact it's finally done with counting and gluing and can move on to something else!

It's good to see you again my friend...*

I'd arranged to meet my former colleague/ boss (now friend) this afternoon to visit the Reg Mombassa exhibition at Ambush Gallery in Kambri at ANU (I've had a soft spot for Reg's work, not just because he's a fellow kiwi living in Australia, but because he has a dolls' house in his studio...)

We got a bit lost as neither of us had been there before, and ended up finding a lift that took us straight into the gallery from the plaza.

So it wasn't until we left, via the front entrance, that I spotted something familiar in the foyer below. Raced down the stairs and stopped dead in front of Bette Noir, delighted to see she was being used once again as a publicly-accessible miniature gallery.

I felt a bit teary, to be honest, and wondered how long she'd been just up the road from work without me knowing...

And to make the whole thing even weirder, in the blog post from when she arrived into my life, the contract that I'd just started, that was sucking up my energy (and that morphed into my current role), was the one where I first met the colleague/ boss/ friend I was standing in front of her with.

(*It's been a long long time.)

Well that was tedious

And not quite 250, but I figure close enough: and having spent all afternoon separating teeny tiny ivy leaves from each other I'm not inclined to go back through each one to find where the other five are hiding.

I need to rest my eyes for a while, and then I'll start putting it all together... (And interestingly enough, so far it's more soporific than scary...)

Leafing it to the last minute

And so I finish the year, and this year's Daily dolls' house December challenge.

Alas I haven't finished yesterday's kit, but I've opened it up, read the instructions (twice) and sorted out the pieces. Then I started carefully prising the stacks of leaves apart, holding my breath, and being paranoid that I'd accidentally sneeze and blow all the little teeny tiny leaves all over the place, causing me to spend next year trying to hunt them down (the instructions say there are at least 250 of the blighters in there...)

Today, in the list of yearly tasks, I repotted my work pot plants (and one from my bathroom) ready for another year. They're like hermit crabs, all moving up a size pot each year, and (not like hermit crabs) gradually all ending up in self-watering pots. Alas, it looks like Robert (Palmer: geddit?) is now so big, I may need a hand truck to get him from the car to my desk this next year...

But that doesn't explain the state of my hands in the first picture. After exactly a year of many excuses ('Too hot!' 'Too cold!' 'Too worried I'll balls it up!' 'Too difficult to schedule three to four times, exactly twelve hours apart...') I finally realised this morning that if I scheduled staining at 7:30 am and pm over the next couple of days, when the weather was coolish enough to safely stain,  I could possibly get these armchairs' wooden bits stained wenge before I went back to work for the year, and thus assembled, out of the workshop and into my lounge.

(Here they are in my shopping trolley on this day a year ago, when I snapped them up from ALDI for $30 each, marked down from $100, thinking I could try turning them into the frugal version of the IKEA Ekenäset. Which I'd actually bought two of just after I bought the flat, in that 'limited edition might miss out' frenzy, but knowing full well I had three years to return them if I changed my mind. Which I did and I did: partly because spending $600 on armchairs seemed ridiculous, but mainly because I quickly realised that the teaky-coloured wood didn't fit in with the wenge colour I had elsewhere in my lounge.)

Anyway, that's a very long-winded way of saying that I finally plucked up the courage to not only deal with the scariest kit in the whole stash, but also two armchairs that have been sitting around in boxes in the workshop for a year.

So far the prognosis is not looking good, but I remind myself that first coats usually look like shit and to withhold judgement until the third (or fourth) coat is on. And if it's all a disaster, it was a cheap-enough one...

And on that note, I wish you a happy new year: may the best of this year be the worst of next, and may all your pleasures be tiny ones!

Make, do and mend Monday: the scariest kit in the whole stash...

I was out and about this morning: checking the post box, catching up with friends for brunch and popping into IKEA (where I was delighted to find just what I came for in the As Is corner, marked down by 30%. It would seem I not only have a Frugalling Fairy, but I have an As Is Assistant as well, and this is why I always enter IKEA through the exit!).

And since it's only three days until I head back to work for next year, I started on my list of yearly tasks.

So it wasn't until after 3 pm that my mind turned to today's blog post.

'It's Monday, so we can do a make, do and mend.' it suggested. 'Something quick, easy, take a picture of the completed item, up it goes, bang, done, head to the (newly vacuumed with washed cushions) sofa, recline for the afternoon and finish your book.'

'Go on...' it wheedled. 'Only two days of this year's Daily Dolls' House December challenge to go, and the only rule was to blog something miniature related...'

Alas, when I opened the drawer of small kits, I spotted this:

The scariest kit in the whole stash. One that was bought for a house that I sold 23 years ago to pay to move my belongings from New Zealand to Australia.

And suddenly, it seemed like a jolly fine idea indeed to mark the end of Daily Dolls' House December 2019 by confronting my (miniature) demons, and actually having a crack

Who knows? It might turn out to actually be quite easy, and then I can feel like Grover in The monster at the end of this book.

(Either way, as I pointed out to a friend a few days ago about something else, it'll make good blog fodder...)

The sailor's daughter

And so he did. And so she did.

Which meant I got to mock up the beginnings of the next scene in the space (that's why there's a kitchen cupboard on the roof...)

The story is that when the sailor died, his daughter moved in: but not before getting rid of a lot of the 'old tat' in the place, and moving and modernising the kitchen (I probably need to think about getting another kitchen set as I use this one quite regularly).

She did keep the stove and fridge, which were still newish, and a number of pieces of her father's that she liked, and worked into the new scheme, such as her father's trunk, globe, model yacht and telescope, and the terrazzo floor...

(The sofa that I'd pulled out to test my box-frame scene worked well here, paired with an Eames rocking chair from a box of goodies received from Elvira back in 2014, a rug gifted by Mitchymoo Miniatures in 2015 and cushions which I swear were also a gift but I can't find documented (although I suspect they were part of this package from Mini Dork...))

In the space where the old kitchen and (huge) table was, she added a set of industrial shelves, a tulip table (from my now-sold Kaleidoscope House.. *sniff*), some Tolix chairs, a small desk (from Mini Mod Pod), paired with a school chair (from my seaside shack), and a low sideboard (the repainted Europa sideboard from the next build after that).

(The lamp base is from a necklace picked up on a recent op shopping adventure, and the shade my trusty Irwin Interior Decorator Set, which I have used in many scenes over the years).

It pleased me greatly to add a new satchel for the sailor's daughter: like father, like daughter, obviously!

Now I'll let the whole thing sit for a while to mature, which will give me time to decide what I'm going to do about wall coverings, and if I like the sea-washed paper above the kitchen or need to try something bolder (or softer).

Plus decide if that wall cupboard needs to move down into the kitchen or not...

This ship has sailed (The Saturday shelfie)

Back in August, I placed my Lori Ballet Studio on my desk, above my laptop, and in direct line of sight in the hope that it might cause enough inspiration to make me find time in my life for miniatures.

It worked (sort of, and much later than I'd hoped) but this week I've found that it's been sitting there taunting me as I sort out other parts of my life that were long neglected as I packed and moved last year.

'Bloody hell', I finally declared around 3pm.'It's Saturday. Do a quick shelfie of the kitchen. Blog it. Then you'll be done and dusted for the day and can go back to sorting out your files...'

So I did:

 (Of course, you know what happened next...)

 I finished the kitchen.

 Then I finished the lounge.

 (Deciding that it's much easier for my sailor to live in the present day...)

 And I think I'm done. 

(Although there's a small voice in my head suggesting that my sailor might be due to die, and then his daughter take over the space...)

Flashback Friday (it *is* Friday, isn't it?)

A couple of weeks ago I shared some photos of the bedroom of my Mickey apartment: the very first scene I'd created when I returned to the hobby in my 20s (and if you're new to the artform and feeling like you'll never be any good and so should just give up now: have a look at this photo I took just after I started as an adult...)

At the time I mentioned that I didn't have any electronic photos of the lounge/ kitchen area, and hadn't yet got my printer hooked up after moving a year ago. This has now been rectified, although I'm almost loathe to share the photos as they're so bad (and did momentarily consider recreating the scene to rephotograph, as I still have the rooms and the contents: wrapped up until I decide what to do with them in my much smaller home):

Let's go for a stroll down Memory Lane, shall we?

It's the late 1980s, so no internet as we now know it existed. (I worked in a scientific organisation and had recently been introduced to this 'thing' where you could leave messages on notice boards and other people THAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD would reply: so yes, the internet existed but only for a very specific and rather small group of people but most certainly not for buying dolls' house miniatures).

I knew of two shops in Wellington that sold miniatures: one, the hobby shop where the Lido cafe now is (in what I didn't realise then was a lovely modernist building),that sold basically Chrysnbon, some wood, and not much else that was interesting for a miniaturist. The other was an odd little shop in the Regent cinema arcade on Manners Street: I remember poring over the contents of their sales counter wondering when I could afford the singer sewing machine set displayed there: even though it wasn't modern, it was still miniature.

Apart from the pieces I mention in my original post on this room, I made the Mickey Mouse triptych out of wrapping paper and cardboard, the Mickey Mouse wall clock out of Fimo and cardboard, and the speakers out of Balsa wood, paint and pantihose. The records are prints from the World Record Club catalogue (remember them?!), and I sewed the gingham cushions.

I was particularly proud of the yellow case I made out of Fimo: the first time I recreated something I owned myself.

The rest of the contents were commercial pieces I picked up over months as I saved up enough to purchase my next 'must have' item.

Sadly, to this day, although I have lights in the room, they have never been hooked up to work...

I scoped it out

So it took a while, but a good part of that was that (after I got the instructions clear in my head) the pieces were luxuriating in a egg-cup bath of vinegar for a day to make them look suitably aged.

Once that was complete, I did a little sanding and voila!

(OK, OK, it's only blog ready as I've not yet glued anything together, or made the lens. But if I'd not told you, you never would have noticed, right?)

Christmas day plans...

...look a lot like this:

(Yes, it's another post where I get out of bed in order to make a scene of my bed so I can tell the world I'm not getting out of bed...) 

It's a Christmas-day tradition around here,

except for last year, which looked more like this (and makes me particularly appreciate my ability to return to tradition for this year):

I hope your day is just what you need it to be.

Procrastination by printer

So I made brunch, and read the kit instructions while I ate.

'Paint the aluminium strip gold'... (I didn't find one in the bag. This could be a problem.)

As I read I realised the absurdity of a technical editor reading a set of instructions, over brunch, during a holiday.

Brunch finished, I took a deep breath and returned to the studio. Where I started at the kit bits for a while and then sprang into action...

...harvesting appropriate book and magazine covers (with magazines covering several decades as I still don't know when the scene is set), printing them off and gluing them to cardboard supports. And (finally!) making candles from some white glue sticks I picked up at Daiso (probably on this trip) and some black wire from the local discount store.

I did pick up the telescope kit pieces, rearrange them into groups, and decide that perhaps my sailor didn't need a stand for his telescope and could just have a hand one. I then realised that the sanding paper I needed to work on the pieces was through the flat, out the door, down the stairs, across the car park, and through the garage (which made me feel like a character in Bears in the night*) which just seemed like too much fuss to bother with right now.

Yup, still getting used to the 'new' set up. And am missing the extra three metres of floor space I had in my old studio, plus the space on top of my catalogue drawers as well. It's OK: part of the point of my time off work this summer was to get used to my new spaces, and work out how I can make them work best for me.

(*Which I only now realise is a Berenstain bears book, which makes me feel quite silly as I use the Berenstain bears as an analogy at work very regularly...)

Make do and mend Monday: watery thoughts

Yesterday, with the printer hooked up for the first time in over a year, I tested out making a view for my sailor. And what a difference it makes to his flat!

This morning, in the shower, I was ruminating on what today's blog post would be. The view, obviously (and that would hit the mark for a daily post), but since it was Monday, perhaps I should make something...

And my clever brain piped up (water... geddit?) and suggested that now the sailor has a view of the sea, perhaps he'd like a telescope to look at it. And reminded me that I had just the kit in stash (which I'd completely forgotten about until then, and have no idea where I got it from!). Clever brain also thought the sailor might like some shells, and perhaps now was a good time to use the ones I picked up almost three years ago?

So with a plan firmly in place, I unpacked the kit pieces and started reading the instructions. 'Paint the aluminium strip gold'. I look at the pieces of kit and can't see any aluminium strip.

Perhaps I'll have brunch first and come back to this later?

Market not-miniatures

It's the plant man's fault...

We have a chap at the local trash and treasure markets who sells ex-hire plants very cheaply. This time last year I bought a couple for the balcony after the cockatoos attached my favourite palm that I'd originally put out there (and quickly moved back inside). I figured at $20 each it was way cheaper (and more environmentally friendly) than buying fake plants, and so it wouldn't really matter too much if the cockies stripped them (which they did) and I needed to replace them (which I haven't yet).

This year I was thinking about having planter boxes along the inside of the balcony wall, in the hope that the cockies wouldn't see the plants from outside and so might leave them alone. And I knew the plant man occasionally had them. Last weekend I asked about them and he said he had some at home which he'd bring this week for me.

And so I woke bright and early this morning and trundled down the hill, only to find that he'd forgotten and left them at home.

So there I was. The temperature was cooler (huzzah!), I'd already paid my entry fee, and I needed to get my steps in for the day. What else was there to do but go for a wander?

For a total of $20 I bought a mouse mat (ignoring the fact I don't have a mouse). Two cupboard handles (with no handless cupboards), some super-duper looking clamps (tools are not miniatures, right?) and some lovely teak parquet floor lengths (I'm considering parquet for my no-longer-new place so a cheap test drive an excellent idea, don't you agree?)

And was home in time for breakfast, after which I opened all the doors and windows in the place to let some cool air in and decided today was the perfect day to continue sorting the studio.

I may visit the sailor later this afternoon, especially now I've hooked up my printer so can make him a view. We'll see... (or should that be 'sea'?).

It's so hot, my Blutack is melting...

but I managed to get things to stay put long enough to take some photos with yesterday's accessory choices in place:

 Yep, looking good...

 The one thing I still have to decide is what year this is set in.

Is it now (hence the modern packet of Weet-Bix), and he lives with a mix of things that he has inherited or that he bought years ago and still work, or do I need to swap the Weet-Bix out for a vintage version of the box, which would mean perhaps the chairs and stove are new, and we're in the 50s or 60s?

Such are the things that keep a miniaturist awake at night (assuming the heat isn't already doing a good enough job of that...).

Tied up on the shore would you weary no more?

My sailor seems to be settling in, and I'm enjoying finding out who he is.

The scene is not yet finished, but I'm feeling pretty happy with where it's heading. He's old: been retired for years, and happily living the simple life by himself, in a small, slightly run-down flat with a view of the sea (which isn't there quite yet as I still haven't got my printer connected to my new network: and spent the time I planned to do it in today playing with my miniatures instead).

The kicking-off point was the original photo I took of the picture with one of the grey and brown armchairs I'd bought off eBay, and a stripy carpet sample:

At that stage I truly thought that the resulting scene would end up being for a wealthy businessman who sails as a hobby.

But then I spied a roll of 'terrazzo' contact paper I picked up for 50 cents while op shopping several months ago, and through I'd see how that worked in the Lori ballet studio: which I'd placed right in my line of sight above my computer back in August in the hope it would kick-start some scene making (which obviously it didn't...)

The next surprise addition was an German cupboard from a job lot I bought back in 2013, and then things just took off (I love that moment!).

I'm nowhere near done yet, but I have the bones in place for now:

which means I get to play my favourite miniature game with my accessories stash: 'Who lives here?'.

Moving (and melting) slowly

It's the first of three very hot days here in Canberra:

(that's 104, 100.4 and 107.6 Fahrenheit for my so-inclined readers), and worryingly early to be hitting such heights.

And although my new place has much improved airflow (and therefore my studio is a much more bearable temperature) than in my old place, it still means I'm moving at a snail's pace. Which is fine. I'm on holiday after all.

It also means that any painting or staining becomes inadvisable.

So here are my (small) mini achievements today:

1. I made a frame,

and pulled out some pieces that I thought might go nicely with it in a scene. At this stage I'm calling it The Sailor, and have no idea if it's going to be just a shelfy or a full-on build. (Either way I now have some Big Country stuck in my head, which makes me very happy).

2. I went to the post office to check my mail, and discovered, to my delight, that the Christmas-day reading I ordered on a whim has arrived in record time!

(I just need to hide it from myself until Christmas day. Although the way this break is going, Christmas day may pass me by leaving me in blissful ignorance...)

In 'non-miniature' news, I popped into the op shop on the way home from the post office and found this brand-new candle holder for $2:

I'm sure it'll work wonderfully well on my balcony, and there's no reason at all to be googling how to remove spot welding (if that is, indeed, what's holding it together...), or looking at tin snips on the Bunnings website.

Sorting the stash

While looking for a miniature print to add to the framing pile this morning, I finally got frustrated enough with the 'I'll just pop this here for now' approach I took with supplies when I first moved in to declare today 'Sort out the stash' day.

Which meant plans for framing were out, and a quiet gentle day pulling out and emptying boxes and tubs, sorting the contents into piles, and then putting them away properly was in.

I love days like this, especially when I suspect the rest of the city is running round in the heat and smoke finishing up work or school for the year (or doing last-minute Christmas stuff in heaving malls) and I'm sitting on the sofa contemplating if this picture is 'medium' or 'large' or that patterned fabric is primarily blue or yellow.

Normal transmission should recommence tomorrow...

Feeling framed

 This morning I visited our local dolls' house shop.

'What!' I hear you cry. 'But you stated quite categorically just two weeks ago that you 'most definitely do not need any more miniatures for quite some time'.

Does it help you if I said I made it no further than a metre inside, as James had kindly opened especially so I could pick up some picture framing?

You see, mine's still safely tucked away.... somewhere. And I figured that the fastest way to find it was to go buy some more, which would almost surely cause the existing stash to decide to come out of hiding.

I was given a selection of New Zealand art auction catalogues by a neighbour of my parents when I visited them over Easter this year,

 and found this tiny watercolour on an op-shopping adventure soon after:

 So I feel some framing needs to happen in my near future.

(Which is actually oddly synchronistic as I just looked up the last framing blog post I did: and it was two years ago tomorrow!)