Life in uncertain times

 And, finally, the weekend.

I gave up on the studio as too cold and decamped to the dining room table, where I finished the last few things I needed for my chair scene, then, chasing the light, to the kitchen to finally put it together.

I call it Life in uncertain times.

(And I'm hoping that that 'P 30m' sign doesn't mean 30 months: although my mortgage would be rather pleased if that were the case!)

Careful placement of the chair, and the angle and cropping of the photographs means you don't get to see this:

(I did have a back-up plan which involved ever-so-casually draping a throw or shawl on the side of the chair, but that turned out to be unnecessary).

One good thing about setting up a scene on the kitchen bench is that you're forced to put it away (or at least somewhere else) before you can start preparing dinner...

Mid-week minis

 I finished the chair. And it sat there for almost a week waiting for me to have the time and headspace to finish the scene I was planning for it, and for some light to photograph it (it's been a grey, rainy and freezing week, culminating with snow early this afternoon).

That doesn't mean I've not been mini-ing. After I logged off from work each afternoon this week I pulled out a kit from stash (in a fairly random way: but focusing on quick and easy wins), and worked on it.

Life in lockdown

 And so, after almost ten days of side-eyeing my half-completed and almost abandoned chair kit, yesterday morning I came up with a plan that might just work, and, more importantly a possible solution to cover its problem area.

And reminded myself that done was better than perfect, the whole point of the exercise was luring myself back into the studio, and if it all turned to shit I would quite happily bin the whole damned thing.While waiting for the first lot of glue for the day to dry I played my favorite game of 'Who lives here?', reacquainting myself with the stash to see where the potential scene was heading...And it seems it's heading into life in lockdown. The yellow table is back, and paired with one of the stools I picked up at the 2018 Sydney show, and a radiator I bought for the 2015 HBS Creatin' contest (which isn't moving forward anytime soon... *sigh*).

There's working from home so I needed a monitor, laptop and keyboard (and a mouse: as yet unmade).

Some topic-appropriate artwork, collected from various places across the years (including a magnet I bought at the Wellington Underground Market in 2014 (now closed), and in a city that I'm not sure when I'll next be able to visit, and which I thought I'd be using in quite a different scene (as yet unbuilt...), a wee something from a gift from a friend back in 2015 (are you sensing a theme here?), and a card of another friend's father's artwork).

I added some appropriately-coloured and themed swaps and gifts, and, finally the necessary cleaning supplies. Except I realised that the hand wash didn't really look like sanitiser, and so spent a couple of hours on the sofa that evening looking at tutorials for making miniature hand sanitiser pump packs without coming up with anything that was the right scale, and included items I already had.

So I went to bed.

And an old friend returned. Just after 3am, a thought bubbled into the dream I was having (am I the only one whose dreams are currently more interesting that their real lives?). 

My subconscious reminded me of a piece of canvas I'd completely forgotten that I had: with colours that might work as a mural in the scene: and causing the viewer some more general 'unease' with it.

Even better, it came up with the solution to my hand sanitiser problem: suggesting that a bottle from the perfume bottle set I'd bought as part of the At home with Hello Kitty range could possibly, with some white nail polish and a couple of labels, turn into a bottle of hand sanitiser.

And blow me down: it was right. Not only in remembering the tiny bottles, but also, helpfully, reminding me I had a macro lens for my phone, and pointing me to where it was!

So my Sunday involved rooting out forgotten treasures, making some ever-so-important-in-these-times hand sanitiser, and, finally, finishing the chair that started the whole thing...

(Which doesn't look so bad...)

Plus (unexpectedly and quite pleasingly) starting to move some things around from where they landed when I first shifted in, to places that make more sense for how I'm using them!

The kit with no instructions

I'm not actually sure when I was given this slipper chair kit by Adelaide Cann of Adelaide's Miniatures, but I suspect it was probably over five years ago at the surprise birthday workshop she threw at Div's.

It's been sitting in stash ever since, and one of its biggest issues is a lack of instructions. (If I'd been given any verbal guidance at the time I've long forgotten it).

But in my constant effort to sort out the studio I'd stumble across this op-shopped treasure, which suggested it might work rather well with the parking sign I bought on my last trip to New Zealand (Oh, in those halcyon days just before travel restrictions came into place!)

And I decided that it was worth giving it a crack as the potential negatives were so low (financially at least) and the positives so high (a new scene!)

I thought I started well, although commented on Instagram that I was at this stage where I don't know if this is going to be brilliant or a complete disaster...

Turns out, after further gluing today, that I'm lurching dangerously close to a disaster.

So I've abandoned things for now to let my poor (overloaded by work) brain time to come up with a brilliant solution that works within the small amount of fabric I have.

In the meantime, I'd decided that this piece required a scene. Which required a keyboard.

Which I only have one of, in the wrong colours (and in the wrong operating system).

A quick text to my local miniature shop indicated that such a thing would be some weeks away, so I went with option B: printing one myself.

It may not be perfect but I think it'll work for now...

Attempting it again in August...

After the spectacular (in my mind at least: I suspect no one else much noticed) failure of my May miniature challenge, at the end of last month I finally thought I should try another approach.

It's a nice mix of supportive and caring ('I know it's been a draining couple of years and you keep saying you don't have the brain space for minis, or find your 'new' studio easy to navigate, but perhaps by making some time to make something you'll feel better and finally start settling in?'), and my usual hard line and logical ('And if you don't actually start to use some of this stuff, perhaps we need to consider getting rid of it!')

And so on the weekend I figuratively locked myself in the studio: firstly unearthing my cutting mat and the chair in front of it,

and shoving stuff into the cupboard ('My what a lot of treasures you've amassed!'),  then dismantling and putting away most of The Sailor's Daughter and dusting off the remaining empty space.

I even worked out how to pull apart the IKEA mini shipping container that was sitting next to it, making more room for future possibilities (which may just include its return, if I decide to attack it with my tin snips rather than look into laser-cutting options...)

After all that excitement, past failures, and realising that I'm once again very rusty, I decided to approach things very gently.

There's making scenes. And there's making miniatures. Perhaps I should focus on the latter this time, rather than the former. Yes, I'll end up with just the same amount (if not more) stuff in the studio, but at least it's completed and not grumbling at me from the cupboard, and just perhaps starting with the latter will kick the former into action.

And so, on Saturday I started with this,

figuring that since I didn't remember where the kit came from I wouldn't care to much if it came to nothing,

By the end of the day I had a handful of completed projects

(none of which, you may note, is the book kit that started the whole approach).

Since my focus was on kits made of paper, I also made these: from a kit I received in the goody bag from the 2015 AMEA convention.

(Giggling as I spent way too much time making sure that the card corners weren't square...)

At that stage I hoped quietly that I'd managed to find and recapture my mini mojo....