Double Challenge

My order arrived from my friend Liz at Grandpa's Dollhouse. I'll show you the great things I got, hopefully, tomorrow but I must tell you about one item in particular. You may remember that I ran out of the wood trim that I was using to make the peg/bulletin board in the scrapbooking vignette. Although I managed to finish that piece, I really wanted more of that trim but couldn't find it anywhere online. So I wrote Liz and sent her a description and a photo. It turned out that the trim has been discontinued but she managed to find a supplier who still had some in stock and got it for me! That's the kind of service you can depend on from Liz.

To save on shipping, she had included Joanne and Laurie's orders with mine and in addition to our orders, she sent a bag of 'stuff' she thought we might be able to use.

Laurie is making a public bathroom for our country fair display at the show and sale in September so we talked today about some of the items needed for that such as towel dispensers and toilet paper holders.

So I looked at one of the scoops from Liz and thought I might be able to make a toilet paper dispenser from one of them.

I started by cutting the bottom off one of the scoops.

 Then I cut an opening for the access to the toilet paper. I goofed a bit and a piece of the plastic snapped off inside the circular part so I decided to cut straight across rather than leave it rounded.

 Then I 'painted' it with black marker.

Ordinarily I would use a piece of drinking straw for the toilet paper roll core but that would be too small for a commercial roll like this so I cut a strip of cardstock 5/16" wide and wrapped it twice around  the handle of a foam paint brush, gluing it to itself.

Then I cut a strip of two-ply tissue 5/16" wide,

separated the two plies,

 and wrapped it around the core. (A full roll would require probably about 6 single ply pieces.) It's glued in a couple spots to make it easier to handle then a strip about 1/2" long left to hang out of the dispenser. The roll is then glued to the inside of the dispenser.

 Then the dispenser will be glued to the cubicle wall.

My Mom broke her pelvis the night before I left for Phoenix but she and my sisters insisted that I go anyway. (One of my sisters also lives here so Mom wasn't alone.) So my days after my return were broken up visiting her in the hospital. She returned home on Monday. She lives in the building next door to mine so I go over in the morning and help out and run errands and Shirley goes in the afternoon. We're settling into a routine so I'm hoping that I'll be able to start getting a bit more organized around here.