Off to the library today

In October of last year, the Miniature Enthusiasts of Edmonton club donated a storybook dollhouse to the Children's Department of the St. Albert Public Library. At the time, it had a plastic snap on cover but it became apparent that we would have to replace that with a plexiglass cover as naughty hands were able to get behind the soft plastic cover.

Joanne e-mailed me on Monday with the sad news that Miss Muffet's tuffet and the spider had been removed from the house (the bowl of curds and whey and the spoon were still there).

The Quarter Scale group meets at Tina's on the fourth Tuesday of the month so I suggested to Joanne that we both attend and use the time to make a replacement tuffet and spider. (Even though I don't work in 1:48, Tina's good enough to invite me to join the group.) She would make the spider while I would make a tuffet.

Erika, the maker of the original tuffet and spider, was at the group so we broke the news to her. (It was a bit intimidating to make the replacement in front of her as she had done such a marvellous job on the original.)

I started with two spice jar lids glued together.

Then I wrapped a length of double-sided carpet tape around the lids and attached a layer of thin foam.

 I then put another piece of carpet tape across the top:

TIP: When you cut carpet tape, you get a lot of adhesive stuck to your scissors. This can be removed with nail polish remover.

 I placed a square of foam over that strip of tape,

 then trimmed it to shape.

A circle of fabric was glued to the top of the tuffet. This was an opportunity to try the new Beacon "Hold the Foam!"™ glue I had bought in the States. Seems to work well but I think I'm more interested in how it will work on the rigid Styrofoam™.

ASIDE: If you're wondering how I got the TM in there, there are hundreds of handy-dandy things you can add in Windows using your numeric keyboard on the right hand side of your keyboard and the 'Alt' key. It's the first time I've tried it here so it'll be interesting to see if it holds when I publish this. For more information, go here.

I then took a strip of the fabric (doubled over at the top)

and glued it around the sides (again using the new adhesive).

Here I've added a strip of white braid around the bottom. Didn't have any red bunka to trim the top so I braided some red embroidery thread and added that.

Joanne hadn't quite finished the spider so I'll get a picture of it today when we place it in the house and put on the plexiglass front.