X-Acto knife in mini

Not much sense in having a cutting mat if you don't have an X-Acto knife!

I took a toothpick with a carved end and shaved a blade out of the piece above the first notched piece using my scalpel (could have used my X-Acto blade).

Then I painted the end of the toothpick silver. (I used Metallics by Billie nail polish from Dollarama but could/should have used my silver Pilot pen.) I didn't cut this to size until the nail polish had dried so I'd have a handle to hold while I painted it.

Once the nail polish had dried, I cut the 'knife' to size and painted the cut end.

Trash to Treasure: Dishpans/large bowls, plant pots, small bowls

I heated up a batch of President's Choice Mini Quiche for a neighbour and, like most PC appetizers, they come in a plastic tray.

My first thought was that these could be cut up into large bowls or small dishpans. I should take one of them, fill it with the white air dry clay I bought last week, cover it with a dish towel, and have rising bread on the kitchen counter.

This is 1 3/4" across the top, 1 3/16" across the bottom and 1/2" deep.

Then, as I was cutting out a bowl, I had an AHA moment. The pieces between the 'bowls' could also be cut out and used as plant pots.

The tall ones could be used at plant pots and the lower ones could be used as low pots for cacti - or serving dishes.

The tall one is 11/16" square at the top, 1/4" square at the bottom and 5/8" tall. The short one is 5/8" square at the top, 7/16" at the bottom and 1/4" tall.

child's loft bed, wash basin

I don't ordinarily look through RL furniture flyers but did yesterday and spotted this child's bed which would be SO wonderful in miniature (especially since dollhouse rooms tend to be so small). It comes in two options: with the shelving or with a trundle bed.

If I were doing a child's bedroom, I'd make this for it in a heartbeat...and with little Houseworks casters on the trundle bed. And pretty simple to make - especially if you made faux drawers rather than real ones under the steps.

It's really tempting to make it anyway just for the fun of it. But at this point I better just concentrate on finishing the Bombay house.

I took President's Choice salmon  mini-wellington's to the MEE Christmas party (more about that later). They're very tasty. AND the packaging has great mini possibilities.

They come in a clear plastic tray with insets for holding the tarts. The ones marked with an 'X' have a little scooped section along the top edge so I ignore those.

But I cut apart the other six. Below you can see where I've trimmed the edges around the top of two of them and I've coloured one with a red felt marker.

The're 2" in diameter across the top and 3/4" high so make a nice dishpan.

Although marker works well to colour this (and copper or some of the more gray silver nail polish would probably work), don't think the plastic would take paint unless it was primed. Another possibility would be to give it a thin layer of gesso, then paint it blue or red and give it a spackleware enamel finish like this:

To get the spackleware look, dip an old toothbrush in a bit of white paint and run your thumbnail over it so the paint spatters in small drops. You may want to practice a bit on a scrap of paper until you get the direction and size of your spatter right.

Loveseat

I've had this in my mind for quite some time and finally decided to try it out for my young miniaturist friend.

Soft sponge 4 1/2" x 2 3/4" x 1 1/2" (8 for $1 at Dollarama)
2 3/4" foam hair curlers (pack of 8 for $1 at Dollarama)
piece of matboard 10 1/4" x 2 3/4"

Score and fold the matboard in 2 3/4" from each end.

Remove the plastic piece from the inside of the foam curler and slit the foam lengthwise.

Wrap the matboard around three sides of the sponge and slip the split foam rollers as shown. I'm going to cover the foam so I'm just holding it in place right now.

I have a suede look shirt that I picked up at Frenchie's in Nova Scotia that will be used to upholster the foam.

I cut a piece of fabric to cover the sponge. Not the best choice of fabric. Between the sponge soaking up glue and the fabric being a polyester blend, you really have to be patient and glue one part at a time then wait for it to dry before proceeding to the next step.

I wrapped the fabric around the sponge overlapping it at the back. I only glued the back pieces - not the bottom, top or front. Once that glue dried, I trimmed the ends a bit and glued the fabric to the ends of the sponge. I then glued the entire seat in position on the matboard and placed it in my gluing jig with a book against the open end to hold everything in place until the glue dried.

Boy, if I thought gluing that fabric in place was hard, it was nothing compared to trying to glue it to the foam rolls. I cut it to cover the outside with just enough to cover the slits on either side. I wrapped the fabric around the piece, gluing the ends into the slits and sliding a popsicle stick in the slit to hold the fabric in place while the glue dried.

Then I cut slits all around the ends, spread them quite liberally with glue, and tucked each piece into the middle of the roll.

When I put the arms back on, I felt they were too high so I cut the matboard down by 1/2" - which was probably a bit too much.

Not thrilled with it but it was a fun experiment.

couple wonderful links

Have to run out to do some errands but thought I'd share these before I leave.

Miniature artisan, Peter Tucker, has made a wonderful scale conversion spreadsheet (for PC and for Mac) that takes the work out of converting real life measurements to the various scales. Click on 'enable editing' when you save it to your computer. Then you put a short description in column 1 and the RL measurement in column 2 and the RL measurement will be automatically converted to the measurement in various scales. Peter has generously given me permission to post this information here.

He also has a blog where you can read about how he does some of the incredible work he does.

On Canada Minis, we've been discussing Trash to Treasure which, as you know, is one of my favourite topics. Linda McD gave me permission to share Minitreasures wiki Trashminis pages with you. Eleven pages of incredible T2T which will have you running to your stash to try things out.