Mini Day Out

SHOOT!! You would think after all the times that I've had my camera and forgotten to take pictures and cursed myself for it that I would remember to take pictures....throughout the day and not just at the last minute. I get SO frustrated with myself.

Missed some great shots of the whole group and some of the beautiful attics that some people were working on. AND the incredible corsages that Janeen makes from bread clay. (Teresa took some pictures of those so I'll see if I can get them from her and post them later.)

There were 15 of us throughout the day working on a variety of things. Lois's husband, Peter, was there to help with the wiring of the attic project. And I demonstrated some of the tutorials - the canned goods and bowls made with a quilling tool, the knives made from tooled toothpicks, and cakes made from corks and bottle caps.

One of Erika's bowls from quilling paper

Teresa and Lucille hard at work. Lucille was working on a kit of a  child's playhouse in 1:48.

Peter and Lois working away. Dolores's attic is in the foreground.

Trineke, Barb (busy quilling items) and Judi (checking out the T2T booklet). Joanne had brought and donated to the club a large box of quilling paper that she had inherited from a former club member who introduced her to minis. After Peter helped her with the wiring of her attic, she was sorting through the quilling paper (lower right) but she'd kill me if I added that picture...

But I can show you a view of the wonderful work she did with Crayola magic clay on the outside of her attic:

Trineke quilled all the canned goods then tried her hand at some lovely quilled bowls.

Barb R. also had a very productive day.

Tina finished the first project she had brought to work on so started working on a hydrangea in 1:48!!! OMG, I can't do flowers in 1:12 so even the idea of doing them in 1:48 boggles my mind.

At the end of the day, Trineke and I were discussing her attic and she described a piece that she needed - a wall-hung sink. I knew that the piece she wanted was available as part of a Chrysnbon kit...so we discussed Chrysbon for a while, then I remembered that I had that particular kit (bought with pieces missing) and the pieces she needed for her attic were all in that package I had. We were both SO pleased.

She hadn't been familiar with Chrysnbon so I later e-mailed her the url for a website that has the most comprehensive collection of Chrysnbon furniture and accessories that I have ever found 

I love these times we spend together.

Trash to Treasure - soaker tub

I just finished putting together a Trash to Treasure booklet for our club members who are meeting here for the Mini Day Out on Saturday...and one of the items mentioned there was...If you watch your plastic packaging, you may even find a piece that will work for a bathtub.

When Joanne and I were out yesterday and doing the rounds of Dollarama, Dollar Tree and LoSeCa, we picked up some Marie Callendar cornbread muffin mix. When we got home, I decided to try it so pulled some cupcake papers from my pantry....

And there it was:

6" long x 3" wide x 2" deep

 The packaging for the cupcake papers that I bought at Dollarama is a perfect large soaker tub!

To give it that "enamel" look all I have to do is paint the outside with white acrylic paint...and I can add 'jets' to it by gluing silver sewing snaps to the inside for jets/drains..

What are the chances?

Some ideas for making cakes

Some of my friends are real artisans when it comes to miniature baking, especially Carolyn and Natasha. I don't have the ability or inclination or the skills with polymer clay that they do but occasionally it's nice to be able to quickly make a little cake to put in a scene. So here are some ideas that you might like to try.

From cork:

All you need is a cork, a blade, some spackle and (optional beads, glass stain, bunka for decoration)

I use a scraper blade (available at Dollarama and Canadian Tire).

Use a straight blade to slice a piece of cork about 5/8" thick. You can cut a 'slice' from it if you like.

The first cake was iced with spackle then topped with very tiny beads mixed with red glass stain. The 'cake edges' of the second cake were painted with brown paint and the rest iced with spackle.

TIP: If you push a push pin into the bottom of the cake. It makes a good handle while you're icing and decorating the cake.

Here I've taken the cherry topped cake and put it on a pop bottle cap liner and push pin that had been painted with red glass stain. The pin from the push pin goes through the liner and into the cake to hold it all together.

Other options:

Plastic pop bottle caps can also be iced with spackle for a quick cake.

You can mix a bit of acrylic paint in with the spackle for coloured icing.

Fine-grained crafting Styrofoam can be cut into rectangles for slab cakes or circles for round cakes.

¼” balsa or basswood can be cut to size for slab cakes.

Wood dowelling of various sizes can be used for round cakes also – just cut slices for the dowel to the thickness you want.

This cake was made with three slices of dowelling in three sizes. The larger two formed the bottom two layers and the smaller one for the top layer. They were all iced with a smooth layer of spackle. The trim on the layers is strips of white bunka laid into the spackle. I think for the top trim on the bottom layer I unravelled the bunka before putting it in place. Pieces of round toothpick were used to separate the top and bottom layers. When everything was completely dry and in place, I painted the entire cake with white acrylic paint.

bulletin boards, canned goods for pantry

Thanks so much to all of you who commented on my bulletin board storage. For those of you who have the closet space for them, I highly recommend them. For years, I used the parts storage cabinets such as these:

They're great BUT they're very labour-intensive if you want to keep them up-to-date and know exactly where things are. 

The bulletin boards (and actually they don't have to be bulletin boards - you can use the big ceiling tiles that are used in suspended ceilings) keep everything visible and readily accessible. I put labels on the outer/visible edge so I can see at a glance what's on each board.

When I want to work on a particular project, I just pull out the board/boards that  apply to that particular project and everything is handy.

The DIY of the Day:

On Thursday, I showed how to make a bowl from quilling paper. 

Today's DIY is generic cans for your pantry using the same method.

You can email me if you would like me to send you the .pdf file for these cans.

YES!!! ...plus a very short/simple tutorial

Everything is put away where it belongs.....

The dining room table is empty of minis:

Ohhh! It feels good!

Quick tutorial:

This little shelf will work almost anywhere in the house.

Cut two narrow pieces from any fancy molding, glue it at right angles to a piece of basswood and you have a nice little shelf. (This one is the depth of the molding but the shelf can be deeper.)

Not a totally wasted weekend...

On Friday, I absolutely could not find something so I knew it was definitely time to (Oh, the horror of it all!) CLEAN MY WORKROOM.

Oh, I've tidied it up every couple months or so - especially when I have fellow miniers over but haven't done a really good clean for much too long.

No wonder I couldn't find things.

I got half done! This is what it looks like now.......

Huge improvement BUT (hanging my head in shame) that's only half the work done. (At which point I succumbed to mumblemumble of the Louise Penny books that had been calling to me.)

Most of the items that were taken from off and under the tables still have to be dealt with. (Run screaming!) 

Most of you who know/follow me are aware that I keep most of my mini accessories on bulletin boards in a closet at the end of my workroom.

Occasionally I bag new items and put them on the bulletin boards but more often I tend to hoard them then do a wholesale sort and put away. And that's what ahead of me tonight.

All the items to be bagged and put away are on the dining room table and the 20 bulletin boards are spread around waiting to be updated. My guess is that there are at least 200 items to be sorted through, bagged, and put away.

So this will be how I spend my evening...

Hopefully I'll get back to some Trash to Treasure and tutorials tomorrow.

Knives from turned toothpicks

Knives from turned toothpicks

Full toothpick, cut to knife length, one side shaved, both sides shaved, rough tip ready for shaping with emery board.

The blades are shaped roughly with an X-Acto knife just slaving the uncarved part of the toothpick (after it's been cut to desired blade length) down bit by bit on either side until it's a thin as possible then finishing the shaping with emery boards. Then the blades are painted silver with my Pilot pen and the handles stained with a Minwax stain marker or painted with nail polish.

(Step 1) Cut the round part of the toothpick off about 5/8" from the edge of the carved part. Rest the 5/8" part on the edge of a table or book (something hard and flat) and hold on to the carved part.

(Step 2) Using a new X-Acto blade, shave about four thin strips of wood as evenly as you can make them off the top of that piece (or until you're shaved away about 1/3 of the thickness of the toothpick). Don't try to take off too thick a layer at once.

(Step 3) Flip the piece over, lay the flat side against the table and do the same thing on the other side.

(Step 4) When you have the second side down to about 1/3 (or less) of its original thickness, you can take your X-Acto blade and cut off the end of the 'blade' at an angle to begin shaping the tip. 

Once that's done, you can again rest the "blade" flat side down and sand it smooth with an emery board. When both sides are smooth, take your emery board and sand across the blade one side at a time at an angle until you have an 'edge' to y our blade.

The blades are actually pretty sturdy and I've yet to break one but I have (more times than I care to think about) taken off way too much when I've been shaving the wood off. In which case I simply make a paring knife instead of a carving knife. LOL

Once you get going, you can make any length and shape blade you want.

Finishing:
1. Once the knife is completed, paint or stain the handle first. (I just finished a batch and used red nail polish to paint the handles. This way I get the colour and sheen at the same time. I've also used permanent marker and clear nail polish or gloss varnish. Or Minwax stain markers for a wooden handle. I don't advise using acrylic paint as it raises the grain of the wood and you get straggly ends. It also tends to fill in the grooves. Then stick the knife blade into floral oasis and let sit until the handle's totally dry.

2. Once dry, you can hold it by the hand while you use a silver Pilot pen to colour the blade. Then you can just put the whole thing on a sheet of wax paper until the blade is dry.