Meeting the Challenges

Along with my growing list of blogs that I follow both with my gardening blog, but also with this blog, I also belong to several dollhouse groups on Face Book. Miniaturists  from all over the world participate, sharing such great ideas and beautiful projects. This morning one member asked about if anyone kept a journal or scrapbook of their houses. I said no, but then remembered that my blog does exactly that. I take a lot of photos, which are really helpful to see how the project is going and then I share and comment on the project; so I guess our blogs really are records of our work, stories about how we work, how we think, our momentary frustrations and how we solve problems, the products we use, and the vendors whom we rely on for tools and supplies. We learn so much from each other, too by sharing how we solved a problem or created something and we do with joy and love. How great is that!

Take this project for example: One of Lily's requests for her house was for a weather thing--with a horse. "Oh," I said, "you mean a weather vane?"  "Yes," she answered.  I wondered where she came up with the idea then I realized that we have a weather vane on our barn.

It is a very simple piece and does define what we are all about here--horses, gardening, chickens--all subjects for my gardening blog; however, a previous owner installed it. I always wanted one of those copper weather vanes with a rooster to put on our hen house.

So here is my interpretation of a weather vane.

First I searched for miniature weather vanes online. Have you seen how much they are? I might spent a small fortune for my dollhouse, but not for a child's house where things will get glittered, painted, and modified with child's play. 

After struggling for a few days on design, which included trying to cut a horse on the Circuit, I turned to buttons and finally settled on this one. I love those packages of themed buttons at the craft stores. I've got a nice stash. The horse button is too small and the loop in the back goes in the wrong direction, so I settled on the whimsical unicorn. Lillie loves unicorns, too.

I gained inspiration from two builders, Jen's Minis on Face Book. She used this same base with curly-q's. Mine was in a stash of stuff that came with the Franklin when I bought it. I found the arrow in the jewelry findings section at Hobby Lobby, the brass pipe there, too, It is smaller than 3/32 which I started with, but the the loop on the back of the button is small. I threw away the packaging, so I can't tell you the size. The beads were in my stash. Right now scotch tape holds it together. I need to find a good glue. Any suggestions.While Jen has blog, Jen's Minis , she also posts great tutorials on Face Book. She removed the whale and modified  a cherub for her embellishment. Jodi at My Miniature Madness  used the same weather vane and created a really cute, whimsical weather vane that fits the theme of her little cottage by adding a really cute tea pot. Both tutorials helped me design my weather vane and encouraged me to figure mine out.

Now, do I paint it or not? I thought about spray painting weather vane black or leaving it as it is because I like  the glittered unicorn. 

This week's project, however, has been to paint the house. I primed it earlier so I set out to paint the the main box.

The first coat as it dries always looks splotchy and awful. I should have removed the tape.

The saga green does not photograph well, but I like the color.

Painting the trim and shutters white came next. Painting is not my favorite thing to do. I don't know which I dislike more: staining or painting.

With the painting finished, installing the windows came next. I was really dreading that task. As you can see, the mass produced dollhouse has curved windows cutouts and the instructions say to use a box cuter, Xacto knife, or wood rasp to square the corners. I used all three, even my Dremel with bad results. The kit windows also had a lot of parts, so I considered buying Houseworks pre-built windows. I went to Real Good Toys to see what they recommended for the Cranberry Cover only to discover that the house has been discontinued--or at least removed from the website. Was I bummed! Now, I am thinking about it, there are very few examples of the house being used on Pinterest. I don't think it was very popular. As I priced windows, I realized that I didn't want to spent another fifty dollars on new windows that had to painted, too. So after thinking about and doing some measuring, I realized that the window opening would require a lot of rasping to accommodate pre-built windows, so I decided to figure out the kit windows.

With the house laying on its front, I pieced the pieces together to see how everything fit, which gave me confidence that it wasn't going to be so difficult to install the windows.

And they will look nice, too, so I started gluing.

The squared corners of the Plexiglas windows did not fit in the curved corners very well, so I snipped a bit off of the corners and they fit perfect-- much easier than rasping corners to make them square.

The windows are in! And I like them.

The lines left by the tape are not as visible in the photos, but some still show. I even rolled on another coat of paint trying to cover them. I should have either removed the tape right away or forgot it.

And I painted the front door. OMG Fuchsia! I will take my little can of paint to Ace Hardware and have it tinted darker. 

Now here is a curious photos. Can you tell me where I took this photo?  It all looks to be dollhouse furniture. Nope. If you could read the sticker on the furniture, it says "fun chew." I saw these cute little items at Pet CO when I went in to buy parakeet seed. They are hamster toys. The tub is ceramic and about the right size, but yellow? Perhaps. 

Have a great day. Thanks so much for visiting.