Pink Makes a Friend

October comes packed with events, most notably the change in season. As the fall colors begin to appear, my love for Spring as my favorite season fades away and Autumn wins over my heart with all of her glorious color. October is also our anniversary month. We met on Friday the 13th way back in 1972 and have never been apart since that impromptu date--well, except for the seasonal hunting and fishing trips He takes and my few little excursions now and then. So here are we are 49 years later. We had dinner at a favorite steak house where the wait staff surprised us with a complementary desert and card signed by all the staff. Now that was special. 

    

 

My Daughters of the Revolution Chapter is back in full swing after having the summer off. I've been working a major project for the chapter to designate a little country church on a lonely highway in Northern Colorado on the way to the Wyoming border  as a DAR historical site. The application required a great deal of research, but it is now ready to be submitted. 

Next, October brings the DAR chapter's card making project where members gather in my basement to create hand made greeting cards for the veterans. We send Veterans Day cards to the veterans at the Cheyenne, WY VA nursing home and we will collect small gift items for them and make Christmas cards. We set our goal at 100 cards, though at last count last year there were only 17 residents in Cheyenne. The remainder of the cards are sent to an organization Cards for Soldiers in Michigan and those ladies ship thousands of hand made cards to US military serving over seas--for some their only source for greeting cards to send home.

Thus the mini workshop is converted to a card making workshop for the season. I'll pop in here maybe with some roofing progress and I'll be making dozens of mini flowers for the Manchester garden, so stay tuned.

In the mean time, Pink insisted on a photo shoot for the greenhouse. She is so proud of it--I don't know why she needs all the glory because I did all the work, but she does have that glorious head of pink hair, while I'm slightly gray. And she invited her Bee friend, who appears to be a bit reluctant to be photographed, so here is the grand tour: Scale wise, the lemon tree seems to fit nicely. The leaves are a bit larger than scale, but who's measuring?

Pink had to dress it up a bit with a hat. I purchased her basket at the Denver miniature show last month along with the butterfly house.

Bee was saved when I found her at my favorite potpourri gift store. She begged to get out of the dreadful sales display. She and Pink are just getting to know one another and I'm afraid the poor creature didn't know what she was singing up for when she teamed up with Pink, but they both put the lemon tree in scale. I ordered to pot from Molly Sue Miniatures, one of my favorite website artists who sells very unique miniature accessories. I always order a handful of little things since they are shipped from the UK. 

Heather and I flew out to San Jose last October where I found this birdhouse shelf, one of my favorite pieces. I gritted my teeth and glued it in place so that it would stay put, but photographed the back so that I could recall the artist. I have some small figurines to add.

I made the second birdhouse: very easy. a 1/2 inch square dowel with some holes drilled in and a couple toothpick perches. The clock is a wooden disk with an image collected for the web modgepodged in place; same with the posters. I ordered the shelf brackets from ministers.com and the fern comes artwork from Minatymama on Etsy. She is also on InstaGram as Lenakarin66. Makes beautiful, stylish minis.

I finally got brave and glued all the pieces in place, then glued the back wall to the sides and the floor. The brick wall is a piece of scrapbook paper from my paper stash, so the wall decor pieces are actually glue to paper so the wood won't be damaged if I ever decide to redo the wall.  For some reason, l've been very reluctant to permanently attach things for fear that I'll make a mistake, but if you don't glue items in place, things fall apart--don't they!

Buntings seem to be an English thing. As I follow my Birtish friends' blogs, they celebrate with elaborate buntings, even decorate their green houses with them, so I downloaded some bunting images from Pinterest and made my own. 

My favorite item has to be my violets that I made both from kits and from scratch. You can see the tutorial here: African Violets (you have scroll down some.) Originally the greenhouse was going to be dedicated to African Violet and orchids, but then I bought that little butterfly terrarium--there is only limited space. 

I had a couple of option for the floor. One was the black white checked faux tile floor that is Hobby Lobby offers, which looked nice, but in the end I opted for a rougher look by painting the floor cement gray and stippling it a bit to rough it up.

Some of my pots came from Molly Sue in an earlier order. 

I have always had a love for butterflies. My dad taught me to love them and he was a collector, mounting them in boxes, often cigar boxes. Now he didn't smoke cigars, but he collected the boxes and used them as storage. This little printable cigar box is a little tribute to my dad fashioned just as he would have: some cotton ball (that's what they had back then as his mounted butterflies were placed on top with a bit of glass cut to fit to protect them. Only I used clear plexiglas. Tiny butterflies can be sourced from a number of places: Search Pinterest for downloadable butterfly images at scale. I download the images then import them into Microsoft Word and scale them down to "tiny."

They do required hand cutting, so use short bladed, short scissors, there are  Etsy shops that sell precut 1:12 scale butterfly collections or printable ones that you can download and cut out like LDelaney that has beautiful butterfly collections, even a download option.

Often I purchase kits first to figure out how they are assembled--like flowers--then I can work out a way to fashion my own from scratch. The kits always are more authentic looking professionally cut and colored. Often the question is do I buy the more expensive kits or do I invest in the punches and other tools to create my own. Well, only you can answer that. For a one time project, the kits are best, but if you are mini nuts and want to make your own will make a lot of flowers then invest in good tools.

I tried to figure out lighting, but with the plexiglass covering the roof, it was just too cumbersome to add an electric light. A fan would have been nice, too, but I decided to pass on that. The greenhouse is now officially finished. I may add or take out items. I haven't decided about gluing the roof and /or the front in place. I'm thinking not incase I  might want to redesign it, I should leave at least one panel un attached so that I can easily move items in and out.

Here are some additional links. You can poke through my recent posts (this year) to find posts on how I made different things, including assembling the greenhouse. It's a fun project, easy and satisfying with so many possibilities. 

 The Cultured Dollhouse: Green House Kit

My Mini Front Porch:  tiny seedling trays

Factory Directory Crafts: Metal Chair: not currently available 

Minatymama: the fern wall art and others; group of six plants; she's on break now. 

Thanks for stopping by.