Whooooo’s a cutie?!

One of my favorite animals is the owl, and I especially love the Burrowing Owl. I have a printout of an image of a Burrowing Owl chick on my wall at work. It makes me smile.  :D

I’ve been so inspired by the work of Anya Stone and Kerri Pajutee, two amazing artisans who make the most realistic miniature animals I’ve ever seen. I’ve wanted to make a Burrowing Owl for some time now, so I decided to just hop to it! Kerri has two great tutorials on CDHM: one for sculpting a bird and another on flocking and feathering. I used those as a basis to start my mini owl.

I decided to make an adult Burrowing Owl.

I was lucky to find a good photo of the back of the owl, too (see photos by Ecobirder).

I sculpted my bird using white polymer clay, though it got fairly dirty as I worked with black wire to make the legs and feet. The feet look a bit big, but it was the only wire I had and the flocking and feathering will add weight once applied. To get the bird to stand while baking, I tied some wire around the ceramic tile I use for baking clay.

After baking and cooling, I painted the whole piece with light tan acrylic paint. I also painted the eyes and beak before feathering. Caution: naked birdie below…

I bought two types of feathers, using the darker ones for the tail feathers and back and using the lighter ones for the breast. I used embroidery floss to make the flocking.  I cut all but the spotted and striped portions from the feathers. I followed Kerri Pajutee’s tutorial for placement for the most part but tried to use the natural patterns of my feathers to mimic those of the Burrowing Owl.

Here are some photos of my owl as the feathering progressed…

And, finished!  :D

I love him!!!!! I don’t think I did half bad my first time around if I do say so myself.

And, he looks right at home on Baslow Ranch!  :D

Categories: Animals and birds, Polymer clay
August 20, 2010 | 0 comments

Scratch built table lamps

One of the bigger challenges in decorating a dollhouse in a more contemporary style is the limited amount of contemporary lamps and other accessories on the market. There are some modern fixtures, but most are brass or old-fashioned. The table lamp selection can be pretty good, but I wanted to see if I could custom build my own lamps.

I had the bases all figured out just from looking at real life and miniature lamps. Stack beads, feed a wire through, etc. Even making shades from paper seemed simple enough, but it was attaching the shades to the bases that had me scratching my head.

Store bought mini lamps usually have a plastic disk holding the bottom of the lamp shade. I could use acrylic disks, but I would be limited by the pre-cut size of them. Then I happened upon the handmade lamps by M Carmen at Mini Shabby. She had used a jewelry finding to hold her shade in place, and it looked like a great idea! I left her a comment on her blog, and she was kind enough to send me the information on where she found them.

The site was Bindels Ornaments, and let me tell you, they have great items and ideas! They sell components and kits for lights and accessories in small scale. They even have pages showing you how they built bottles, lights, trays and candlesticks from jewelry findings. I bought both the three-prong and four-prong findings, but I found the four-prong worked best for this particular project.

I started with a wood bead base, three copper colored beads, a NovaLyte LED and some miscellaneous jewelry findings.

I first glued the three beads together, using a metal rod to keep them lined up as they dried. It’s not very stable, but it kept them from shifting around while working with them.

I glued the stack of three beads to the wood base. Again, the metal rod is only to keep things aligned and not glued inside the beads.

I had cut out a groove in the bottom to let the wire out the back and to keep the lamp bottom flat.

I fed a small black wood bead onto the LED wire and then fed the wire through the bead assembly.

The shade is made from a strip of heavy paper 1″ wide and 4″ long, the ends lapped and glued.

I formed a holder from a fancy head pin and glued it inside the short black bead under the LED.

Unlike how M Carmen made her shade, though, I cut off the four circles on the jewelry finding and used it to support the top of the shade, not the middle. Since the four-prong holder showed when the light was on, I glued a strip of black quilling paper around the top edge of the paper shade.

Here are the two lamps on either side of the master bed.

I love the way they turned out, and the LEDs provide great light not usually seen in miniature lamps.

I didn’t save any money making my own lamps since I used pricier LEDs and had to buy more materials than necessary just for two lamps, but I have unique fixtures in a more contemporary style than what’s available on the market.

Categories: Miniatures, The Newport
August 10, 2010 | 0 comments

Newport – master bedroom bed linens

In a previous post, I wrote about making the box spring for the Daisy House double bed kit I built. Tonight, I started dressing the bed. Using the same process as I had for the guest bed, I made a fitted sheet and flat sheet to cover the mattress. This time, I used the same fabric as I had for the box spring.

The pillows are made from white cotton sateen and filled with beads. Here they are uncovered.

The fitted sheet is glued in place, but the top sheet is only taped down. I am still deciding on bedding materials, so I need it to be removable for now.

I made the pillow cases a little larger this time around. I like the way they’re a little baggier than the one on the guest bed.

Anyone else feel suddenly sleepy? ;]

Categories: Furniture, The Newport
August 6, 2010 | 0 comments

Newport – upstairs hallway

Just because it’s not really a room is no reason to ignore the hallway! In fact, I wanted to do something special with this space, and it was all due to this photo I found online at Coastal Living. This is likely an entryway, but I think it lends itself well to the hallway space in the Newport. Flipping the first floor stairs meant the second floor stairs would have to face the back wall, but it was more the mirror and wainscoting with the art shelf that drew me in.

For the walls, I used the same scrapbook paper as the garage: Swan by Martha Stewart. It’s a very pale green and allows for just enough contrast with the white wood trim. It’s also one of the few papers I’ve found that is larger than 12 inches square; that means no seaming! :D Ah, it’s the little things…. Unfortunately, the store where I got it no longer carries that size.

I used scraps of the Handley House wood flooring sheets for the hallway. It runs the opposite direction of the wood floor on the first floor, but I wanted to use up the leftovers from the first floor so they wouldn’t go to waste. I sealed it with Minwax Water-Based Polycrylic protective finish in clear semi-gloss before installation.

I created the picture rail using 3/8″ corner trim and gluing crown molding into the groove.

After centering the mirror on the left side, I did some math to figure out the best width for the vertical boards and the spacing between them. I first cut full pieces of cardboard the size of the “openings” on either side of the door. I used that template to cut pieces of paper and did my calculations and drawings on those.

Once I had an acceptable layout, I used the paper pattern to cut a piece of basswood to use for the trim. In real life, this treatment would like be done with planks instead of one continuous piece, but I wanted to eliminate the possibility of seams showing between the pieces.

I thought the mirror would be the hardest part to recreate, but I found many potential mirrors online. I ended up going with the House of Miniatures Chippendale Pier Glass kit, omitting the small table as shown in the inspiration photo since there wasn’t enough room at the top of the stairs to add it.

Assembly was a bit of a pain since I had to miter the corners myself, but I’ve had plenty of experience with that! I replaced the glass mirror and cardboard supplied with the kit with plastic mirror sheet backed with balsa. I like the lighter weight without the glass.

I painted the frame Robin’s Egg Blue by JoAnn Craft Essentials and then dry brushed it with white for accent.

Having worked on multiple prints of the same size before, I knew replicating the art prints would be time consuming. Each frame has to be as precise as possible since size discrepancies show so easily in a setup like this.

The four pieces of artwork I used are all by Hazel Barker: Casa Girasole, Le Jardin Rouge Provence, Champs de Lavande, and Hill Town Provence. I changed the aspect ratio of two of them to make them all square. During a big sale at Michael’s, I bought two paper punches: a one inch square and one slightly smaller square. This made for super easy mat cutting! :D

I glued the mats around the artwork before cutting them out.

I am undecided if I need frames around them.  I rather like the prints just the way they are.

And, here’s my nearly finished hallway. The railings are not glued in place just yet, and I still need to finish the back stairs and the ceiling, and install an overhead light or two for the space. I love the way it turned out…no more boring hallway! :D

Categories: The Newport
August 4, 2010 | 0 comments

House of Miniatures Chippendale Chest of Drawers

I’ve officially decided I love House of Miniatures kits! :D If you finish an antique piece in a more modern color scheme and update the hardware, you end up with something that works well in a contemporary setting. It’s like thrifting in mini!

Here’s the box image for the master bedroom dresser. Very traditional.

And, here is the kit after finishing. I used black paint followed by a satin varnish and wooden knobs painted silver for the hardware. The flowers are part of the Bonnie Lavish dahlias I made last week.

Categories: Furniture, The Newport
July 31, 2010 | 0 comments