Here I Go Again...

Hi Guys! Well, I blew my posting streak, didn't I? That wasn't my intention, but sometimes, life has other plans for you no matter how many other things you already have to or want to do. Oh, I made my Delphiniums and three window boxes full of Geraniums just like I wanted to. But then, Russ agreed to put a new top on my crafting table and that prompted a whole other series of events. More on that in a minute…

Cobalt Dream Delphinium

The greenhouse kit came with only a single window box. What a shame! So, I traced the fancy shape onto 1/8" thick balsa and created two additional matching window boxes: one for either side of the greenhouse door. All three boxes got filled with lilac colored geraniums. I was going to make blue ones, but none of my test colors turned out as pretty as the lilac.

Here's where the greenhouse stands as it waits on my shelf for other distractions to conclude...

Now for the cause of the shift in attention...

I may have mentioned before that my crafting table was a family hand-me-down from my grandma. My grandparents bought the set, which included a hutch, buffet and four chairs, second hand, in the sixties. It was an Art Deco style set manufactured in the thirties. As a kid, I thought it was so fancy! I grew up longing for the day I'd get to sit at that table instead of the fold up "kid" table that got pulled out for holiday gatherings. The rest of the year, the table was covered with a fancy tablecloth and sat lonely in the dining room. If I had known that I would have to lose my amazing grandparents in order to sit at that table, I'd have been happy to stay at the card table forever.

Sitting at the dining room table with family at grandpa's funeral, 2009.

We only ever sat at the chrome and melamine table in the eat in kitchen. Grandma's kitchen was a very special place filled with love, laughter and the most delicious baked goods made with love from grandma.

Grandma, auntie and cousins at the kitchen table sometime in the 80's.

When grandma (1998) and then grandpa passed away, the dining room set ended up with me in my dining room. It felt good to have something special from my childhood here with me. I recovered the chairs and tried to care for the aging set as conscientiously as my grandma did.

October 2010

But it was lonely in my dining room, too.

Until 2012 when I began my dollhouse journey again. At first, I tried to keep the table as pristine as my grandma had with her weekly Pledge polishes. But by 2015, my dining room was in full "craft room" mode and the adjacent formal living room became my "office"

Dining room transitioning to craft room. Table covered with cloth tarp.

Adjacent formal living room in October 2010 prior to becoming my "office".

Moving my desk into the former formal living room April 2015.

Eventually, the entire space was absolutely dedicated to fostering creativity, mostly with mini projects. Grandma's table was no longer given any consideration of protection. In many ways, I think my grandma (who secretly listened to Elvis loudly on the radio when no one else was home), would have been tickled to see me using it so unconventionally. At least it was getting some use!

Dining room May 2022

Grandma's table a little worse for wear.

No longer recognizable as a dining room

The functionality of the table was always marginal, at best. The leaf section always pulled away from the main table halves which left cracks that were hard to keep closed. More than a bit frustrating when things would fall to the floor. There were metal mechanical parts on the underside that were sharp and I had to be very careful not to accidentally grab there and cut myself. Cuts happened quite a few times. The legs are well constructed and solid, but that made the table heavy and hard to move. The top had been scrubbed so many times that the shellac was peeling and coming off. No way to tell if it was toxic, but I always wondered because everything made back then turns out to be deadly, lol. It was time to replace the top. And while we were at it, why not put it on lockable wheels so that I could move it around more easily?

New butcher block top, new wheels.

Russ cut the legs down a bit to compensate for the 2" tall wheels and the 1-1/2" solid butcher block that would replace the 90 year old top. And while we were at it, I primed and painted the legs black. Seven coats of varnish should keep the top durable and washable, and when it is not any longer, because it is a solid wood top, I can sand and refinish! Heck - maybe someday when I croak I'll have a grandkid to leave it to! It should still be strong, safe and easy to move.

And while I had everything torn up to refurb the table, why not do a spring clean? Cleaning, sorting, reorganizing and making piles for eBay. 

Table painted and with new top and wheels loaded with eBay items.

I hung a cloth shower curtain from my shelf to make a
nice backdrop for larger eBay items.

Desk now on the opposite side of the living room.

And even moving my desk to create more usable space! But as you know, anytime you clean and reorganize, you create a whole bunch more work for yourself. See all the stuff piled onto my window seat? That is the materials/décor we still have left to use up and put away from our real life 1:1 reno project. But it is progress because this whole half of the living room has been filled with To-Do stuff since December of 2024. At least now that the kitchen and family rooms are nearing completion, you can see the floor!

The entryway with the in progress beadboard "wall".

Russ will add some trim and then I will paint it black.

The back side of my desk has created a wall between the entryway and the office (former formal living room). Russ is covering it with bead board for me so that it will look nice from that side too. You can see that because it is an office now and not the living room, the color scheme that used to match the comfy chair back in 2010 has got to go. Two story ceilings and walls are not easy to paint, so the entire room is going to be a work in progress. Which we will work on in between higher priority To-Dos. So much to do and we're not getting any younger!

But first - more eBay auctions coming soon! I've got to reduce some things in order to make way for painting and a few other exciting things. Forgive me if my posts are a wee bit late - I promise I am working diligently behind the scenes! And hopefully, I still get to sneak in a mini project here or there.

xo xo,
Jodi

Blue In Green

Now we're getting somewhere! Don't you just love the point in a mini project where you start to see your (sometimes very long awaited) vision come to life?!? It makes me want to ignore all my other responsibilities and just mini all the time!

How much sleep does a person really need, anyway?

Getting here wasn't all that much work - just the better part of five days. And when I'm making mini flowers and landscaping, the joy makes it feel like no time at all!

Let's start with my inspiration photo...

This combination of blue and green flora uplifted my soul!

In my attempt to capture some of what this image evokes in me, I started with one of my favorite blue flowers - hydrangea. I wanted to make a shrub, but with limited laser cut petal and leaf sheets (purchased from SDK Miniatures), I knew it would have to be a compact one. I had 5+ petal sheets and 4+ leaf sheets on hand which made fifteen flower heads.

*** If you buy the kit, it comes with beads to create the hydrangea heads (seven, I think). You can make your own up with just a few craft supplies below. If you are using Punch Bunch mini punches, the scale ends up being a bit larger than the SDK laser cut sheets but they are still passable. Regular printer paper works, or tissue paper for the petals. If you have Japanese Rice or Silk paper, it is even better. Just make sure you cut the leaves with the veins running vertically.

#28 floral wire, beads, leaf and petal punch for making your own without the kit.

I only purchased the individual leaf and petal sheets, so I had to make up my own bead heads. I cut wires to around 2", filled the bead hole with tacky glue, stuck in the wire and then let them dry. Later, I painted the beads in a similar color to my petals. I made extras so that next time I feel the urge to make hydrangeas, I can grab them and go! I used alcohol inks in cloudy blue for the petals and meadow for the leaves.

I like when mini hydrangea leaves have the veins - marvelous texture! So, like an obsessed person, I veined each leaf with a miniature leaf veining die that I purchased so many years ago. I had trouble finding a similar one to link for you, but I am sure they are out there if you can just find the right string of words to search under. 

Once all fifteen of my flower heads were ready...

I needed to make a shrub frame. I used aluminum wire to create an armature. I use the method taught by Luke Towan, just adapting up from railroad model scale to 1/12th scale. I think his wire length was 13 inches for an HO scale tree, and my 4" bush started out with 8 - 20 inch strands. If I had had more flower heads, I could have used more strands so that it would have ended up with more branches.

My finished size needed to fit a 2" x 2" x 4" space.

After trimming a bit

Imagine my shock when, after only nine years sitting in a drawer (since the last time I used it), my latex rubber had completely solidified! I was surely not going to wait over a week to get more shipped to me, so the next best thing was wood glue to coat, texture and thicken up the wires.

After several coats.. You can also wrap the armature in paper clay if you like. It is great for adding wonderful bark texture if you have the time. I needed to get my bush ready quickly, so I left any further detailing opportunity on the table.

I sought inspiration on the web, once again, for the actual bark of a hydrangea shrub...

I'm happy enough with my impressionist version... Most of it will be hidden, anyway.

Now the fun part! Attaching the flower heads...

And filling in the space with every last leaf I had! Trust me, there were LOADS! Still, my hydrangea shrub looks... ahem... like it belongs to someone who is not afraid to prune! But I LOVE IT!!! It turned out perfect for the space and it looks lovely! I hot glued it to the landscape board so that I could raise it up a bit. Once I get it tucked under a nice bed of "dirt", it'll be even better!

Next up was to come up with ground cover for either side of the garden path. I got inspo from this photo, and I thought I could replicate it with the things I had in my landscape stash. First, a Bill Lankford climbing vine. It is a sheet of a tangled web of maybe coconut husk fibers? With model railroad clump foliage sprinkled on top? If you scroll down, once you hit the link's landing page, you will see other variations offered. Mine was plain greenery.

At any rate, I cut it up, glued it down, then punched out a bunch of tiny five petal flower shapes from tissue paper, shaped them, glued them and added a yellow dot to each center. Blue Flax? Creeping Thyme? Forget Me Not? You decide! It makes for a quick and charming groundcover.

I only used the tiniest petals

You may have also noticed that I did a bit of terraforming with hot glue around both end corners. I had some of the spongy dollhouse groundcover stuff in a mix of blue, white and green bits. I just slathered the "ground" in tacky glue, sprinkled on the squishy bits, pressed it in a bit, then let dry. Once dry I removed any loose crumbs and saved them for later use. Another simple and pleasing groundcover.

And here is where it stands as of this writing. I am loving the blue in green palette! BTW, Miles Davis has been the perfect accompaniment!

Next session, I get to begin Delphinium and, with a bit of license taken, Geranium. The joy is almost too much to contain!

My advice? Go get your hands dirty! Soil? Glue? Dough? Makes no difference! Whatever ignites your joy, my friends! Do it now before you lose the inspiration!

xo xo,

Jodi

Long Range Dreams And Sudden Inspirations

Greetings fellow creators! I am back again and it seems as if I'm on a posting streak! It feels so amazing to be dedicating so much time to the Greenhouse and Potting Shed project, or any minis for that matter! I have much to share so let's get started...

When last we left off I was putting the final details on the greenhouse roof. There was a point in its construction that I went away from the instructions and had to engineer some improvements. You see, the original assembly had no bracing at the bottom of the "glass" panels which made the structure extremely flimsy. It was literally being held together with very little glue. The weight of itself worked against itself whenever I'd lift it off the the walls. No Bueno!!! 

So, I beefed it up by adding support pieces at the bottom of each "glass" pane that braced themselves against each of the vertical styles. And, I added support where the two roof halves met at the apex. Here, I glued a long wooden dowel down the center so that the weight was carried by more than just a narrow glue seam where the two angles met. Much stronger! Also, rather than using the two small triangle kit pieces of "glass" designated for the gable end, I cut one solid piece which removed some flexibility and tied the gable to the roof sides much more strongly. And finally, I cut an additional spreader for the roof so that each vertical style tied into one - the kit only had four but there are five "trusses" including the end. The effort really paid off because the roof is totally solid now and I'll feel safe putting it off and on as many times as I need to without worry. I have a sneaking suspicion that this roof is why you don't see many of these completed kits on the internet. It was extremely difficult!

The next challenge was completely self inflicted. You see, I want to be able to remove one of the greenhouse's side walls because I plan to set up a lot of scenes in there. I not only want the ease of loading and removing minis, I want to take photos that look like they are being taken from inside the greenhouse. Because the kit was not made to be constructed that way. I had to engineer a way to make the walls sturdy. Its going to need to stand up to regular roof and wall removals. I added 1/4" x 1/4" beams and affixed them to the potting shed wall where both long greenhouse walls meet it. I also added more bracing to the end wall where the removable wall will butt into it. Adding all this sturdiness also allows me to have the removable wall off but still keep the roof on!

Before I could go farther with the removable wall, I had to get a handle on where some of my hardscape elements were going to go. I looked online for some inspiration and found many real life gardens with elements I wanted to try to incorporate. The first choice was what kind of path I wanted, I settled on something with a bit of whimsy - flagstone pavers made out of egg carton that would wind its way around flower and shrub groupings.

To allow for some depth in my planting beds, I made my egg carton
triple thick by gluing three layers together.

To color my pavers, I used my tried and true kitchen sponge/water/glazing medium/two tone acrylic paint method to give them life. Man was I having fun!!!

Inspiration photo and products used

I underpainted a moss green around the pavers.

Then I used Woodland Scenics Underbrush in light green as moss/clover/weeds between the rocks. I put down Tacky glue where I wanted the greenery, compressed the foamy stuff into the glue, let dry overnight, then rubbed my finger over everything to remove any loose stuff.

Another inspiration photo had a little wooden bridge over a dry creek. How charming! Using a scrap piece of chipboard, some Woodsies Craft Sticks, and a zip tie for "metal" straps, I made a simple bridge.

For the "dry creek", I used Scene A Rama rock and gravel mix. I like that it has various sized rocks to emulate the different sized rock you find in a creek.

The last task to complete before I could justify starting on the actual flower and shrub making was to address how the removable wall would sit firmly in place when I wanted the greenhouse enclosed. For this, I grabbed some of my leftover bricks from the potting shed floor. I wrapped the bottom of the wall in masking tape, set it in place, then glued a row of bricks onto the landscape board. Once they were dry, I painted them a gray that should just fade into the background (if they aren't covered by landscaping).

The wall fits tightly and will stay in place even if the structure is jarred in any way. Hooray! I love it when a long pondered plan finally comes together!!! This greenhouse dream began for me in June of 2023!

And that, my friends, is where I had to stop for the week. Just a few more chores and I can start on the pretty stuff! Yippee!!!

Hope each of you are working toward long term dreams or sudden inspiration! Whatever makes you happy!!!

xo xo,

Jodi