Thank Heaven For Little Girls

Hi Guys! Hope the New Year is being kind to everyone! For me and my family it has been a strange time of waiting. Waiting to find out exactly what we're dealing with with mom's illness and how we can help her through it. Thankfully, when my mind gets stuck in worry about things I can't change, I have minis to help pull my hands and mind into something productive. And thank Heaven, I have two little girls that I get to make things for.

During my last visit to mom's, my new bottles of Fred's Weathering Stuff came in so I had all I needed to finish the treehouse's wood flooring. Like the first floor, I used the veneer strips that came with the Linfield kit to cover the second and third floors. Just to refresh your memory, that included the girls' bedroom, Wayne's attic apartment and the second and third floor balconies that frame two sides of the great room.

Goldie and Alice's bedroom floors pre-staining.

Wayne's attic apartment floors pre-staining.

One of the dangers in bouncing around the processes of a project for me is forgetting the important things I need to remember. Such as running ceiling light wiring before I install the flooring on the floor above. 🤦‍♀️ Oh well. At least the masking tape and sharpie help "mask" the wires, and they'll be almost totally under an area rug.

Kitchen's ceiling lantern.

Wiring from the ceiling lantern coming up through the floor.
covered with masking tape.

Sharpie camouflage.

Once the floors were finished with stain and sealer, I could finally install them into the treehouse. Like a layer cake I positioned the kitchen's stove wall with glue and clamps, then applied the glue to the girls' bedroom floor and let everything cure overnight. The next day I did the balcony and Wayne's floors.

The Paperclay stones I applied to the oven wall had caused the chipboard beneath
it to warp a little as it dried. I had to weigh it and clamp it while the
glue set to flatten it back out. Luckily, it worked!

Girls' fireplace wall permanently installed.

Unfortunately, the stain from the new bottle and the stain from the older bottle weren't a perfect match. The new floors got a little darker. Fortunately, the only place where the new and old meet is the transition from the balcony into the girls' room. You have to really crane your neck or peep through windows to see it. The transition strip makes it look clean, at least.

Here is a photo of the treehouse interior with all of the floors finally installed! The only structural pieces left of the kit are the roof pieces, and with all those gables, it's going to be challenging!

I also made the wiring mistake on Wayne's floor/girls ceiling fixture.
I "fixed" it the same way. He will also have a fireplace wall and a rug.

All the floors are installed! Yippee!

You may have noticed some furnishing in the girls' room. Back when I made Roz's bedroom chair I also made a couple chairs for Alice and Goldie. They are a little larger, true 1/12th scale, and are covered in a more youthful and jovial butterfly fabric. I also used my graphics program to combine aspects of three different Pottery Barn Kids rugs to print the perfect rug for the girls. I am delighted with my new printer and will share about it in an upcoming post.

It is wonderful to finally see the ceiling and flooring in the girls' room!

I bet you also spied the dollhouse bookshelf and a dollhouse. I designed those in Design Space and cut them with the Cricut Maker. I hope to figure out how to make the projects available to everyone sometime this year. The dollhouse is 1/144th scale.

Dollhouse bookshelf with secret cubby.

I'm making board games, paper dolls and lots of other things the girls will love to play with when the weather forces them inside. Currently, I've got a big batch of real opening books for the bookshelf in progress on my craft table. Through The Looking Glass and The Three Bears will be included, of course, along with many other children's favorites and fairytales. 

Trixie Potter lives just down the holler across the creek.
She generously gifted the girls with every volume of her works.

My own love of reading bloomed with my first library book, a pop up dollhouse.
I can't wait to introduce them to Beverly Cleary, too.
They both share so many personality traits with Ramona!

I'll share more about all of that fun stuff in my next post. If you want the mom update, scroll past my signature. Otherwise, I hope you're all finding loads of things to be grateful for in the new year, and I hope it includes minis!

xo xo,

Jodi

Mom's surgery is Friday and hopefully, shortly thereafter, we will have more answers, a thorough diagnosis of her cancer, and a treatment plan. To our delight she continues to feel much, much better than before her hospital stay last month. Her blood analysis looks better and so far, no need for another transfusion. She's even insisting on cleaning her own house!!! I hope to start posting more regularly again and will, of course, keep you updated. I can't thank you enough for your kind thoughts, well wishes, prayers and love!

 xo xo

A Little R&R For Roz & Rozario

Finishing Roz's bed last week had me feeling pretty good about my progress, but I couldn't forget the "functional" part of my promise. She was definitely going to need a place to hold her nighttime things. It had to be the right height for reaching the reading lamp from her bed, be big enough to hold her current book and glass of water, have a storage drawer to securely stow her wand, have display space for more books and tchotchkes, fit into the limited bedroom floorspace and still feel "feminine". Oh Boy! I had my work cut out for me! I got some measurements then got to work designing the perfect nightstand in Design Space.

Once the pieces were cut, I decoupaged strategic sections with some very pretty scrapbook paper and assembled the chipboard parts. I made trim pieces with cardstock to overlay on top. The tabletop is finished with the leftover fruitwood stain from the Chrysnbon table kit I made for the breakfast nook. Waste-not-want-not, right? The chipboard takes this stain nicely. I added a fancy pull to the drawer and Ta-Da! Very pretty and yet "functional", too! The solid purple cubby gives a nice contrast to but will not compete with whatever Roz decides to store and display in there. As you can see, I had assembled it before adding the rose buds to the bed posts. It still needed many accessories to make it "function" well for Roz. 

First we'll talk about her lamp. It was part of a Chrysolite Mantle Lamp kit set from my stash. I loved the compact size, but it needed a larger base. I added a fancy spacer bead to the bottom and then a small round wood circle, which I cut a channel into so the wire could exit the back. I painted it a unifying black, then gave it an aged bronze finish with glaze, burnt sienna and dark brown paint. Its aged bronze look matches all the other lighting fixtures in the project.

The alarm clock is a Playmobil piece that Birgit sent to me in a Christmas package. It is adorable, so all I did to it was add a bubble of "glass" (UV resin) to the clock face. The vase is made up of more mulberry buds and flowers and secured in the vase with UV resin. Little Women is one of Deborah's wonderful books from her Etsy shop. The bottom cubby is stuffed with books covered in pretty scrapbook paper and a potted plant I made. That should give Roz a good start to the "functional" part in her bedtime ritual!

When it came to addressing Roz's floor, I knew she needed a rug. Stepping from a warm bed onto a cold floor in the winter is not my idea of "functional" - it's enough to make you stay in bed all day!

 Unfortunately, I encountered loads of challenges trying to get this job accomplished. First was finding a rug photo for the round room. There is not much to choose from, surprisingly, when searching for "Round Purple Rug". Maybe I am just too picky?

I attempted to change the color of rugs with patterns I liked, but with unsatisfactory results. I learned how to change objects in a vector to a different color, but could not find a suitable vector image of a rug.

 I finally found a pretty purple rug photo, but it was layered on top of several other round rugs. This prompted me to learn how to cut out a circle shape in Inkscape (very helpful!). Unfortunately, my low budget, eight year old Canon printer thinks purple is the color of red wine. I have done all the tutorials to calibrate the colors, many times, with no improvement. It's just not that versatile.

As its final insult, it refuses to feed my velvet paper through regardless of the settings I choose. No nice piled rug is ever going to come from it. I won't even allow myself to contemplate the cost of the ink I've wasted all these years. 

Below you'll see the rug on the left is the one I sent to the printer, the one on the right is what I got... Yuck!

I am not one to give up easily. So, thinking through all my limitations and options, I decided to print a rug I liked in a light color scheme and then color several elements with markers. It didn't come out too bad but it still really wasn't what I had in mind.

Throwing money at a problem always helps, right? LOL! But I did finally break down and buy a new (and supposedly much better) printer. The rug I printed on the new printer using cotton printer fabric came out much better than the one from the old printer, but it's still not fantastic. Until I have time to play with materials and settings, I am calling it good enough, for now.

Moving on! The next functional element Roz needed for her bedroom was a place to sit. Since the floorspace was going fast I decided to make Kris Compass's Parson's Chair Tutorial from her website. If you are new or unfamiliar with Kris' tutorials, I encourage you to go explore. They are fabulous! I was able to reduce my pattern to a more appropriate size for Roz and her room. It is maybe 1:16 scale now - perfect!

Before we get to Roz's bedroom photos, let me share Rozario's nook furnishings. Aside from his bed, there will be a wall shelf and a floor shelf to house all his treasures. Because of the curved walls, I made the shelves out of Sonotube scraps, again. I primed, painted in a metallic purple and added gold Dresden detailing to match his bed.

Floor Shelf Back

Floor Shelf Front

Wall and Floor Shelf Primed

Wall and Floor Shelf Painted and Trimmed

I let Rozario go through my stash and take anything he liked. I also made him some board games and books. A special ~Thank You~ to Johnny's momma and to Birgit for passing so many of these great minis on to me. I will treasure them and make sure they are put into use, eventually! Here's what we made, gathered and spruced up in Rozario's favorite colors...

Toys

Books~Games~Family Photo

Board Game Printies

Rozario also asked to have a photo of his heroes, the dragons Draco and Tschang, to hang above his bed. He wants to be as honorable and as powerful as they are when he grows up. And if he feels like misbehaving, the photo reminds him to expect a little visit and some words of... encouragement from the pair.

And then Rozario and I got to load his shelves! We had a ball! By the time I got the camera, Rozario had, eh hem, "adjusted" some things. 😊 He is so excited about his new toys and his bedroom!!! If you've never seen a fire breathing dragon blow bubblegum bubbles, let me tell ya - it's a sight to see! We had to make an "outside only" rule for everyone's safety.

And here is the furnished nook...

And here are Roz's finished bedroom elements together...

And placed in her room. She hung framed photos here and there of Fluby, Rosey, Rozario and herself.

And with all the lights on...

It was a lot of work to get here, but finally, FINALLY! Rosalinda and Rozario will get to enjoy a little R&R in their new bedroom! I can't tell you how great that makes me feel!

They love their new spaces, and for the first time, maybe ever, Rozario didn't complain about bedtime!

If you have been keeping track, my friends, that leaves only the parlor to finish in the trunkhouse! Then it's back to work on the treehouse part of this project. Wayne and the girls have been so patient! But with the leaves rapidly falling, the need for indoor living space is becoming urgent! No time to stop and celebrate the trunkhouse progress yet. There's still so much more to do!

xo xo,

Jodi