Halftime!

Getting the balcony railing installed for the New Orleans felt like a major accomplishment!  I kept at it, installing the last interior wall then starting in on all the trim work. Here’s where you find out just how out of square your build is and how good you really are with your measurements. I'll have some pics for you next week. I have a fair amount of filling and touch up painting to do, and that just got real boring, real fast. I got out the roof piece to begin making decisions on the ceiling molding and suddenly felt lost for direction. Oh how I long for step by step instructions where I don’t have to make many decisions and can kind of just mindlessly enjoy something crafty!

Ask and ye shall receive!

For Mother’s Day this year, my grown up daughter flew to California to visit her paternal grandma. She asked me before booking the ticket if it would hurt my feelings if she was not with me on Mother's Day. How sweet is that? Of course I told her GO! Have fun! We don't need it to be Mother's Day to spend fun time together, and we do it quite regularly anyway! But she went even further to sweeten the deal and will be spending most of this weekend here. Last time she showed me how to make her eggs Benedict recipe with homemade biscuits, but this time we'll be working on new mini projects together!

I have always been curious about the all in one 3D puzzle kits that you see everywhere, and have always wanted to see if I would really enjoy working in half scale. So using the generous Mother's Day Amazon gift card from the same thoughtful daughter, I bought two of them. Mine is the Chocolatier store kit by Spilay. Natasha has less room in her apartment, and because she has very little mini experience I picked the smaller Cake Diary kit by Cutebee for her.

In preparation for this weekend, I thought it was a great idea to crack my kit open to get familiar with the instructions. While there are very few words in English, the photos are pretty self explanatory. Once you get the key to how the instructions are laid out, it's pretty straight forward. The Spilay kit has the parts segregated into bags marked with a letter. Once you find the bag with that letter, you see a photo diagram of the parts you need for that piece of the kit. The instructions then provide step by step photos of how to assemble. The window film, signs and patterns are referenced in the same way as the parts for easy identification. Many of them have already been painted, and my kit included sandpaper, scissors, tweezers, ruler, razor knife, screwdriver and parts to make a dust cover.

I'll report on the other kit brand instructions after we've had a chance to work on it, though they look really similar.

I have only worked on the main large furniture pieces so far, a couple hours over the past couple evenings and am making steady progress. It is such a nice change to just be able to follow directions, and yet I have found some great opportunities to personalize and embellish the pieces as I go. I have added scrapbook paper, lace, different door knobs and even raised the tiny signs by adding wood back pieces outlined in gold leafing pen. We'll pretend that "always" is not misspelled on this one. :O) This person's English is still definitely better than my Chinese!

Aren't they adorable?!? I am truly enjoying this kit and expect to do more in the future. I hope Natasha finds it just as fun and that it turns into a regular activity for us to enjoy together.

As is generally the case, the universe synchronizes the timing on things. Imagine my surprise and delight this morning when I learned via email marketing that Hobby Builders Supply/miniatures.com is now offering these kits on their site!

The most delightful thing about this little halftime experiment is that I am discovering that I LOVE 1/24th scale! I can see myself doing many more projects in this scale, and because it's so much tinier, I'll have room for twice as many projects! Watch out Shannon! Soon I'll be coming for some of those amazing Red Cottage Miniatures structure and furniture kits I've coveted for so many years!!!

Have a wonderful, fun and creative weekend everyone!

xo xo,
Jodi