Embracing The Detour

Hello My Friends! Once again, I didn't intend to stay away from my blog for so long! But all of the things that keep keeping me away have taken so much longer to finish than I thought they would! At least I am back now with some amazing progress to share on my workroom and with news of a long awaited return to a beloved, if too long sidelined, project. Let's catch you up...

Current State - Still a lot left to do. Purple chair will have a teal charcover.
Retreads in front of window seat will eventually go on the staircase, lol!

We got the ceiling and walls painted and boy does it feel fresh in the office half of my work room! Despite its chilly name, the Benjamin Moore Jack Frost paint is such a warm and tranquil shade of light teal and I just love how it feels to be in this room now! That salmon-y pink I had in the former living room was really harshing my vibe. I didn't even realize how much until the last patch was covered by primer!

Photo from September 2015

A few years ago we had cut and painted a piece of plywood to fit inside the recess of the upper arched part of the window. The intent was to block the intense afternoon sun from shining in and blinding me because my desk faced the window. It made a big impact taking that down, too. Now that my back is to the window, it does not seem so bad for very long in the afternoon. I am really loving the light! If it becomes a problem, I will find another solution other than blocking the wonderful light. 

    

I painted the shelf backs a color called Surf City. I love the contrast with the white shelves and the way it plays so nicely with the wall color. I have moved some of my mini projects over to those shelves and it seems like a nicer way to display them. I have many more to move over that are currently residing in grandma's hutch. I also bought special frames to display a couple of the projects that were featured on the covers of American Miniaturist and Dollshouse World. 

Russ put together a rustic sign board for me using three pieces of the tongue and grove boards we have left over. He sanded them and attached them together so that I could whitewash them. I made stencils on the Cricut to paint the My Miniature Madness logo. We'll get it hung this weekend. The whole workroom is starting to feel like a legitimate workshop for me! There are several more details and decorations I want to add as I have time and inspiration.

Speaking of inspiration... When removing all of the things from the shelves in order to paint them, I did a lot of detailing to many past projects. Honestly, it was a task that was long overdue and I was a little surprised at myself for having let it go for so long. Ah well, it does no good to live backwards so I just got on with the cleaning and detailing and actually enjoyed the walk down memory lane.

When I got to the Three Pigs project (it was the 2017 HBS Creatin' Contest entry in which I received Honorable Mention), I was aghast at how much dust had accumulated. It made sense though, as the roof was cut back a ways for ease of reaching in. It made me think that in any future project I do, I want to be sure to make it completely enclosable. And then I thought, why not take The Three Pigs apart, streamline the scene and put it into a new, completely enclosed room box? I love the idea of cutting the items down and giving the scene new life. Big, spacing hogging projects are so much to keep! I set about decommissioning the brick house, saving the contents for future display, and I even gave the structure to a new mini enthusiast! 

And all the reminiscing and dusting had me thinking about The Storybook Cottage. There are some incredible minis that I collected for the project and have yet to display. It is so close to being complete and I love that dollhouse so, so much! What am I waiting for??? There is no time like NOW! So I have determined that that will be the project I bring down to the table to work on as I find any mini time. Finally!!! It is really going to need some TLC. Time has revealed which adhesives fail over time and what dust can do to a garden full of flowers.  This will be quite a journey...

And the final bit of change I have to share is my window seat area. My wonderful and generous 30 something son gifted me with some yards of lovely peacock colored upholstery fabric and several pillow covers in varying shades of teal in order to recover and rejuvenate the best feature of the former living room. It has turned out so lovely, and I am looking forward to testing out it's comfortableness with a nice afternoon nap in the near future.

And that's a lot of what kept me away from minis and blogland, my friends. I am really struggling with the urge to get hip deep in a mini project, and I've almost got enough off my To-Do list to jump in guilt free! I can't wait!

Hope you're hip deep into something joyful now, too!

xo xo,

Jodi

Successful Hoard Reduction and New Paint!

Greetings kindred souls! I want to offer a big hearty Thanks to everyone who came by the eBay store to have a look, bid or win some wonderful mini kits! It was a great success and I am so very grateful for it! Now I have a little bit of extra dough in my pocket and a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing those kits will finally get their time to shine! 

I'm not quite at the point of getting back to my craft table yet. It is full of all of the things you have to relocate when you paint. And boy am I painting! Technically, I am priming over the salmon pink in my "office", then painting new colors on the walls, shelves and ceiling.

Does this color palette look familiar? Yep - they came straight from the blog! I captured the RGB values, searched for the Benjamin Moore equivalent on e-paint and bought samples to test. The test patch was dramatic but oh so lovely!

I also owe a million ~Thank Yous~ to Russ for picking up a million gallons of paint during this whole renovation project!

I really think the new colors are going to make my entire work space feel bright, clean and ready to inspire creativity! But I've got a ton of work ahead of me and this body isn't getting any younger (or any more limber)!

I'll be back real soon with update photos to share. They're going to be dramatic!!! Maybe they'll also  inspire you to tackle long awaited dreams!

xo xo,

Jodi

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

Any Creativity Will Do

Hi Guys! I'm back for another post with a little bit of progress on a lot of different creative tasks. We'll start with the Lawbre Potting Shed and Greenhouse kit because this is a miniatures blog, after all, and it is the only miniature project that I've worked on this week. The other creative things I'll share are real life reno updates. They are keeping me from making more progress on the greenhouse, but any kind of creativity seems to keep my happy meter in the good zone. 

You can see from the photo above that the roof part of the greenhouse is just about completed. Getting here has been a challenge and I am disappointed to tell you that I did not get in progress photos. Not to worry!!! I will be building the greenhouse only kit from my stash soon. I'll take progress photos all the way through and will choose a lighter color so that it is easier to see than the black painted version. 

I have yet to add the glass in the gable end because real life progress was higher in the priority queue. More on that later...

You may have noticed that the greenhouse is sitting on it's landscape board. I did manage to get that cut, glued, nailed and painted before my priorities changed. The next chance I get, I plan to create a nice little path and flower beds all the way around.

1/2" plywood cut to 17" x 22". Trim is Home Depot Rondelet trim. 

Glued and taped

Close up of mitered corners

Nailed and dried

Now for some family room updates... You may remember last summer I shared that I was making a lot of inexpensive art to create a gallery wall in the family room. The theme was nature, and I wanted to experience as many different art forms as I could or thought I could do successfully. That included acrylic pours over hot glue flowers, collage, stencils and texture paste, painting, watercolor pencils, acrylic painting, tissue paper painting, sculpture, textures, folk art, sign making, paper art, paper clay, UV resin and mica power art. I made over 60 pieces and I had a ball! The best part was that with careful budgeting and recycling, I kept the entire project under $400.00! 

As you can imagine, hanging that much art can be challenging. I started cataloging the frame sizes I had on hand even before I began making the art. I made a layout and map so I'd know exactly where each piece would hang. The really neat thing is that I made it to scale, 1" = 1 foot so that as we were hanging I knew exactly how far each piece would hang from the last piece, the ceiling or the floor. It went amazingly and we had it completed in just two afternoons!

We also got the flooring installed and it went lightning fast! The boards were nine inches wide, and three boards fit perfectly across each row so cutting was minimal. Hooray!

Once the flooring was completed we needed to do the baseboards and create the faux beam separating the family room from the entry hall. They needed to be sanded, stained and sealed to make it ready for Russ to install. It is stinky work, but so worth the effort! They should be installed this weekend.

 Just look at those gorgeous tongue and groove ceiling boards! Sanding, whitewashing and sealing ninety of them was a marathon, believe me! But now we get to enjoy them forever!

We should have the room completed in the next couple weekends, including blinds and window coverings. Unfortunately, I have to wait until July to order my new sofa. We can't buy anything new until the new kitchen and laundry room appliances are paid off in June. 

I have some fun things to finish making for the shelves on either side of the fireplace. I have been able to work on those as I have blocks of time. My shelf will be the left one and Russ' the right. He loves Star Wars Legos and has an RC car hobby so that is what he'll display. Mine will be a combination of mini roomboxes, nature items I love and my Nintendo Switch stuff. 

For Russ' shelves, I made him a "Dad" word plaque done in Star Wars style panels using heavy cardstock shapes I created and cut with the Cricut Maker. Sometime soon I'd like to make him a diorama to display all of his droids. Just a simple and quick project, right?

Affixing Star Wars type elements

Painted navy gray

Added various metallic paints to elements

Layers of grungy washes to portray the used and cobbled
 together equipment of the Rebel Alliance

My shelf letters are coming along. They won't be as detailed as Russ', but I am more comfortable blending with the wallpaper. 😊

As you can see, my week wasn't eaten up with minis, but as long as there is creativity of some kind, I am happy! I sure am anxious to plant some mini flowers, though!!!

Have a happy, creative week, my friends!

xo xo,

Jodi

Too Many To-Dos!

Hi Guys! Russ and I are just back from a wonderful and heart filling trip to see family, friends and some awe inspiring parts of the American West! So many things ignited my mini passion that I came home filled with inspiration and motivation to tackle everything on my To-Do and Wish lists. The only obstacle has been... knowing where to start! I should probably do the laundry first!

Before we left I had so much excited, nervous energy that I was having trouble sleeping. I took advantage of the extra hours and started on the Lawbre Potting Shed and Greenhouse. The greenhouse structure is built totally from stick lumber and has to be constructed on a foam panel and held in place with "T" pins until the glue is dried.

The potting shed portion is comprised of 3/8" particle board and is easy to assemble, so I begin with that.

Because I have a vested interest in reducing the "stuff" in my work room, I dug around in my wood stash to find something I could use for both the interior and exterior wall cladding. I found a couple different sized bead board sheets and luckily had plenty! I applied it horizontally to look like clapboard.

I also had a couple sheets of vintage white brick to use as flooring. I picked a few colors of acrylic paint and randomly painted, then whitewashed the bricks. I used OneTime spackle for grout and will age everything with washes or chalk dust once the roof is on and the window is in.

I'm hoping to start on the greenhouse walls this week but I can't give the project my full attention for several weeks. You see, we have to turn our attention back to the real life house renos now that Russ' crazy work project is finished. With a bit of smooth progress and renewed motivation we should have the family room wrapped up in a few weeks. Then I have some new tools to set up in my workroom, more mini stuff to list on eBay and a side project for a friend. See? Too many To-Dos!

But one last exciting thing...

Auntie Em's in Glendale Arizona just happens to be right on the way from my parent's house in Lake Havasu to our friends' house in Carefree. If I had the time I could spend days (and soooo many $$$) in there! It is absolutely jam packed with amazing minis! Emily, the vivacious and friendly owner (who is in her 80's) is still there to talk minis! I always seem to find something on my wish list, and this time was no different! 

I know, I know! I need another project like I need a hole in my head but come on! How can I resist a Sid Cooke?????? It'll go on the dream shelf to tempt me with all my other treasures until inspiration wipes out my common sense. 😊

Progress on all my dreams might come slow, but knowing that I am working on something everyday is comforting! I'll be back to share some kind of progress soon!

xo xo,

Jodi