This Ship Has Sailed...

The Beachside Bungalow is officially finished! And as you can see, it didn't take the girls long after I placed the last item to get the celebration started!

There was a surprising amount to do for such a tiny area, but I decided to start with the seating. I looked around online to find outdoor chair styles that I liked and ended up on the Ikea website where I found their Bondholmen chairs. Since Ikea provides detailed measurements and diagrams, converting the measurements from metric to Imperial and then scaling them down to 1/12th was simple. I made a few design changes just to keep them similar to the bungalow's other furnishings. I had the Cricut Maker cut the chipboard. 

Unfortunately, once I'd assembled them, they seemed a bit too short for the occupants to see over the porch railing. They are meant to be low and are very stylish, but aren't good for placement behind porch railings. I finished them anyway, just to have fun, practice with the upholstery and possibly use them in a future build.

A pair.

And a spare.

Back to the drawing board for the bungalow's chairs. I added 3/8" to each of the legs, and then they were perfect to sit and watch beachgoers pass by. When I first dreamed up this project in 2016, I ordered several of Brae's pillows. I am so happy to finally display them - they are perfection!

I made some other furniture pieces out of chipboard, too. The shoe bench and the table between the deck chairs are the same interchangeable design. I made a shelf, as well, but the porch seemed a bit too crowded with it. Another piece to save for later!

 

I made a couple crates out of chipboard, some wall art and and the wave coat rack, too. The boat cleats I 3D printed last week are used as the hooks. I debated with myself about the shutters for a long time but in the end decided I could not pass up a chance for more detail.

Here is the result of the address plaque I made on the 3D printer. There's just no end to the accessories that you can come up with!

I'm really proud of myself for sticking to my commitment about not buying anything new for this project. But I was sweating it a bit when it came time to provide the girls with party snacks and beverages. I'm just about tapped out of spare glassware, but I did manage to find a plastic pitcher stashed away, as well as some plastic pilsner glasses. To create Arnold Palmers (half iced tea, half lemonade) for the girls, I mixed UV resin with a few drops of Honeycomb alcohol ink, I added it by toothpick drops into the pitcher and glasses, layering in "ice cubes" and lemon slices. I had a little bit of a lemon cane left, so I also added sliced lemons to the rims of the glasses. Looks refreshing!

For the crackers, cheese and Bundt cake, I had push molds which I filled with Paperclay. Chalk dust colored the crackers, and the cheese was painted with orange paint and Mod Podge. The cake was painted brown, then topped with puff paint frosting. I'm not a very experienced or proficient mini food maker, but Rose seems happy enough.

Kairi wanted to be sure to send out new house announcements to her friends right away. You all know Fiona and Enoch from past projects, but Alice and Goldie haven't had a proper introduction on the blog yet. They are both the inhabitants of a future project which I hope to begin someday. I used the Maker to score and cut the envelopes for me, then just printed these teeny labels to be applied to the tops. The font size is 2, so they are very tough to read.

Here they are in the mail box just waiting to be picked up by the mail person.

This next section should be labeled "The Things We Do For Lights". Deciding to add in the two lighted ship's lanterns to the front porch was going to be a challenge since I'd already "finalized" the wiring by heat shrinking everything together and to the power plug. But sometimes, ideas seem like good ones. Until you're sitting under a table, trying to tuck your head under metal bracing and a dollhouse. All while carefully removing previously shrunken heat shrink tubing so as not to cut any wires. Then adding in two more wires and re-finalizing. Sweat was literally running down my nose by the time I'd finished. But, it was worth it.

By removing the table leaf, I was able to span the dollhouse across the opening to get access to the underside where the wiring can be accessed.

This was my view from below. I stopped counting how many times I hit my head (and glasses) on the metal bar which is part of the support from the table.

All buttoned back up again!

And here was the payoff...

At "night"...

And here are some exterior shots of the Beachside Bungalow from different angles...

The right side of the porch is decorated with some wall plaques on anchor hooks, a crate and a watering can for the tropical fern plant.

Betsy mentioned in her comment last week that she heard the faint sound of a windchime. It must have been this sailboat windchime kit that I made. My string was not a very good kind to use, so it wants to stick to itself. This task might get a do-over. Want it nice? Do it twice!

Kairi and Roxanne look happy and relaxed, just like you should be when you're spending time on a beachside porch!

Remember how I still needed to trim out the back opening? Well, that task is completed, too! I had a few random pieces of lattice left over so I had to get creative with how to use it. Since the last piece I had left was a shortened piece, I decided to make an "access door" to the crawlspace.

And just to put the dot at the end of this very fun project and this post, I leave you with more interior photos...

And now that this ship has sailed, what's next? I have a little work room reorganization planned and also want to keep the momentum going with unfinished projects. There are several to choose from, so we'll see which one is pleading with me the loudest!

Thanks so much for being here with me on this joyful journey!

xo xo,

Jodi

Beachside Bungalow Porch Preparedness

It's been a couple weeks since my last post, but I really have been working on the Beachside Bungalow's porch every spare chance I get. Since I am making nearly every accessory, I have been doing a lot of prep work to make and decorate them before I could start putting the porch together. By prep work I mean finding/creating/configuring items in Tinkercad to be 3D printed, and designing custom furniture pieces in Design Space to be cut with the Cricut Maker. I'll share my prep progress here now in order to save a ridiculously long finished porch post later.

Of course a beach house porch needs lots of beach themed items. I started with surfboards. I knew I wanted to include a few styles on the porch, so I went to Thingiverse to look for the perfect models. I found three - a longboard, a standard surfboard and a boogieboard. I saved them then imported them into Tinkercad to resize them to 1/12th scale.

Once 3D printed, I had to come up with a way to decorate them. I am certainly not an artistic painter, but in Design Space, I found various surfboard designs. To make sure the dimensions were right, I exported two of the boards from Tinkercad as svg files and then uploaded them to Design Space. All I had to do was resize my images to the 3D printed sizes, then use the Print Then Cut feature to cut the images out. The longboard was a little trickier. Because of it's curved design. The svg export just stops the file at the start of the curve, chopping some of the length off of the surfboard. To get around this, I scanned the longboard into the computer, saved as a png file, then imported it into Design Space as an svg file. There's always more than one way to skin a cat. For those not familiar with English slang, I apologize for the gruesome phrase.

Surfboard art images left. Svg imports right.

Scan of longboard.

I painted a base color on the surfboards. Once the images were Print Then Cut onto regular printer paper, I just had to peel away the waste parts.

To stick the images on the surfboards, I used yellow label Mod Podge. I overcoated several more layers of Mod Podge letting them dry thoroughly in between. This made the boards appear to have a good coating of wax on them. I applied the images to both sides of each board.

I printed several other fun accessories with the 3D printer. Some were my own design, and some I downloaded from the generous creators on Thingiverse. Some got a few design tweaks, some just resized. The birdhouses on the right were all provided by a wonderful designer and given away for free on Thingiverse. They were meant to be printed full size for actual birds, but they scaled down amazingly well. The birdhouses on the left were my design. I made them to look like an old fashioned beach changing tent. 

Right as I began painting this one, I noticed that it looked conspicuously like a Honey Bucket. For those that don’t know the brand name, they are port-a-pottys that are brought in to various places like construction sites and concert venues to give folks a temporary place to "go". I decided to leave it as is - after all, birds “gotta go” too. Better in here than on your head, which I saw happen once to a poor bald man! At least he didn't have to wash bird poop out of his hair! 😉

From several different designers, I found shoes that I could reduce to 1/12th scale. My painting skills are definitely not as polished as Betsy or Birgit on tiny things, but from a distance they are passable. With all the sand at the beach, taking one's shoes off at the porch will be a house rule for Kairi and her friends.

Mailbox, boat cleats and various shoes.

Tiny Converse like sneakers.

You may have noticed that grouped in with the shoes is a mailbox. This was my second printed attempt at the mailbox, after I had combined some parts and resized others. The fun thing about this mailbox, other than it was a full sized design that was down scalable, is that the door really opens and closes and the flag is functional, too. I just had to resize and reinforce the holes so that push pins could be fitted. Kairi might just have some outgoing mail soon.

It just wouldn't be a beach theme without life savers and boat buoys. Thanks to Thingiverse, I was able to easily find these, too. A few adjustments and they suited my needs perfectly! I added a ship's wheel and anchor hooks just for good measure.

Two styles of buoys.

If you have followed the beachside bungalow build, you've already seen the lanterns I designed last fall. The porch was a perfect opportunity to print and paint up more. I am planning to install two that actually light up. Fingers crossed I can easily connect them to the "finished" wiring hub.

This was my first attempt at printing the mailbox before the adjustments. I also made an address plaque, but I'll save the finished photo for the porch reveal post.

I've also made several pieces of furniture designed in Design Space and cut out of chipboard with the Maker. Since I have yet to upholster them, I'll save them for next time, too.

Hope you are all making progress on your projects and having fun doing it! See you soon!

xo xo,

Jodi