Have My Cake And Eat It Too!

In keeping with my flighty nature (when it comes to miniatures), I grew bored/dissatisfied with the SOS shop kit. After I had made a counter unit and painted the exterior front wall, I moved all of it's parts and pieces to the top of the New Orleans where it will likely sit until it inspires me again. No telling how long that will be. Good thing there won't be any company coming over for a while!

Why switch, you ask? Because once again, ideas solidified and I became excited for the next steps on Brimble's bakery... the roof and exterior.
The roof is really pretty boring, so rather than expanded explanations, I'll just show the progression via photos and captions...

Fill, Sand, Gesso, Sand...

Cut cereal box covering for wires...

Add trims and gesso...

Dowels to bridge the apex gaps in the dormers...

Of course the cereal box fits - it was Lucky Charms!

In Miniatures, you can turn a wooden roof into a
metal one with just a few pieces of trim!
It's magic!

No shingles - yippee!!!

Channel molding to hide and direct wires...

Base color for metal roof...
The metallic paint will come later...

Also notice that body trims are being added to frame exterior elements...

And just in time - The Cake part, because, well, I really love cake!!!
Some of you may remember that I wanted to try to make the exterior of Pound Cake look similar to a layer cake...

So using the Design Space software for my Cricut, I made lattice, stripes and floral stencil. These were cut from paper products, of course, rather than fondant!

Lattice, stripes and stencil created in Design Space.

Here you can see that I laminated three layers of Kraft card to thicken up the lattice.

And here I am adding hundreds of tiny half pearls, one at each intersection. There were 112 of them used for the bottom lattice alone...

And then, along with trims, they were added onto the bakery...

And then the stripes...

And more lattice and trims above that...

Great progress, right? Until I got to the flower fondant layer...
This was proving to be a total trial and error adventure. I had hoped to be able to share the finished exterior in this post, but alas, the work continues...

I had the following ideas about how to achieve a fondant/frosting kind of texture:

1. Cut floral shapes with the Cricut and add embellishments to supplement.
2. Create a stencil with the Cricut and apply spackle like frosting over it.
3. Use a Tim Holtz stencil as above with spackle, then paint and embellish.

My first attempt at cutting an intricate floral stencil was a disaster. For those of you with a Cricut, I used Cricut Kraft paper with the Kraft setting, fine point blade with extra pressure. It did not cut all the way through on the first pass, and the second pass only tore sections. So disappointing. Back to the drawing board...

My next experiment is going to be with larger flower shapes which I plan to apply in a random pattern on the wall, paint and then embellish. If my cuts don't go well again, I'll try the stencil/spackle idea, though I fear that will be majorly messy!

To fill my non mini time during our mandated seclusion, I have also been baking (muffins not cake... yet!), cooking a whole lot more than I'd like (but not as much as Russ likes), finally getting my money's worth out of Audible, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, and learning that at 51 years old, yes 51, you can absolutely love playing video games. It turns out, surprisingly, that I'm a pretty good pirate and warrior! :O)

Finding silver linings is something I'm truly good at. I hope you are too, that you are staying safe and healthy, that you have all you need and are not afraid to ask if you don't. There is so much kindness out there and we all get to take turns giving and receiving it.

God bless all of us!

xo xo,
Jodi

Pound Cake: Second Floor Walls

I didn't realize as I was taking progress photos this week that I was taking so many! There were a lot of separate steps to raise the walls and separate the spaces, so I hope you'll stick with me here for the dreadfully long update post!

Sink/Restroom Side installed, touch up paint still required.

Top floor progress picture, still more trims and ceiling/roof to install.

It all began with foam core for the walls. The roof/ceiling piece can be relatively easily added or removed now, so getting a height measurement was easy enough. Then I just had to trim the foam core down to 9-3/8" tall.

The two restroom walls were a little more difficult in that I had to replicate the ceiling angle onto the foam core. I attempted a complicated "Rise and Run" calculation, but in the end just held the pieces up to the roof piece to confirm. All was well - at least well enough that trim would make me look like a genius! A quick test of the door frame to confirm the opening followed.

Sink, stairway and restroom walls being test fit.

For the stairwell side of the wall, I added textured ceiling paper above beaded wainscot. This area will only have a peek-a-boo view from one of the side dormer windows, but I wanted a clean, finished look. Wouldn't you know my paper wrinkled a little. Such is mini life...

The restroom side of the wall received pieces of my leftover wallpaper. I didn't need much, and because of where I had cut dormers out, there were funny angled gaps where I had to paste pieces over. Not to worry - this area will be behind the door and will never be seen. Why do I only ever buy three sheets of wallpaper when countless times I needed four?!?

Above the sink I thought a window would be nice. It would give some depth and interest in the room and would also let in additional light from the stairwell/dormer window. I cut a 2" x 3" piece of foam core and glued it, centered, in the space above the planned sink unit. This gave me something to hold my Xacto blade against to cut the window hole. This would not have been necessary if I had planned the window before I glued all of the walls together!

For the wall treatment in the sink and stove area, I tried out a new tip for the Cricut - the Debossing Tool. It is meant to imprint a design into several types of material. I made a subway brick tile pattern using my graphics software, then imported it into the Cricut Design Space program. From there, you can choose to deboss the pattern. I chose deboss and resized it to fit on pieces of wall squares that I'd already created for each foam core wall. The material I debossed was the Cricut Kraft board which is like stiff poster board. The pattern is subtle with this material, but in this application for the bakery walls, worked just fine. Besides, who can complain about no painting and no laying of hundreds of tiny tiles!

To give the tiles a shine, I brushed on gloss Mod Podge. My Mod Podge had a lot of lumps and partially dried bits, so I used a filter and a cup to get a nice clean batch to work with. You can buy these filters in large packs for a small price on Amazon. They work great for filtering old paint, too.

Once the tiles were dry I was able to frame the pass through window opening.

And check the fit of the sink cabinet I made with the Cricut for the space.

Window frame, cabinet, door frame and behind toilet plumbing cabinet painted...

I sprayed the countertop in white satin and then applied a couple coats of Krylon Triple Thick spray gloss. I had a faucet from Elf Miniatures that came with the sink I used in the New Orleans kitchen. By adding the spring from a fountain pen to the spigot and a painted, tapered bead to the end, it looks more like an industrial bakery kitchen kind of faucet.

Now it was time to make sure my initial height measurement for the walls was accurate. I nervously installed the ceiling/roof and said some hopeful prayers...
Success! With a little molding, pre-cut before adding the ceiling permanently, the finished room should look like I knew what I was doing!

I confidently applied the glue and weighted the wall piece down. And waited for glue to dry...

Meanwhile cutting and painting trims. And painting/assembling the Chrysnbon bathroom kit pieces...

And here is the view down the stairs that you will never again see...

And the only view to this side of the sink window pass through, through the side dormer window...

And I made shelving and brackets with the Cricut...

Then installed the restroom fixtures and accessories...

Then the angled side wall and door frame with added transom window...

Frosted for privacy, but which I hope will let in extra light to the sink area...

And installed open shelving for all of the equipment and supplies that one would need to operate a successful bakery...

And other than touch up and trims, the bakery's kitchen is ready for living!

Now on to the ceiling and the lighting.

Back next week with more progress, I hope. Until then, I pray all of you are safe and well, and are making it through this uncharted territory that, together, as a world, are experiencing. God Bless!

xo xo,
Jodi