Product Review: Andi-Mini Fieldstone

In my miniature adventures, I have tried several brands and methods of making brick and stone. I have really enjoyed how they've all turned out, I guess it comes down to personal preference.

Packaging and sticker roll

I have used the Magic Systems kits on 3 projects. It is essentially a roll of brick, block or stone shaped sticker paper that comes on a roll. The idea is that you attach the sticker paper to the surface of your project (walls, floors or whatever), then spread the mortar mix (provided in the kit) over the top of the sticker. Then you carefully peel the sticker away, and viola!

Magic Slat

You must first paint the background of the surface which serves to be the "grout" when finished. The mortar mix comes in several color choices, depending on the kit you purchase. For example, red mortar for bricks, grey for flagstone etc.

Magic Brik

I like it, it is easy and it works great! You can dry brush or color wash it after it is dry to add more depth. Once done, seal it.

Magic Ston

It can be on the pricey side, depending on the scale and budget of your project, so that is a consideration. Speaking of scale, it's perfect for 1/12, and could probably pass in 1/2 scale, as well.












I tried out the stone paper from HBS in this project. It's okay in this setting because there is so much else going on you hardly notice it. I added color wash to varied stones to give it more life. I will probably not order it again, unless I am going for an animated or cartoon looking vibe.

Last spring I finally had occasion to try the egg carton method. I was really surprised at how much I loved the results! It was very easy, and completely customizable!

Basically, you cut or tear pieces from an egg carton, (to-go drink containers and anything that is a recycled formed paper item will work) into the shape you're trying to achieve. . You tacky glue them to the surface you're covering. You can dry brush, use artists chalk, or color wash with acrylic paint. Seal them well with matte sealer and let dry overnight. Next day, grout with real tile grout or your own mini mortar mix. Otterine has a real tutorial. It's a great one!







One product I hadn't tried yet was the Andi-Mini Fieldstone. I saw them in the HBS catalog and thought they could be fun! They are made from high density casting plaster, and are a solid color throughout. Apparently, this is so when you cut them they still look like authentic stone. I ordered a couple bags of the Brown Fieldstone and some Andi-Mini mortar to try out on the barn.






The body of the barn is a darker blue with some grey undertones. The stain I used throughout and will use on the roof shingles is a honey oak color. The grout is grey. The combination of those colors makes me a little nervous, but we can only move forward and see what we see and learn what we learn!





I'll pop back in on this post and update how the progress is going. It will be interesting to see how these stones look when glued over top of milled clapboard siding.

Wish me luck!

UPDATE

When I had rocked up to the front door area, I had to stop and make the deck. Otherwise I'd have no idea what to cover and what to leave. I finished constructing the deck, and finished installing the rocks. A coat of satin varnish was added. The fieldstone comes alive with the varnish! I'm loving them!

All I have left with the fieldstone is to grout, and then install the trim cap. I'll update again when finished.

UPDATE to the UPDATE...

I tackled the grout today! It was a messy job, but I kind of like messy projects!

I decided as I was going to sleep the other night that I should put the grout into a container that would allow me to squirt the grout in between the rocks and there fore control the mess a little better. I found an almost empty honey container, so that's what I employed for the job.

The directions on the mortar jar said that you could add water to get the right consistency. It looked good to me, so I scooped all of the grout from the container into the newly cleaned empty honey jar, then set to work. Don't get me wrong, it


was still messy, but it was definitely a more controlled mess.

I found that once I squeezed the grout in between the rocks, the best tool for getting it squished in was my finger. I'd do an area, the wipe down the rocks with a damp sponge.

The grout went on a pretty dark grey color. I left the grout to dry, and by the time we'd finished dinner it had dried to a very light grey. In fact, I'm not sure if it was the terrible night time lighting in my dining room, but it almost seemed to perfectly match the blue on the clapboard.

At that point I took a kitchen wash cloth and really gave all of the rocks another good wiping down. It seemed like the rocks had dulled a bit from the grout residue.

Still looking dulled, I added another coat of satin varnish to both the rocks and the grout. That seemed to deepen the nice variegated color in the rocks again, and made the grout a deeper grey.

The clean-up was great! The mortar dries like sand, so I just brushed off my work surface and ran the vacuum. The sponge and wash cloth came clean right away, too!

So, all in all I would say I enjoyed the product. I have about half of one bag left, and enough mortar to use them in some future project. Would I spend the $15 again for each bag? Humph. Probably not. I think I could have had really decent results with egg cartons and real life grout (I still have tons left over from tiling my laundry room). Better to spend the money on something I can't do myself. I would rate the project as an intermediate skill level kind of thing.

The Boring Details...

The next step in working on the New Orleans kit included the boring and repetitive details such as priming, painting and assembling windows. The necessary evil of the dollhousing process. Prime, sand, prime, sand, paint, sand, paint, sand, glue together, wait, seal, buff etc... I find that if I load a bunch of interesting videos to my YouTube Watch Later list, then press Play All, I can go for days repeating the same process on the same pieces, several times and not totally lose my mind. And just when I've reached the end of the Watch Later list, I've hopefully reached the end of the process. And with any luck at all, you get to look and be happy with your work...

A nice payoff for all the tedious work!

I started on the foundation. I knew I wanted brick, but not shiny new red brick. In my mind the house is an old one which has been lovingly updated by the new owner. I thought if I were refurbing an older home I'd want to fix up the old mortar and seal the bricks with a nice long lasting marine grade paint. I'd go white for a fresher look.

After doing so many types of bricks in the Three Little Pigs: Revenge project, I knew that I would not have the patience for the egg carton variety this time around. I used Magic Brik. It takes a while to separate the sticker from the brick waste, and is messy to apply, but there's nothing out there that looks more authentic and goes on so quickly. The nice thing is, if you let the messy dropped bits dry where they landed overnight you can recycle them easily. Just scoop them back into the mixing container (I use a Rubbermaid sandwich container). The next time you need mortar, add warm water and stir. It reconstitutes beautifully! If you'd like more info on the product, read this post.

To finish them off, I primed, painted and sealed them.

After setting the foundation aside to dry, I started to prime all of the first floor walls inside and out. I used a couple coats of primer, then painted the exterior clapboard and trim in the finish colors. The bright white LED fixture over my work table tends to cast a greenish tone on everything. Maybe seeing the paint chips will give a better idea on the two main exterior colors...

All the window frames were painted white.

Turning my attention to the inside, I cut and filled door and window openings, then got the walls primed and ready for wallpaper.

I test fit the new kitchen wall with the arch cut out...

The dining room in the back looks good through this doorway...

And this one... This is where I start to get excited!

I made the chimney breast out of foam core. It will serve also as the framing for the recessed bookcase. I am waiting for the matching arch to the dining room doorway. It will frame the bookcase.

The false wall will conceal the hub for the lighting. I will leave it accessible for future access.

I attempted to start on the stairs today. I am going to make some changes to the opening in the second floor and to the doorway to the bedroom, so I needed a test fit.

In looking at the stairs that came with the kit, they look to be a sort of press board. The kind that pills up when exposed to wet paint or stain.

After trying out a few test spots, I went ahead and ordered the really nice stair kit from HBS. The one with real wood treads. You get such a better result when the treads are separate. Trying not to get stain on the white parts in the all-in-one stairs is difficult for me!

It will be worth the wait to have the right kind of material. I've learned the hard way: don't rush and let a cheap or thrifty now solution cheapen the rest of the project in the long run. If you can wait and can eek something nicer out of the budget on a project like this, do it!

I think the next step is to solidify the lighting plan, then get started on the wallpapers and ceiling treatments. I hope to have a much better experience with the tape wire and MDF this time than I did with the barn. Prayers much appreciated!

Hope you all have an excellent week, a rejuvenating weekend and if you're so inclined - lots of chocolate from the Easter Bunny!

xx oo
Jodi

Inspirational Time Out

I was really looking forward to starting the outside of the Sweet Christmas Cottage last weekend, so I began to start on the chimney. Better to get that and the electrical camouflage taken care of before figuring out where the gingerbread texture should go. I got some of the chimney structure cut & glued, then suddenly began to feel like I did as a teenager while doing math homework: board. Can you believe that?!? Board working on a dollhouse?!? Well, I was...

So, while I sat there waiting for glue to dry, I spaced out for a while. Then I picked up my phone and started looking through Instagram. That's when inspiration hit me, and I ditched the chimney for more a exciting project. Let's just call this one an interlude.

Here's the inspiration photo posted by lev_vackert, whom I follow. Amazing interior design, styling and photography. Check it out. Anyway, I wanted to try to recreate this scene using stuff I could find and tweak from my own stash. So here is what I did...


I gathered up some supplies and materials from my stash that I thought could work...

Leftover Magic Brik mix and tape, scrap veneer and plywood.

HOM Queen Anne Table Kit, Chair Kit, Laser Cut Window.

Miscellaneous Mini Supplies 

I made a simple two sided display using the plywood for the base and foam core for the walls. I didn't cut the foam core's paper covering through on the inside so that I could use a 1/4" x 1/4" piece of basswood for a corner support.

I coated the foam core with gesso to seal it and create "grout" for the bricks.

Then applied the brick sticker and brick material, Amazingly, it was still a perfect consistency after being stored in that RubberMaid container for over a year!

While the brick dried, I turned my attention to cutting flooring strips for the floor from 1/32" wood veneer.

It was really hard to see the exact floor pattern in the inspiration photo, so I had to make a guess. It looks to me as though there is a section, almost covered by what I think might be a piece of floor cloth, that looks like an old cellar door. So that's what I went with.

A tip here on getting a good meeting of the miters. Using double sided tape, I taped down my cellar door frame, letting the corners overlap. Then I cut where the corners met diagonally so that the remaining miters met up in a nice way.

I darkened all of the veneer strip edges and the floor under surface with a Promarker before gluing down with QuickGrip contact cement. It is stinky, but with wood this thin it is the only thing that won't make the wood curl.

Once the floor was laid out, I added some nail holes, scratches, dings and faux wood grain to try to simulate the floor in the photo. At this point the brick was also dry!

Then I added trim to the floor and wall edges...

To finish the walls, I painted the brick and trim in warm white. The original photo has a cooler white, but I like warmer better. I also mixed up some Folkart clear wax and antiquing wax to get a not too dark floor finish. I want to play around with the floor finish a bit more, 'cause I think I can do better.

I put together the chair kit, then began to see what I could come up with for the desk. The finished kit style and height was all wrong, so I "borrowed" some of the pieces to form the base for my own design. I eliminated the real drawer and cut my own for a more simple look. I cut and sanded chopsticks for super simple legs.

This is where I left things this evening. We'll see if inspiration strikes again over the weekend. If I can finish this one up, I'll have a nice bookend for my shelves, and a new mini scene to boot!

Hope you're finding inspiration for new and ongoing minis, too!

xo xo,
Jodi

Unfinished Business

Without intentionally planning it, 2022 is shaping up to be a year of finishing undone things. It's apropos because the motto that I have adopted this year is:

How can I embrace the future if my arms are still wrapped around the past? 

To continue this liberating trend, the next project on my list of things to finish was Starbucks. It is housed in the bay window shop of the Houseworks Street Of Shops set. At one time, I'd envisioned having an entire street of downtown Seattle landmark shops housed in them. That was the plan in 2013 when I bought the kits, but as you know, ideas evolve, time changes us and I lost interest in that idea.

Bay Window Shop

Nonetheless, here sat my little Starbucks shop nearly finished and collecting dust. It was a shame, really, because I had worked so hard on it at the time. 2013 - 2014 was a time in which I was able to get over my fear and lack of experience with building furnishings/fixtures from scratch and working with things like FIMO and resin casting. By the time I'd finished the Starbucks shop interior, I was pretty proud of my efforts. What I took away from the project encouraged me to never stop dreaming, trying new crafts or pushing the boundaries of my mini skills. It's a kind of time capsule now, so though it needed some minor interior repairs, I wanted to leave the interior pretty much as it was in 2014. The exterior was totally unfinished with the exception of a little trim paint and a remodeled front door.

Shop photo from 2014

I pulled the room box off the shelf and I think I actually heard it gasp in shocked surprise! Taking it over to the work table, I began to assess it's condition after being so long forgotten. Surprisingly, it wasn't too bad, though it really needed a good cleaning! The front wall, left, having never been attached, is leaning against the store. You can see where at some point in it's history I had applied Magic Brik tape in order to create the faux brick front. On the right is the tiny, separate restroom box that I'd originally constructed to attach to the outside, just on the other side of the restroom door in the store. It's front wall had not been installed, either.

Once I relocated all the dust colonies, I was amazed to see that almost all of the wee items had stayed in their places. You see, this shop was done diorama style, and everything was glued into place. Some of the clear resin pieces have yellowed over the years, but I decided to leave them as is, too.

Now was the big question: Do The Lights Still Work??? I had big doubts because:

1. This structure is made of MDF.

2. The lighting system is powered by tape wire.

3. My long term success rate with MDF + Tape Wire is 0/4 (the brads and eyelets always seem to wriggle themselves lose).

4. It was installed 9 years ago.

Make that success rate 0/5 because only 2 out of 5 LED light strips still worked. It wasn't all bad news, though! The LED light strips themselves still worked. And, I had just enough strip light connectors left to hard wire them in. I could remove all of the tape wire and go with a totally hard wired set up.

LED light strip still works.

Display case light still works.

The plug had to be jiggled to get a good connection or the
LED strip lights and display light would go out.
Definitely time to move on from tape wire.

These are the LED strip lights once they'd been removed from the walls and their connections to the tape wire strips had been removed. The strip light connectors I installed on the ends will now allow me to hard wire them into the transformer wire. One of them was broken, where the two plastic pieces connect to hold it onto the light strip, but I repaired it as best I could and crossed my fingers. 

I kept checking the lights and connections at every step since I didn't quite trust them. Phew! Still working!

With the tape wire removed from the shop, I installed the light strips again in the same place, just not on top of tape wire. I had to drill holes for the new wires to exit to the exterior of the room box.

I also added a strip of two rows of clear plastic tiles to the bottom of the original corner molding "shades". I painted them with Mod Podge and a drop of white paint to make them opaque. This gave me a little extra depth to prevent seeing the strip lights underneath.

I had to replace the strip lights in the food display, too, because the wires ran under the flooring where they connected to tape wire. Instead of adding another strip light, I opted for LED bulbs, one under each of the top two shelves. I ran the wiring under the floor, through a channel I cut, and then out the back to meet up with the rest of the wires.

5-12 volt, 3mm LED bulbs to light up the top two shelves.

New wires run down through the floor.

Wiring channel chiseled out. 

By this point, as you can see in the photo above, I had finished and attached the restroom box to the shop. This is a good time to talk about the restroom here because I don't think I have ever mentioned much about it on any previous post. It's constructed out of 1/8" plywood, made to be the same height as the shop and made to attach as a pop out to the side of the shop. Drinking coffee = having to pee, so I thought it was important to have a restroom.

Back in 2014 when I made the restroom I wanted it to look as authentic as possible to real Starbucks bathrooms. I made an industrial sized TP dispenser out of a clear plastic jar, painting the inside dark gray. Attaching dangling TP to the bottom sells the illusion. I used a plastic lid for the toilet seat cover dispenser, gluing a reasonable facsimile of one onto the front. In my family, we affectionately call toilet seat covers "ass gaskets". :O)

The toilet and sink are MBS plastic models. The sink is mounted on top of a painted Chrysnbon butter churn and the soap dispenser is made from beads and a nail. The wall and floor are also MBS clear plastic tiles where you paint the back any color and they look like porcelain. I made the light fixture from wood, more plastic tiles painted opaque white and LED strip lights.

The front fits into a channel created by installing corner molding with enough clearance for the wall to slide in and out. I made it like this in case the inside of the restroom ever needs to be accessed in the future. The paper towel dispenser s made from a clear plastic Chrysnbon box, painted on the inside, and then a brown paper towel is glued to the bottom.

With it attached and connected to the main shop, it was time to check the lights...

Phew! Now how about the rest of the lighting...

This side works...

The display unit works...

So far, so good... WAIT!!! What's this??? The left wall light strip is not working! ARGH! Wouldn't you know, my "repair" to the connector didn't hold. I can either pull the shade off and try to re-repair (but the result would probably, eventually be the same), or, I can live with it. Guess which option I chose...

At this point, I decided to attach the front wall of the shop and just move on. There is plenty of light without the left strip.

This is the last chance to see the window display unencumbered. Here's where all the coffee fixins are located.

And here's the progress on Starbucks so far...

Next week, I hope to be back with the plexi tops made and installed, decisions made and implemented for the exterior finishing, and with a little luck, just maybe another abandoned project will be done! It is June, already, and that means 2022 is halfway through! Better keep crackin'!

xo xo,

Jodi