The beach hut is finished!

It's been a fun couple of weeks!!  I was very eager to see this finished, and I am so happy how it came out.  Here are some pics of the finished work, and then I will post pics of little details:

I finally decided that I did not like the painted roof and opted to wallpaper it with grey shingles

I really like the house number!

Peaking through the windows..

View from the top, without the roof

A nice lunch table for two. The towel rack has designs from Véronique

A little side shelf to store stuff and to use as auxiliary table. 

A sink with cupboards to store utensils and food

Plates, glasses, food pantry and cleaning supplies

View from the entrace, with the doors open.  The carpet is the work of Ana Circea.

These director chairs are also from Seaside Miniatures.  A super easy kit made with wood and fabric paper.

Here is a view of the blind curtains that I talked about in the tutorial some days ago.

Do you see the white plates?  Those won't be like that for long...

My husband and I have gifted ourselves new dinner plates for our anniversary.  They are Sargadelos plates, which we absolutely adore.  A coworker of his gave us a beatiful coffee set from Sargadelos for our wedding , which we have been using since then.  She also gifted us a couple of mugs.  So this year we decided to buy some plates as well.  The design of our coffee set is no longer in production, so we chose the Espiroide design.  And naturally, I wanted some Sargadelos plates in the beach hut!

I simply printed the design to fit the plates, cut them, glue them and glazed them with Mod Podge.

Before

Process

After

That is mostly everything, for now.  I am going to buy some wood to make a base for the hut, so I can add some extra floor and set up some more decorations.  More on that soon, I hope!

Tutorial: Easy blind curtains

I love to accessorize!  I think every miniaturist enjoys the decorating part of any new scene - I certainly enjoy it more than the building process, even though I do enjoy putting up wallpapers!

Since I have tiny windows in the beach hut, I wanted to craft some miniature curtains - blind curtains, in fact, that don't require any complex work with fabrics, for which I am totally useless.

This was my first time crafting blind curtains, so here is what I came up with.  I think it is a very easy process, even for newbies to the hobby.

Materials required:

1. Your choice of fabric - I used a printable nautical fabric from Véronique
2. Scissors / cutter
   
3. Pencil
4. Double sided tape
5. Ruler 
6. Fine sand paper
   
7. Toothpics, or skewers - depending on how wide are your windows

1- Measure the width of your windows to determine the size of the rod you will be using.

2- Take your toothpick or skewer and mark this measure.

 

3- Cut to measure your toothpick/skewer using the cutter or an old pair of scissors

4- Sand the edges of the toothpick/skewer

5- Cut a strip of your fabric the width of your rod.  If you used printable fabric like I did, remove the paper backing.

6- Cover part of the strip with double sided tape.

7- Remove the coverings and place the rod at the beginning of the strip.  Make sure it is properly centered and straight.

8- Start rolling the fabric carefully, to make sure there are no wrinkles and that you keep the rod as straight as possible.  When you reach the end of the double sided tape, you are finished!  Trim any excess of fabric if necessary.

Congratulations!  You made your curtain!  

I have 4 windows, but for now I made just two curtains to try the technique.  Now that I have seen it works, more will follow!

Now get creative with decorations for the fabric: lace, trims, ribbons... Anything that you like!  Since this are for a nautical beach hut, I am leaving them as they are.  Have fun!

Book nook: Explorer cabin

A new book nook, made with the same kind of box I made the Nurse's Office.

For this one I don't have a particular reason I did it.  I found some time ago a beautiful steam trunk from Heidi Ott, and I liked it so much I wanted to have it.  I thought about including it in the museum scene, but it was way too big for that.  So when the box came into my possession, I decided to feature it there.

The wallpapers are the creation of Pixel Market, as well as the ceiling, pictures and the floor.  

The right side of the trunk features a human skull, a box with microscope slides, a microscope, a rack with glass tubes, a handmade box with mineral samples, and some fossils:

The minerals were a gift from a coworker

The microscope slides are the creation of Ana Circea

The fossils are also from my coworker

The left side of the trunk features a vintage cetacean poster, books and a drawer with more nature posters.  The posters are the creation of Lost Miniatures.

The books are the creation of Evona at Artsy Miniatures

So happy to have finally finished this one!  The handmade wood box took a while to finish, but that's because I am lazy to work with wood sticks :)

I am very excited with my next project, with is going to be a beach hut!  Hopefully, more on that soon...

Book Nook: Nurse's office

One of my husband's students brought us a gift some time ago.  She said it came from her mother, as she was very happy to see her daugther well adjusted and working hard, and thought it was thanks to my husband's mentoring.  Well, the gift in question came with a box, and I thought it would be nice to gift something back inside such box, and what better than a little mini scene.  The student's mother is a head nurse in a hospital - we all know how much they have been working since Covid struck, and I thought paying homage to her profession would be nice.

So here is the finished scene for her:

Except for the furniture, the jars and the stethoscope I had everything at home

Almost everything is made of paper

The gloves boxes I made scanning one that I brought home from the lab

The file holders I designed myself

Poster from the Covid prevention campaign

... and another one denouncing violence against medical personnel

The subway tiles wallpaper comes from Pixel Market, and the floor from Jessica Cloe Minis.  I am very happy how well it turned out.  I do hope the recipient likes it as well.

Japanese roombox. Day 4

What were we lacking to do?  The ceiling!  This time the wallpaper comes from the collection of Pixelmarket, and I think that, even though it is supposed to be a floor, it looks very pretty as ceiling as well:

It was very easy to mount: just 2 sheets put together

The seam is barely visible in the dark plank

Lovely!

I still have not attached the ceiling to the roombox, since there is still so much work to be done.  However, I still have to decorate the outside walls, and I already have chosen with what.  But I have to take the files to be printed in a copy shop, as I need them in A3.  More on that soon!

Revamping Kassandra's old house

As it could not be any different, this week that I am on vacation, Kassandra has asked help to decorate the ceilings of her old house - the one that has the Magic Shoppe.  When we moved, I did the walls, but ceilings were not on our mind them.  Mainly because there were no download-and-print papers for ceilings.  But now that that little problem has been solved, she was very excited to have pretty ceilings in her, as she calls it, "my "single lady" house".

We started with the parlor, which seemed the easiest one, has it has a lot of room to maneuver.  All of our ceiling papers come from Pixel Market, so if you need one (or many) go take a look to see of they will suit you.  We started as always clearing out the space, and printing some sheets to mount.  In this case, two were more than enough:

Work is starting...

It was easy enough to stick them, as there are no beams or corners that can difficult the work:

... and everything back to its place.

Next, the study.  The study is so small it was possible to use a single sheet, printed to fit the space, with borders already included in the design:

It looks wonderful in the wood-covered study!

We couldn't unglue the magnet that holds the chandelier, so now it is hidden by the paper!

Next step, the shop.

We took out the magnet that keeps the door closed, to work without issues

This one took a lot more time, between clearing out the space and printing everything we needed.  We thought it would be the same size (give or take) than the parlor, but we were mistaken.  We had to use two complete sheets, plus another one with extra ceiling, and borders, because part of the space was left uncovered:

We made a mistake, and had to reprint: see that the colors don't match?  The paper was backwards!

And after reprinting, we made another mistake and mounted the papers the wrong side; they had to be together by the long side, and we put them by the short one.  Silly us!  Print again, and watch your steps while mounting them again!

Finally, we attached the borders and glue them to the ceiling up the shop - we spent most of the afternoon doing this, and there wasn't almost any light for pictures when we finished; plus, it had been raining all day:

Magnet is back in its place

The magnet that holds the chandelier is hidden here as well

We left the work for the day, and today we finished the last room: the hall.  So, we emptied it and took measures to make a pattern:

We removed the magnet here as well

When the pattern was finished, I wanted to use another ceiling design, but Kassandra said that she wanted the same as in the shop, as we had the wrong matched papers from yesterday.  That way they would not go to waste.  A very sensible thing, I believe.  So we cut carefully the papers, and attached the borders so the ceiling would match the design of the shop.  Then we glued it, and it was a success:

Gorgeous!

Magnet attached, and everything back in its place

It has been a rewarding effort.  Kassandra is very happy that both her houses are now completely decorated.  I am embarking today in crafting a gift for her, hopefully for the library of the big house.  Let's see how that goes!