Scene: Ballet shop

This had been some time almost finished but a couple of days ago it finally was.  Since yesterday we were so busy with the Alien screen, I did not have time to take pictures.  But now is here!

A new scene that I absolutely love: the Ballet shop!

The logo is from an actual ballet shop in Murcia

I just love crafting these little shops!  A lovely scene so well contained, but with a lot of details and that I can actually hang in my wall, so it won't take up any shelf space.

The actual shop comes from Tienda de Casitas.  I find it so pretty, so affordable, and you can actually start decorating the same day you get it because, it just doesn't need anything else!  It opens on the back and it has a "glass" covering the window so nothing gets dusty.

Some things hidden behind the door

 

The tutu comes from Tienda de Casitas.  The hat boxes and the little pink boxes are from Zena Miniatures.

The ballet art posters on the wall come from Etsy.  The pointe shoes in the boxes and the ones in the dome are from Art of Mini.  In fact, they have a lovely section full of ballet items!  The converitble tights come also from Zena Miniatures.

The magazine holder I made myself, and you can find HERE the free printie to make ballet magazines.  The three nutcrackers are also from Art of Mini.  The mugs and the notepad I made myself.  Blue boxes from Zena Miniatures.

The nutcraker pillow came from La Belle Cuisine By Me; the rocking nutcraker was a gift from Nalladris; the suitcases are again from Art of Miniatures, available in the Ballet section; I made the DVDs myself with actual ballet DVD covers, as well as the ballet book (a gift from my husband); and you can get the ballet coloring books HERE.

I love how it came out!  

Haberdashery shop

I had never been fond of haberdashery minis, but recently I have found out that it was because most of the items I had seen were poorly made.  I recently found a shop full of downloadable printables, and many of them were haberdashery items.  I fell in love!

So, in the the last days of quarantine, I purchased a beautiful shop front, that you can even hang from a wall when finished!  It is small, and it wasn't expensive, but it is regal!  It is mahogany-colored wood, and it even has a "glass" for the front window.  And the back opens for easy access to the inside: 

Isn't it gorgeous?

The shop that I found that has the most amazing printables that I have seen in a long time is Zenas Miniatures.  They are not expensive at all, you can buy them and start working on your project right away.  Zena also has ready-made items that you can purchase, and her gowns and clothes are beautiful!

This is the shop, with some of her printables already in place:

Isn't this button stand incredible?  It took me 4 afternoons to complete all the tiny button cards!

So happy to have a project that I can make almost entirely out of printed paper.  I have seen a couple of miniatures that I want to buy, though.  You absolutely need a sewing machine at a haberdashery shop!  And scissors.  And maybe a pretty sewing box...

Time to tend the plants!

Today I visited Kassandra.  She was very busy getting the conservatory ready for some work with plants.

"Good morning", I said to her.  "Are you bringing your flowers already?"

"Good day to you!  No, not yet.  I am having delivered some furniture soon, but it is for the terrace, because good weather is coming, and I want to have guests during the summer".

"But Kassandra, you do not even have the parlor ready!"

"Who needs the parlor, when you can enjoy a summer evening outdoors?  I assure you, my guests won't mind, as long as there are food and drinks available.  Although I should think about bringing a TV set and games for the young ones..."

"I got you these, so you will be ready when your plants arrive".

"Oh, aren't you lovely?  Thank you very much!  I will keep them in the conservatory until I have need of them".

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It was so much fun designing these bags!  I made a very easy to make printable, and I am happy to share it, so here you go!  Have fun with them, resize them, fill a shop shelf with them!  As always, you are welcome to share the printie, but please do not sell it.  Enjoy!

Working in the soap shop

As I have said before, the work in this shop goes in batches!

For one reason or another, I always take up the work when I am on holidays.  This time was no exception, and so I started working on the little heart soaps:

Made of polymer clay and sitting in black-painted wood bowls.  The little basket has little shell soaps made with this mold.

I also printed (finally!) the designs of the towel boxes and the sheet boxes - they had been finished for ages, but I had never tried them out, to see if they fit into each other.  I had to fix the top of the towel box, but the rest was perfect!  I made the towels with printable cotton paper, rolled them and displayed them in the box - I even covered the window with a bit of plastic.  The little boxes have an Art Decó style design; I found them on Google - they are real vintage shell soap boxes, which could not be any more adecuate.  I simply cleaned the lines and reduced the size on Photoshop:

Then, more little bath bottles!  This time in green, and with a label for the Absinthe collection; and a couple of jars with bath salts (it is really salt, painted with a chalk); I love the little bows and the labels:

And here are images of everything in their final places:

I also made a little decoration for the round display, which I think gives it more character than just having it painted all white:

I do not have any decorative washi tape, so I made the decoration simply with Corel, and printed it.  I love that you cannot say it is just printed paper, even from a close distance!

The shop continues to grow, slowly but surely!

Coming back to a long forgotten project

The work at Kassandra's house is never finished.  But sometimes I get an itch to do something different, and yesterday I began the work again in the already-mentioned soap shop in the IKEA greenhouse.

As it is usual with me, I begin these projects by starting with the most minute details.  Yes, I purchased the room, and even some furniture to fill it with.  And then I started crafting polymer clays soaps, pretty boxes, tiny toiletry bottles... I was so excited with all the media I was going to be using that I did not want to deal with furniture painting.  Or even worse, setting up an stable floor that would not end up with all the furniture and the decorations falling down - that happened, by the way.  Many times.

So, in my last trip to Madrid I purchased a board of balsa wood to set up a good foundation for the shop.  I thought it would be tricky to cut it to measure, but with the help of a new, barely used cutter, a metal ruler and a cutting board was piece of cake:

See the tiny pieces that I had to cut

As you can see, the floor may be good for plants, but not for tiny forniture filled with stuff

Once cut to size, I had to trim the corners so the acrylic walls would sit in place.  Then I glued the boards:

And then my favorite part: wallpapering!  I knew I did not want to simply paint the floor.  I wanted some contrast, since the forniture will be white.  So I head over Small Stuff's PrintMini and I chose a lovely tiled floor (that for some reason only exists in the 1:6 scale).  I printed 4 pages directly from the website, and off to mount them on the floor!

See all the stuff packed in boxes?  It's been there since we moved last Summer...

This time I used regular copy paper instead of the nice matte photographic paper.  Mainly because it is not walls, but floor, and really, it is going to be so full of things that I did not think it worthy to invest 4 pages of nice paper.  I took the double sided tape and covered the back almost completely:

Then I glued it to the boards and trimmed the corners:

And yay! It's finished!!  And the walls sit perfectly well in place:

It only took me about an hour of work, and I was very happy when I finished. It almost looks like it really was the floor of a greenhouse, and now the greenhouse is getting turned into a shop!

This morning I started painting the furniture (I hate painting furmiture!).  I gave a couple of hands, then let it sit until I came back from the lab, and applied a couple more coats where they were needed.  Then I took a commode I purchased a couple of years back (it came from El Rastrillo de Viti) and started working on it.

I had seen this beautiful commode on Minicler's shop, and wanted something similar.  But I wanted to use Toile paper in blue.  I find it très chic!  I also replaced the drawers wood handles by brass handles, and here is it the finished version:

I love it!

The shop is getting started... And you can see my minions, LOL!

I am very happy with these two days of work.  I hope I can keep up with the painting in tiny steps and it will be over soon.  I am anxious to start crafting decorations again!

A shop sign for Kassandra's Magic Shoppe

This is a new adittion that did not come off as a surprise.  Kassandra had been saying she wanted a sign for quite a long time, but she could not find something she really liked it.

But apparently she just found something that was, as she put it, "very appropriate".

She says she finds it "very rustic, but charming".  I quite like it; in fact, the image with the apothecary bottles is very nice and crisp, and it can be seen quite well by potential customers, and so I told her.  She is delighted with her new addition for the shop.

The proud owner with the new shop sign

Kassandra's big renovation part 3 - Shop

The work is progressing!  Another room of the house is done.  This time, it was The Magic Shoppe turn.  The easiest of the rooms to do:  just three straight walls.  It only took me a morning to do everything.

As always, I started by stripping clean the walls.  Well, "clean" is probably not a good word, considering the stains...

For the shop, I used another of Ana's wallpapers.  This one looks straight out of a Tim Burton movie - I love stripes!  As always, I took measurements and modified the design to fit them.  I was lucky enough that the printed sheet covers almost from floor to ceiling.  However, I had to add a bit of a cornice at the top, as I was lacking just 1 cm for it to fit perfectly.  

The design is gorgeous, and you can barely see the union between the two sheets.

Sans the cornice

With the cornice

I had to be extra careful while glueing the side walls; otherwise the design would not be aligned properly.

Left wall all done

Finished!

Despite my efforts I could not get the right wall to cover completely the corner, but I am not worried because the shop shelves will cover the mistake and it will not be visible.  The shop now looks much better than before, even though the decorative panels are not very noticeable - only to customers that sit to have a seánce with Kassandra...

As you can see, there are still plenty of stuff to do with the walls.  I have not yet decided which pictures I am going to hang again, or where, same with the wall shelves, so I will leave that for when I am finished with all the rooms in the house.

The next room will be challenging:  the parlor is conected to the hall with a flight of stairs that has lots of steps!  It is going to take some time and a lot of trial and error.  We'll see how that goes...

Free soap box display printable

It's been some time since I made minis for myself instead of for sale.  Lately I have been doing printables to dress up the shelves in my soap shop.  I have still not picked up clay to make the actual soaps, but doing the boxes, the labels, and the box displays is being so much fun.

Funny thing, I had not realized that creating for others was as fulfilling as creating for oneself.  Now that my shop is closed, I miss sharing my creations.  So, since I do not think I will be selling printables again, I am sharing with you all one of my soap displays.  Remember the Ivory soap display?

Here is the printable for you to make as many as you like!  Just, as always, please do not sell them.

I hope I can post pics of my progress very soon.  Enjoy the crafting!

Absinthe Soap for your miniature scene

Remember that post about my crafting of anise-scented soap? Well, I thought it would be nice if the mini people could have their own boxes of Absinthe soap, so I made them reality:

The box reminds me of the After Eight chocolates - they have been my favorites for a long time... I wanted to give them a decadence/luxurious feeling, just as the mint-flavored chocolate. And the color of the soaps is milky green, like real Absinthe after the louche. It was not intentional, but it is a happy coincidence. They are up for sale in my shop!

Refurbishing the shop

I always knew that my magic shop was not finished yet; even though it wasn't possible to stock up on more items, I was far from satisfied with it. So, inspired by the lovely Wise Ways Emporium (Deb's magic shop), I looked for new furniture for mine. I was very lucky, and found a double shelf that had just the exact measurements. So, here is a sneak peak...

Before:

After:

Even though it looks almost filled, I can assure that there is still plenty of room to add goodies. The black "wicker" shelf will be up for sale in my shop in a couple of days, filled up with witchy artifacts, so stay tuned...