Fuses arrived - we have light :D

This time I was smart and ordered 20 fuses at one time - now I have some to burn :D Here's how the house looks like with the lights on:

Manged to do some small things today, a basket for spare toilet paper rolls and a holder for it.

The bedroom

The lights closer

And here's some new stuff for Poe's house

Now I have to start hunting for some Waco glass paint as I need lots of more and the first one is now finished - it just seems that it's really hard to find.

New pics of Toscana house

Here's some new pics of Toscana house, there's some new stuff :)

The kitchen got a fridge and shelving on the wall.

On the cooker there's my new Bialetti  :) On the wall is a new frying pan. Notice, I have Italian dish washing liquid :)

Shelving and Sonya's fab jars and Chianti bottle :)

Sonya's painting is on the wall :)

The atelier

Her paint brushes are in pretty bad shape :D I'll have to try some nicer ones tomorrow.

Should start with the dividing walls, but I might have to make the roof first so I can see how the walls should slope. It's going to be difficult, let me tell you :)

Wonderful gifts from Sonya :) and some furniture to Poe's house

Look what the post brought today from Rome, Sonya:

I just love all of them, perfect for my Toscana house :) Look at the wonderful basket, the ceramics,  the chianti bottle, the small Provolone cheese, the preserves, all of it - I'm really happy :) Thank you Sonya SO much!

Here's what I have for Poe's house ready:

The wooden sheet is the floor of the house - so small. So I've decided to attach the Primrose to the Orchid in order to get some more room. The Primrose will be the kitchen and on the ground floor of Orchid will be the living room/enterance. Upstairs is the bedroom/study and maybe the bathroom, I haven't decided yet the actual era the house is in.

And isn't the picture frame fab, it's made from kit by Cynthia Howe.

Now off to fit all the new lovely stuff to my Toscana house :)

Wonderful gifts from Glenda :)

There was a package from New Zealand in the post box today and look what a wonderful minies were inside:

Most of the blue/gray basket are going to the Bakkery, but at least one is going to the Toscana house as are the wonderful flowers, they are so delicate and life like, I just love them :) And the round basket might also go to the Toscana house, as it fits there so well.

Thank you Glenda so much, you really are one talented miniaturist :)

Here's link to Glenda's blog:

http://peppercornminis.blogspot.com/

And to her Etsy shop

http://www.etsy.com/shop/undancey

Toscana house coming together, finally :)

tI've been working with the Toscana house for the weekend what I've had time from my son's hockey tournament. And here's how it looks like now:

I couldn't put the lights on as I burned today 4 fuses before I got one defect light fixed and now I'm out of fuses.

There will be a shower in the bathroom in that small tiled square. I added some wall scones above the bedroom fireplace.

This is how the work space/atelier looks, the door opening on the right is going to be access to a small balcony.

The table is made of ready turnings and balsa, I am really happy how it turned out :)

Here's how the livingroom looks like from the kitchen.

Still tons to do, but some progress. Now I have to figure out the shape of the roof before I can do the dividing walls upstairs.

Now for a well earned cig and cup of coffee :)

Welcome Tallulah Belle, Anama, Carol, Bözse, Hanna and Jody :)

Nice to have you all here :) The amount of followers is increasing quite fast, with this phase it's not going take long before I have to have another give away :D

Now off to the ice rink, it's going to be quite a show as I just got info that I have to do the announcements, do the real time results to web and also keep the game score sheet...

Slow progress

Here's the very little what I have done today:

The table is bought one, I just painted it to resemble mahogany and I found excellent paint for it - brown Waco glass paint. I didn't have to sand the table at all and the paint leaves a really nice shiny, even surface and dries really fast :) Beside it is an antique birdcage, from the looks of it for a really big bird :D Hope that the person who it's going to likes it - antique, birdcage - ringing any bells for someone ;) And if you (a hint more - N.) recognize yourself, you can stuck it to the very furthest corner in your new project :D

I've been figuring out the lighting for the Toscana house - burned 2 fuses and noticed that the bathroom light doesn't work anymore so probably more soldering to be done. As I really don't want to do all the lighting myself (althoug diy ones seem to work much better than the bought ones) I've been surfing in the internet to find some nice lights. And yes, have found many, but the prices...

I'm stuck with the Toscana house before I have most of the lights before I can do the floor for the second floor. Needed are 2 table lights, 1 wall light and 1 ceiling light and before the roof can go up I need still 2 more ceiling lights.

I was going through my building materials and thank goodness I have enough wood for the Toscana houses floors. I have also these nice real sandstone tiles and I'm going to use them in the Poe houses kitchen. I'm probably going to do the Poe/Orchid as a mirror image and will leave the other end without windows as I want a fireplace and chimney to the house. The stairs are also a small question as if I do the house as a mirror image, the stairs would come up in the front of the bay window so I might have to use different kind of stairs than the ones supplied in the kit.

Weekend is going to be busy as my son has big ice-hockey tournament and I'm there working so hope that I get some minies done.

Some progress in Toscana Kitchen and ideas for the new houses :)

Here's some small progress that has happened in the Toscana kitchen today. The gas cooker got some knobs, did a hanging rail for kitchen utensilities, a balsa wood cutting board (needs still a knife), got a quite (very) rustic sink done (it's made from Cernit and really didn't turn out how I would liked it to be, but it will do), got the tabs on place, did a soap holder and also some dried herbs (it's actually wild oregano from Crete, quite tasty stuff).

Also did some organizing in the living room, the fern on the windowsill is new, it turned out quite nicely :) I did use some ready mini fern leaves to it. I dropped so many things and knocked down the side table so many times when organizing stuff that now on I'll secure most of the stuff with Tacky wax so they keep in place :)

And yes, I've now made up my mind with the Orchid, it's going to be mainly Poe's Raven house, but might get some influence from other sources - Poe's homes have been quite plain and simple and I'll see if I can keep it that way - most probably not as I love to stuff the houses :D

And I finally found a place where to buy some architectural cardboard, the stuff that they use in their miniature house models. So, some cardboard coming by post :) And that means... ANOTHER HOUSE :D Yes, you read correctly, I'm going to build a fourth house simultaneously with the Bakkery, Toscana house and Poe. It's going to be a NY 1 bedroom apartment on the top floor in a red brick house. The interior will be wood, whites, beiges and bottle green. It will be almost a exact copy of a French interior designers work, but I'll releave him later on, see how well I get the house done :) The apartement that I'm taking the inspiration is actually located in Paris, but I will move it to NY as I love the old apartment buildings there. It's going to be hard work as there are so many things that need to be done from scratch, the most difficult thing will be the spiral staircase.

Welcome Estefania, Geneviève, Bogna, Pilar and Dale

Really nice to have you all here, hope that you enjoy my blog :)

Ira

Some ideas for my Orchid house?

Yesterday I got the flu and feel so tired all the time, so didn't do any minies, instead did tons of googling. I have a small problem with my Greenleaf Orchid house - it was originally supposed to be a house owned by an adventurer who has collected all this weird stuff all over the world. BUT, the house is way too small and has too "open" layout for the feeling I was thinking for the house so now I don't have any ideas. The definite thing is that the house is going to be painted black outside and will have dark gray shingles. I call the house The Dark House, but now I need some ideas who is living there. I don't want to make a witches house or a halloween type haunted house and but something dark, scary and a bit evil would go just fine. Thought about funeral home, but don't think I want to see it too often.

I would like to do a small, walled shady garden around the house, no flowers and maybe the garden to be in the late fall so not too many leaves in the trees. My head is totally empty, I can't come up any movie or story that could be my guideline. I do love vampires, but I think that the house is too small and plain for them also, though I could try to add a tower to it?  I love the looks of this house

Have any ideas?

Got some new houses

Yesterday I went to pick up my new houses - the Greenleaf Primrose, Orchid and Lily and OMG - they sure have tons of pieces! The Primrose and Orchid probably will be quite ok to do, but the Lily - really don't know if I'm able to put it together...

I was also a bit dissapointed of the quality - some of the plywood sheets are a bit warped and there's a lot of sanding to be done as all the edges are quite rough. Also the wood is so thin, that it I'm probably going to break many of the pieces. I'll have to start with the Orchid and see how the pieces fit together and how much warping is going to happen when painting etc. them. The Lily will be staying in the package for a LONG time and if building the smaller houses is a pain in the butt, I'll consider selling it.

Well, they were cheap ones, so one can't expect any wonderful quality :)

Kitchen coming together in the Toscana house

I've been doing some kitchen cabinet set bashing. I wanted to do the kitchen for the Toscana house, but didn't feel like building the cabinets from scratch so I bought this cheap modern kitchen set and did some bashing :)

There's still missing the sink and tabs as well as the knobs from the gas cooker. And the fridge, which is a pain to find a suitable one, really don't want to do it myself. Tomorrow I'll try to do some herbs and a pelargonium to the kitchen and I don't know if I should tile the back splas area or not.

And to replace some of the loss in the bakkery I did some more Fimo cream tarts, which don't attract the dogs :D

Salt dough and dogs....

Not a good combination. One of our dogs ate all my baquettes, chocolate cakes, buns etc. last night. What a wonderful suprise - not. So, I have to start to do some experimenting if varnishing would make the dough not eatable or to find some spice etc. that makes the dough not appealing to the dogs. It's going to be hard, as the our dogs eat EVERYTHING except canned mushrooms - there has to be something seriously wrong with them :D

So, if you have dogs, keep the salt dough away from them. Or I would believe that normal dogs wouldn't eat it, but for our dogs the whole meaning of life is to EAT.

Now off for a walk with them,

Ira

A wonderful website!

Go and see the work of  Rita Pillman, one very talented miniaturist, she has done some wonderful stuff. http://www.pillisminis.de/projekte.htm

And the winners are...

The Old Maid , Geneviève and Janice  :) And it was lucky that all you three liked the different colours :) The Old Maid is getting the black set, Geneviève the beige and Janice the red.

Have a nice Sunday you all,

Ira

Choco cakes, witches safety aerodynamic wall breaker broom and some other minies

I did a couple of chocolate cakes, here are close ups of them so you can see the texture of the salt dough. The salt chrystals are really visible in these macro pics, but don't stand out that much for the naked eye.

Here's my aerodynamic wall breaker broom with ostrich feathers :)

Some Italian food packages with my potatoes

Soda siphon, a statue, thorpy, thread and an ashtray

 Bakkery's kitchen has gotten a fridge and some other small nick nacks

The shop area has gotten a new counter, have to paint it, the bakings are just stuffed to the shelving out of way

Next week I have to do some more work on the houses, they have been quite negleted for the last week.

More albums/books and some baking

Here's what I've done today - it looks so small amount, it's amazing how long the minies take time to do!

Albums

Bakings

Finnish buns

Baquettes and Finnish dark bread

Potatoes, unwashed :)

Waffles with cream and strawberries

All the bakings are made from salty dough which contains equal parts of flour and salt, then add some oil and water. It was the first time I dried to do anything with it and I was really positively suprised :) The texture is more close to the real baking than with polymer clay but it's not as easy to work with. To do the dark bread I added lots of cocoa powder to the dough. It was such fun, that I think I'll continue to experiment with it what you can add to the dough etc. Just make sure that you don't have any cuts in your hands, I have and it was not too nice :) And be aware if you have dogs - they seem to like this stuff some reason, I had them accompanying me and drooled all over kitchen floor...

Tomorrow is the drawing day :)

An award (got me laughing) and welcome new followers :)

I got an award from Sonya at http://cannellaemelograno.blogspot.com/ Grazie :)

When I saw it, I had a momentary miss reading happening and read first "Honest CRAP" :D Well, spot on, I was thinking - LOL! I'm a bit tired you know, went to bed at 2 am, woke up at 5 am to let one of the dogs outside, fell asleep, forgot the dog outside and woke up at 6.30 am as she was barking like mad by the fence - I can imagine that our neibourghs don't like me too much at the moment :D

Well, the Crap-award would be nice addidition to the kick ass-award, I could award myself almost daily :D

Welcome new followers, Alafosca, Si, Natascha and Flora :)

Give away update

Wow, that was fast - 100 followers! It's good that you all didn't need to wait until next year ;) I'll give it a bit more time and do the drawing of the winners at Sunday 18th in the morning, good luck to your all :)

And welcome Caterina, nice to have you here :)

Ira

3 to go - then a 100 follower give away :)

I could never imagined that I get this many followers to my blog and so many wonderful friends from the mini world :) So thank you all very, very much :)

So, I'm having a give away, when I reach 100 followers, I'll pick the winners randomly. But, this can be a long wait, you never know, I might get the 100th follower next year :D

So, just leave feedback to this post and when doing so, mention which set you like the most.

The black & white set

There's a woolen throw, an album, spool of black thred, jug with b&w flowers, strawberry-banana cream tarts, a chocolate bar and a block of Marseille soap (real)

The red & white set

There's a woolen throw, a jug with white flowers, a r&w cook book, a kettle holder, strawberry-pink grapefruit cream tarts, a chocolate bar and a block of Marseille soap (real)

The beige rustic set

There's a woolen throw, an album with Fleur de Lily, a rustic metal basket with sea shells, an Eiffel Tower charm, kiwi-orange cream tarts, chocolate bar, a block a Marseille soap (real)

And a warning - the pictures are good making the stuff look probably too good, so no disappointments please :)

And still one thing - I'm cutting the following persons from this give away:

Glenda from Peppercorn Minies

Norma from Make Mine Mini

Sonya from Cannella e Melograno

Michelle from Poppenhuis en Miniaturen

Aren't I mean? Well girls, you're all getting your own special packages in the next couple of weeks ;)

Once more thank you all for making my mini world experience such a wonderful thing :)

Ira