Thursday, August 23, 2012

Writing Letters


Today's mail brought another wonderful piece by Linda Master. http://miraclechicken.blogspot.com/ It is a gorgeous brass ink well and carved wood stand. The wood has been routered to insure the well doesn't turn over. I have raised the ink well so you can see how pretty it is. She also sent perfect white and a brown quill feathers.

OOPS! I neglected to say Linda turned the brass ink well. That was her first attempted at turning metal on a lathe.

Thank you so much Linda!!!

Friday, August 17, 2012

Someone Has Been Out Shopping In the Rain


That someone is me. And yes, thankfully we are getting some badly needed rain today.



I was wandering around Michael's craft store and found these tiny purple flowers. When I saw them I thought they had been dried. No! Instead they have been preserved by some method that makes them feel like you just picked them. I decided to add them to some peonies I made.

I also couldn't resist the William Morris acorn wallpaper I found. I guess I have had acorns on the brain lately ;-) The umbrella was a ETSY find. It is just perfect. http://www.etsy.com/shop/FranMadeMinis The the fabric has wonderful fluffy folds at the top.

Friday, August 10, 2012

The Egg's Nest (Nutshell Cottage)



The Egg's Nest features a second floor furnished bedroom that can be seen through the surround windows. Those windows were made from 8 double windows, four of which had to be cut in half to make this octagon shape. There is a cup and a vase of flowers on the night stand next to the bed. There is also a chair in the room. I am afraid you cannot see that in these photos.


It is a gift for a special friend, Linda Master http://miraclechicken.blogspot.com/ . Linda has made so many beautiful miniatures for me in the past year. I wanted to make her a house that would reflect her love of birds. She gave up sitting out on her porch this spring / summer because several robins and barn swallows kept deciding build nests there.


All the "timbers" are made of real twigs and the 'daub' is opaque embossing powder. Filling the areas between the twigs with glue and powder is a very tedious proposition. It requires several careful fills to bring the 'daub' up to level with the 'timbers'. I think filling those spaces gives a much more realistic appearance then paint would. The twigs insure I do not have uniform looking timbers.The nests are made of the tiniest acorn caps I have ever seen. I made polymer eggs to put in them.

When I posted that I was totally out of acorn caps, it was Linda who went out and searched for early falling ones and mailed them to me. I couldn't believe it because unbeknownst to her, I was already working on her house and I had to have more caps to finish it.




Thanks also to Tom, who provided the big acorn caps from his yard in Parma, Ohio. "Kilimanjaro"(AKA Kilmouski) and I look forward to your fall crop!



The village is growing!