Back From The Fair, With Goodies!!

Well good afternoon!!
Hope you're all okay and having a good Sunday!

Today was the fair in Woodhall, I call it Petwood but it's actually Lyndsey Fairs. I call it Petwood because it's held at the Petwood Hotel.

Anyways, enough rambling - here's some photos of the goodies I picked up!

I've split them into 3 different photos.

The first photo shows items I've bought that are purely for creative purposes. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with these things yet, but they were bargains so I grabbed them quick!

The second photo shows items that I've bought to finish The Olde Post Office. The post office is not completely finished, I'm still buying odd bits and bobs. It's slow work, the finishing touches, but these little bits were perfect and they were also bargains, so I grabbed them before anyone else could! There's also some glittery pipe cleaners there that I will use as tinsel for the Christmas tree when I start decorating the house for Christmas!

The last photo, the exciting one! I always save the best till last.. Items I've bought for the bakery! The image shows the tiles that'll I'll be using on the roof, the alley and inside the bakery. There is also a few bits there that I just had to have because I thought they looked great! I adore the little bread pot!!

So there we go, my new treasures. I'm going to dash off now to generate some ideas for what to use the creative items for, and I am going to give these new items a home!!

Happy Mini-ing!!
ShellbyFay
xx

Extension Finished!!

Good evening everyone!
It snowed. Humph! (I'm not a fan of the snow to be honest.) Everyone else seems to have snow, and I was kind of hoping we wouldn't have any snow for quite a while... but nope, the weather man predicted snow, we got snow. Grrr!
I planned on taking a drive to a dolls house shop I've found that's not too far away from where I live, but I've only been passed my driving test for 3 weeks, or about that, anyways, and so didnt fancy a drive in the snow to somewhere I've never been before...

Not all bad though, this snow business...

I convinced my dad to get the extension to the bakery finished..!!! (This is where I stop rambling on about snow and get down to the dolls house bit!)

After a few moans, grumbles, coffee's and head scratching he came up with this::

(Click the photos to see them larger!)

Now please, bare in mind this is the first dolls house related piece of woodwork my dad has ever done. He didn't have any fancy tools. Had no real idea of what he was doing, just my word for it. And ta da! It now has a door, a door I can open to get into and the roof is stuck on, but comes off! I'm thrilled to bits with it!!!

Today, I also realised that I went ahead and showed you photos of the new extension a little while ago without telling you what it was or why I was doing it... Bad huh?

Okay, I'll come clean and explain everything now. Well this part is going onto the back of the Bakers Dozen. The room part is going to be the actual bakery. The bit that just looks like my dad forgot to cut it off, will be a dirty, back alley which I'm just going to have a lot of fun with. I've not researched what Georgian alleys would've been like, so this will be my personal touch.

That leaves the orginal building empty, not for long though! This part will be the shop floor and the inside tea room.

Adding the extension gives me that bit of extra space to work with and means I can cram all my ideas into this project without having to hang most of the furniture from the ceiling and pretending the Georgians could fly...


So I hope you all like the progress so far, it's slow, but steady. I'm going to a dolls house fair tomorrow so I plan on picking up a few bits to start the messy work on the bakery next weekend!

Happy mini-ing
ShellbyFay
xx

The Building Work Has Begun!

So, as promised, this weekend the building work for The Bakers Dozen, has started. My dad and I drew out the templates on paper, for all the different pieces of the building. Then copied the templates onto the MDF. Then my dad cut all the pieces out individually and made sure they all fitted and matched.

And this was the result:

It's not all glued together and it doesn't have a door in it yet, we're still discussing what wall will open out and whether or not the roof will come apart, and then there's the "which door!?!?" issue - too many to choose from! Haha.

So there we go, work has officially started on The Bakers Dozen and next weekend, hopefully, the building work will be completed and I can get started on the interior and exterior decorating!

Getting Into The Christmas Spirit

This is the first Christmas I've had to be given the oppertunity to decorate and prepare my dolls house for the winter celebration! This week I've been eagerly making plans for decorating The Olde Post Office and drawing up plans for the new building work that will be done on the Bakers Dozen.. yes, I did say "new building work." You read it correctly.
Hopefully, fingers crossed, if the weather is dry tomorrow, my dad and I will be spending the day outside cutting pieces of wood and preparing the new part that'll be added onto the bakery.. so watch this space!!

So this week I've started the process of preparing The Olde Post Office for Christmas. I've decided that the kitchen, although not fully completed yet (will be for Christmas do not panic!), it'll be fully decked out with a Christmas feast on the table, garlands here there and everywhere and food keeping warm on the aga. I set to making a dent in the food making, and here's a photo below of what I've managed to make so far.
(Apologies for the dreadful lighting. It's only 5.45 here and it's already very dark and the lighting is not the best in this house.)

You can see in this photo the gravy boat, a couple of candy canes, some peas, a hot chocolate with a candy cane and marshmellows (i got the tutorial for the hot chocolate from one of the AIM magazines, can't remember which one though) the carrots with the turkey and if you look closely at the back of the turkey you can see a couple of roast potatos poking round the corner there. There is also some brussel sprouts round the other side of the turkey, but you can't see those. I will take a better photo when I've got the whole Christmas feast completed.

Hope you're not all suffering too badly from the horrible, cold weather and that you are looking forward to the festive season!

Happy Mini-ing
ShellbyFay
xx
 

Donuts & Cross Stitch!

Hello everyone!
I am sooo sorry that I haven't posted up any creation pics that I promised I would post up everyday for 28 days until the local fair. I think I've missed two nights now, so that's two creations to show you plus todays... Well my excuse is this: the annoying part that real life plays when you really want to get things done, you suddenly become busy needing to do things that, apparently, are more important than miniatures... humph.

So I'll show you these first of all: The donuts. Now I promise you, hand on heart that I intended to show you these on the second night of my promise.. but I lost them. I honestly lost all the little donuts. Well they turned up this morning so I spent what little time I had this morning and rushed to get them finished so that I could show you them now. I made two. One set for myself and another for a young friend who I promised I would make something for. Here's a photo:



Yum, yum, yum! The plate isn't brilliant because I made that myself when I first started making things from clay.. I really should do a second attempt at plate making.

Now for the cross stitch. I've been wanting to do some miniature cross stitch for some time now, but I wanted to start off with something basic.. it seems I always want to throw myself in the deep end and I end up choosing a design far to complicated for myself.

So I was reading the November's AIM magazine and came across a pattern of a lavender. Very pretty. It's supposed to be a cushion, but I think I've use an aida too big for this as it seems quite big. It's going to be a pretty big cushion. Any suggestions welcome for alternatives to use this design as, if not a cushion.

Here's a photo: 

You can get the pattern yourself here: http://www.scribd.com/full/40665430?access_key=key-67pda06urjyqo04jdk2 (the link is to the AIM magazine, skip to page 37 for the pattern.)

So tomorrow I have a day off, but I plan on catching up with a load of work I've got to do and by doing that I'll save myself some time for miniatures in the future.. yes? So depending on how tomorrow goes, I may/may not see you all tomorrow!

Anyways,

Happy mini-ing

ShellbyFay

Some news and my first doll! :)

Good evening everyone!! It's been a while since I last posted, so I thought I'd share some news and a creation with you.

Please, allow me to introduce you to Greg! Greg is an incompleted doll that I sculpted a couple of days ago, but put together today. I'm not sure when I'll be able to make some clothes for the poor chap, so I thought I'd show you a pic of him now anyway. Not bad for a first attempt I thought. He looks a bit grumpy though. I took the hints and tips from everyone I spoke to about attempting to make my own doll, and they all said my first attempt would come out like an ugly old man - they were right!

Now onto the news!! Work is about to begin on the Bakers Dozen; my long awaited second project! I have no new photos to show you, but you can see a picture of the Bakers Dozen in it's bare form by clicking on the Bakers Dozen tag below this post, or by going through my archive and visiting my very first couple of posts where I introduced you to my dolls houses. I did try putting up a link, but it's refusing to work tonight. Apologies for this.

So yes very exciting stuff. My dad is kindly building on a extra part to the bakery for me, which he'll do as soon as I can get the correct wood and the supplies I've ordered have arrived for him. I told him it had to be done before the local fair which is only 28 days away! So I promise over the next 28 days, I am going to aim to show 28 new creations! And Greg is the first one :D

Happy Mini-ing

ShellbyFay