Pretzels!

Hi everyone!

I've recently made a little set of delicious pretzels that can be displayed in your miniature kitchen or bakery!

There are 3 tiny pretzels glued into place on the paper doily which is glued into the real glass cake stand. The cake stand includes a lid which is removeable.

There are also 3 loose pretzels for you to display as you wish and a little metal pincer.

The paper bag is also included.

I've added this pretzel set to my Etsy shop: Diddies

Hope you like them!

Back soon with some more miniature progress!

ShellbyFay

xx

HELLO!!

Hello everyone!
I hope you are all well, happy and are getting on brilliantly within the mini-ing world.
I apologise for my extremely long absense. I've been so busy finishing college (qualified at last!) and I have also moved bedrooms!

If you can remember my last post was about the moving of The Olde Post Office to the annex and the extreme lack of space in my bedroom. Well now I have moved bedrooms, to the biggest bedroom in the house! I have tons of room for dolls house, I could buy hundreds more now - and I have a balcony to fill if I wanted to!

I'm unable to post any photos at the moment, but I am quite eager to show you photos of the move around and then shortly to follow there should be some more progress posts on Bruion and The Bakery when I finally get round to spending some time on these projects! :)

Bye for now!

A Sad Day For The Residents of The Olde Post Office

This weekend I grew increasingly frustrated with the lack of space in my very small bedroom. You've seen the photos - it's ALWAYS cluttered and there's never a lot of walking space. So something had to go. And considering I'm now working on two new projects and I can't decide which one I like do the best, The Olde Post Office drew the short straw. I'm not getting rid of it. Ohhh no!! It's visiting the annex for a year or so while I finish Bruion & The Bakery. I'm planning to re-decorate The Olde Post Office and do it to some kind of time scale. It might not even be a post office once I've finished it for a second time. Who knows?
Anyways, here's some photos for you!!


Deciding on where to start was the trickiest part. I had heaps of boxes to put everything in and I found a box full of unstained furniture too!

Zena took refuge on my bed. The floor was too cluttered to move and around and the bed looked comfy. Yes, they are stones in the roof of Bruion. I am using real stones as large stones to decorate the outside part of Bruion. I needed somewhere to put them, the roof seemed like a good idea!

Here is my small collection of mini's.At this point I still hadn't finished emptying the house. I sorted everything into groups.

The residents of The Olde Post Office. Greg didn't seem all that happy, he was comfy in his bed and now misses his book. Penny hasn't shut up moaning, she doesn't find the laptop charger a very comfortable seat and would like to return to the post office. Malcom is happy, he keeps asking me if he can have a job at the bakery when it's completed. Ernie says fair well to The Olde Post Office, he knows it's not gone forever.

All the mini's now put away. Zena looked pretty confused...

*Sob sob* the empty space where The Olde Post Office once stood..

I tried to convince mom to let me leave the houses on the landing, but it appears everyone likes to use the bathroom...

  

Zena got mardy with me. She gave me a look to say "This is my bedroom too, shouldn't you consult me before making changes?" I guess she has a point. Now that she lives indoors and spend 90% of her time asleep on my bed, maybe she should have a say on what goes on in my room... to bad I can't bark.

So the Olde Post Office has gone upstairs to the annex, where it will stay for a little while. I'm not sure if I'm sad or happy. I'm sad because my very first dolls house has been removed and is now hidden away where no one can see it, but I have now space in my room - enough so that I can even do a little dance! - but the Bakery now has somewhere to go.


I'm off now to find a box to put the residents in... Penny is getting on my nerves!!

Bits of progress, here and there.

Hi everyone!

Okay so it was Tuesday since I last posted. That's so long ago! And I have to be honest, not an awful lot has happened since then.
I'm still poorly with the cold. I've been sneezing and blowing my nose a lot today, so I think I'm starting to get it out of my system. Yay! Kind of wish my nose was a body part I could de-attach and leave somewhere while I worked... but then I'd lose it and look pretty strange for a while...

Anyways, enough of that. In between studying, sneezing, sleeping and sniffing Olbas oil - I've been doing just odd bits of work on The Bakers Dozen and Bruion. Not an awful lot, but every little helps - or so Tesco says.

I've been painting the outside of The Bakers Dozen gray, ready to do the brick stencilling. It still needs a second coat, but I can do that in the morning. I've also painted the inside of the extentsion. Here's a photo:

 The Georgian's didn't have many colours, not until the Regency times anyway. I found this shade of colour on a website that showed you different colours the Georgian's had. I thought this would look good in the bakery part. It's a colour that will open the room up a bit, as it isn't very big. Everytime I think about furniture, I have to remind myself it's not as big as The Olde Post Office kitchen. I really like this colour, although in some lights it can look too pinky. It's a homebase brand tester post (I never get the big tins or the expensive stuff!) and I think it's called Ballet. I might have to dirty the colour up a bit as I go along with the project, I don't want it to look too new and fresh.

Last night I painted the roof of Bruion. I've had a change of plan. My original idea was to thatch the roof, but during my research, getting some inspiration, I came across a few fairy dwellings that had mossy roof's. I've been doing that staring thing again. Looking at Bruion with unusually wide eyes while my tea gets cold and I've decided Bruion would look a lot better with a mossy roof. It would look more woodlandy I think... I hope anyway.

Here's the painted roof photo:

This colour is a Wilkinson's tester pot and it's called Oak Leaf. I usually use Wilkinson's colours and they are so unbelievably cheap and I'm usually in that area of town. This is actually a really lovely colour. I'm not usually a fan of green, but this colour is very calm and pretty.

Tonight I grabbed the bag of moss I found in Homebase and thought about sticking it to the roof. Only problem was, the moss was more like thin string. No. Didn't like it. So I put it back in the bag, gave it to mom as a late Christmas present (not that she appreciated it much) and dug out some other stuff I'd bought to use as grass for the downstairs part. Here's a photo:

Much better! The box I had filled just under half of the roof space and I pulled it apart and did it bit by bit. I'm really pleased with the effect so I've sent my mom to the model shop tomorrow to buy some more. This stuff is actually used for bushes on railway models. My brother got a model trainset for Christmas. I took him to the model shop to spend his Christmas money and found this. I don't think it'll make good grass though, looks a bit thick. But it's perfect for the mossy look! What do you think?

Tomorrow, I hope to get the rest of the roof done, and the second coat of gray paint on The Bakers Dozen.

See you tomorrow!

Brick Work Completed On The Bakers Dozen Extension

Hi everyone!

Today, I've been working super hard to get the brick work finished on the extension to The Bakers Dozen! I'm really pleased with it so far, as it was my first attempt at using the brick stencils from The Brompley Craft Products supplier. I used their flemish bond stencil and their red brick compound. It's come out beautifully.

Here's a photo of what it looks like now:

The window and door is not glued into place yet as I still have to paint them. I placed them in just to give you, as well as myself, a general idea. These will be painted white. I also placed the roof on to give another general idea. I'm going to be applying roof slates to this so hopefully this part of the bakery is going to look pretty swish.

Over the next couple of nights I'm going to be painting the rest of the bakery outside grey, ready to do the brick work on it on Friday. I'm also going to paint inside this part of the bakery if I get the time to do so.

Hopefully, if college work is kind to me, I'll be able to add some tiles or wood flooring to this building at the weekend!

I'm at college on Wednesday's and Thursday's, so I only have time to do mini work in the evenings. I'm suffering from the cold that's going around and the nights are dark; living in a cottage you can understand lighting isn't always great. So please bare with me!

Fingers crossed, I'll be back tomorrow!
Good night
xx

Good Evening Everyone

Today, I had the chance to show you lots of pictures. Pictures including the new Etsy item that will be listed within a few days, the progress I made on The Bakers Dozen and a few idea's I've come about for Bruion. But, I've decided to change my plans a smidge.

My blog is going to undergo a small make-over. You may not even notice it unless you visit every single day, but I'm making a lot of changes for the New Year. My Etsy shop, Diddies, will be going under a small make-over too! :D

So I apologise for not showing you any photo's today, I promise there will be an exciting blog post for you all tomorrow!

See you tomorrow!

The Big Clean

Hi everyone!

I'm so sorry that I didn't get round to post yesterday. Real life got in the way, pain in the bum when that happens! I didn't get any work done on Bruion which has upset me alot! I've also got to mention to you now, that I have changed the name of The Enchantment. I've changed it to Bruion, which is Gaelic for Fairy Dwelling. I thought it fitted the property nicely and has a mystical ring to it. So there's my bit of news concerning my newest property.
I still haven't been able to do any work on The Bakers Dozen. I haven't been able to get to my local DIY store to get the Bostik I am needing to do the brick stencil work.

So yesterday, in between the RL issues that were taking place (nothing bad or serious, don't worry - just organising a New Years night out!) I decided to have a huge clear out. My room had all of a sudden become a big mess. I've always said, my room isn't messy - it's an obstacle course designed to keep me fit. It had gone beyond this.

I took this photo after about an hours worth of tidying up and trying to find a space for myself. You see that patch in the floor? It used to be small enough just so I could sit on the floor and play around making some mini's that would never come to anything. I'd managed to clear enough room so I could rotate in my little space.

I took this second photo after another two hours of cleaning and tidying. It still wasn't finished but it was getting there. I could lay roll down and roll around in my little space if I wanted too! Not been able to do that before! :D

And then I came downstairs for a cup of tea and a snack. I decided, because I had to go out and I didn't have enough to do anything constructive with Bruion, I'd try and make something from clay. So I went to my room, managed to find all my clay stuff straight away without spending another ten miniatures searching for the clay box itself!
I sat down at the dining room table. My mom screaming at me to cover the table with heaps of newspaper after I PVA'd it the other day! Eeek.
I found myself getting frustrated when I couldn't find the clay I wanted, or my nail polish remover or the embossing tool I needed. So I thought about having a clear out instead.

Yay! I'm so pleased I did. Here's a photo of my now tidyish clay stuff:

Doesn't it all look good? My clay tin is all organised, I had lots of little bags filled with clay that had obviously been mixed up and saved for a later date, but I hadn't a clue what clay was for and so took a deep breath and threw it away. There was a lot. Trust me. It was horrible, but it had to be done. Now my tin looks pretty empty... clay shopping me thinks! One-armed-Greg (we all call him that now as he lost his arm when I tried to make him a pj top) sat and watched me tidy everything up with interest. He was relieved. He's not in the cardboard box containing my blades, embossing tools, tweezers and all things pointy when I'm not working. Poor guy.

Take a look at my beautiful new blade set. My dad came across these and thought they'd make the perfect Christmas present for me. They are fabulous and I'm so happy with them! There's nothing like a new, clean blade to cut your clay with! Thanks Dad! :D

Here you can see my organised clay tin, and the bag of scrap clay. There doesn't look like a lot in it from this photo, but there was, it was bursting.



So, my New Years resolution regarding my clay stuff is:

To not allow for so much scrap clay!
To fix Greg's arm
To keep all my clay stuff clean, tidy and organised!

One last thing before I leave, I'd like to make a huge welcome to all my new followers! Thank you so much for following this blog, I appreciate it very much!

See you tomorrow!

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
 

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



Books and Nursery Items!

Aren't I doing well with all these posts!? Certainly making up for those long gaps!

Here I have a couple of pictures for you of just some things I finished off today. I'm not sure, but you may have seen a couple of these items already dotted about in previous pictures. Today I just finished them properly.

Here are some books I made. They are mainly children's books but there are a couple of other books that I made for the study and to put on the parent's bedside table. You can make out a few of them. If you click on the picture it'll become bigger so that you can see them more clearly.

Here are some games and pictures I found for the childrens bedroom. I have taken a few childrens drawings from Google images and the picture of the colouring book. I also found the image in the picture on Google too. I made the blackboard myself, but I think I might re-do this as I'm not totally happy with the picture.
I found the jigsaw and the chess box on Jim's Printable Mini's. I cut the missing jigsaw pieces out with a blade and you can just see them next to the colouring book. There are also a couple of colouring pencils there too.

So not an awful lot to show you, but they have filled up the study and the children's bedroom quite nicely :)


Also, today I have been further inspired to make my own dolls for the Georgian bakery, The Bakers Dozen, which is my next project. If anyone has any helpful pointers they could share with me, I'd be ever so grateful!

Happy mini-ing
ShellbyFay

Flooring!!

I am a very bad, bad blogger aren't I!? I have been reading everyone's blogs and have found lots of wonderful pieces of inspiration - for current and future projects; but I can happily say that the reason I have not been blogging is because I have (honestly!) been working on the Post Office!

Here's the progress I've made in the last week:



Post Office Flooring. I made this with fat lollypop sticks, mahogany wood stain and stuck them to the floor with Tacky Wax!



Kitchen flooring. I decided I didn't like the card tiled flooring, so I made some wooden flooring just the same as I did with the Post Office. Only this time I stained the lollypop sticks with "Pine" woodstain.

So, no new furniture. You've seen the fireplace. That candle has fallen over. So whats new? Have you noticed the stairs? And the skirting? Yup - they weren't there a little while back :) A friend helped me cut the angles in my skirting, because it's wood and you know what I'm like with wood - I mean heck, God knows what came over me when I managed to make that fireplace!



So haven't I been a good girly :) I doesn't look like a lot has been done, but this was in a week - and now that I'm back at college that's a lot for me! I do have some more progress to show you, but I'm making sure I've got those tiny details sorted and then I'll post up some piccies!

Also, I would like to welcome all my new followers! Thank you so much for following my blog and all the lovely comments; they are greatly appreciated and really make me push to upload my progress for you! You're all stars.

Now, I've got some research to do for my next project - The Bakers Dozen, which is going to be done in the Georgian Era - so if anyone has any pointers they would like to share I'd be very grateful.

So, bye for now!!

Shellbyfay