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

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

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