Bastet

I haven't been making any miniatures lately, but I did rewire Bastet as the old lights under the floor stopped working. Here are two videos, first about the rewiring and the second about furnishing the bar.

Furniture

Here are pictures of some furniture I have made. The first ones are in 1/12 scale.

This rocking chair came as a part of a kit, so I have only assembled and painted it.

The same kit also contained a dining table and chairs, which I painted and then decorated with some printed cardstock.

This chair is from a set of finished furniture made of untreated wood. I painted the parts that would remain visible and then covered the rest with fabric.

The next one is in 1/6 scale and mostly made of pieces that came in packages of Lundby dollhouse furniture and lights. The darker pieces are very dense and hard to saw, so the dimensions were primarily determined by the length of the pieces, so I wouldn't need to saw any more than was absolutely necessary.

Here is the finished bench.

Trunk for 1/24-1/12 scales

I have built a couple of 1/144 scale dollhouses from laser cut kits. The wood in those is very thin and the bits left over after removing the house parts can be used for various miniature projects. One of the things I have made using them is a trunk that fits several scales.

This is the trunk before painting. The black parts are cardstock, the lid is made of foamcore, the strips around the lid are leftover dollhouse skirting, and the rest of the wooden parts are from the dollhouse kits.

Here is the finished trunk with gold paint, some plastic decorations and a coat of sealer to keep the decorations secure.

Printables

As the cartridges for my old color printer would have cost more than an entirely new machine, I bought a HP Deskjet 1050 all-in-one. It replaced not only my old printer, but also the scanner.

Among the first items I made with it are these 1:6 scale printables from Jim's Printable Minis.

I also wanted to test the new scanner, so I scanned some of my magazines for 1:6 scale. Vogue had a black back cover, so I didn't scan it, but the others have the back cover as well.

I also scanned my crossword book and a cardboard package of chocolate and resized them to 1:12 scale.

I made a miniature version of Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur" with Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations. I made a smaller version first as it didn't need as many inside pages as the 1:6 scale version. The miniature version has a few pages from the beginning of the book, selected by how they would look in small scale, and about dozen pages starting from the first page of Chapter 1, which is the right side page here.

The inside pages are black and white (except the left side page here, which is grayscale), so I printed them with a laser printer on regular copy paper. Laser printer meant there was no need for fixative for these pages.

The cover was printed on cardstock. It looks a bit worn as I scanned the separate paper cover rather than the covers of the book. The book is so big that it was easier this way. The light parts of the cover are gold colored and that doesn't seem to print very well.

I have asked the current copyright holder, Random House UK, for a permission to make the files for this miniature book available for others. If I get the permission, the files will become available on my web site at some point.

Classroom desks and chairs

I realized I hadn't added these here. I needed a classroom setup for my photo story, so I had to make some desks and chairs. The table tops are made of pieces of cork left over from other projects and the vertical parts are made of wooden cigarette holders.

Here are the unfinished desks and chairs:

The wooden cigarette holders belonged to my uncle and my father saved them for me when cleaning the house after my uncle passed away.

Here are the finished pieces in the classroom set, which is just a temporary one, set up inside a painted plastic container.

Custom Catwalk Kitty Chase

Customizing Petite Catwalk Kitties is fun. Here is what I did with a Chase doll. First, I opened her hair and there sure was a lot of it.


Then she got some temporary tattoos, which I covered with satin sealer to prevent damage to them. I painted her top, because it would have been hard to make a fabric top that would not have covered the tattoo on her back. She also got an eyebrow ring, which is piece of gold plated metal wire bent to shape and pushed through the vinyl (first I made a hole with a needle). At this point, I had cut the hair a little shorter to make it easier to handle her, but final haircut was not decided yet.

She originally had green shoes, but as I had an Anika doll I was going to customize too, I swapped their feet and Chase got boots. They were originally white, but I painted them black, added some glitter to the flower patterns on the boots and covered everything with sealer.

And here she is finished. The skirt is made of black leather and the jewelry from thin copper sheet. I decided to cut her hair fairly short and I think it turned out very nice.

Making miniature stone statues for a dollhouse

These little cats came with Petite Catwalk Kitties. As I bought a couple of Chases, I got two similar cats and decided to use them as decorations on both sides of the door of the Birchfield house.

Here I have attached them into a piece of wood using mirror mounting tape to make painting easier. As the tape is fairly thick, the cats do not touch the base and that ensures the paint won't make them stick to it.



The next stage is painting the cats with a "stone" color. Anything from off-white to beige and even some darker shades are suitable for this. I used solvent-based paints as the cats are made of hard plastic and can take it.



The final stage is blackwashing. Take some white spirit (or turpentine) and add a drop or two of black paint in it (if you use water-soluble paints, use water instead). The amount of paint depends on how much of it you want on the surface of the statue, that is, how old and dirty the statue should look like. This takes some experimenting to get it right. Then just apply a coat of the mixture to the statue and let it dry.

Dollhouse kitchen

I found a method for keeping the fridge doors closed. A hobby shop had this thin magnetic sheet you can cut to desired shape and size.

Here is the fridge painted and magnets in place. When you cut the magnets, you need to cut one side first, then place it against the sheet to find a place for cutting the opposite part.

The last piece missing from the kitchen was the oven. I made it using balsa wood. The basic structure is very simple.

The glass on the oven door is a piece of overhead transparency.

The hinge is made of thin cardboard. That is the easiest way of making a hinge and it is durable enough after it has been painted as the oven door is very light. I used the same method for the fridge. I used magnets for keeping the oven door closed.

The cooking plates are pieces of black rubber and the grey buttons are from buttons of an old remote control.

I know there are different types of ovens, but I'm used to having an electric one, so that was the easiest for me to make.

Here is a picture of the entire kitchen.

Dollhouse fridge

None of the dollhouse fridges I have was suitable for the dollhouse I'm building, so I decided to make one specifically designed for this house. It's a good idea as I have made the kitchen cupboards myself and plan on making the oven as well.

The kitchen looks like this:

I used a variety of materials for the fridge as there was not enough left of any one material. So, there's cardboard, foam core, balsa wood and a piece of some harder wood. The structure is basically that of a regular cupboard, except the shelves aren't as deep as they could be. This is because there must be room for the shelves inside the door.

This is the inside of the door. The (approximately) 45 degree angle on one side is there to make sure the door can be closed. Another option would be to make the shelves a lot shorter.

The fridge isn't finished yet. Next, it needs to be painted and some sort of handles attached. I also need to figure out how to keep the doors closed. I'm thinking of using small magnets, if I can find ones small enough.