Crafting together (autumn) - November

It was my turn to get birthday swaps when we met two weeks ago :)
Jolinda and Monique surprised me with wonderful presents for my Hogsmeade cottage!

Monique had made me a Mandrake in a pot, and a Halloween themed cross stitch cushion. The flower basket with the red roses and the macramé wall hanging was made bij Jolinda. They'll get a good spot with Bianca and Penny in the cottage :)

As I mentioned last time, we wanted to make a crow or raven for the small autumn themed scene and maybe, if we'd have time, a scare crow :)
I'd found this tutorial on Youtube that looked very clever. A bit bigger than 1:12 scale but that shouldn't be a problem.
Just getting a proper basic shape for the bird's body, however, certainly was! :)
Monique succeeded a lot faster than Jolinda and I did, but at the end of the time together we all had at least the body finished. Legs, feet and tail were another story though ^^

I finished it a few days later. It wasn't the most easy thing to do, but I felt very accomplished when I managed it! The 3 feathers I used for the tail are form my own lovebird Taco. I cut them and painted them black :)

Time for the crow to go and sit on the fence.

I didn't make the scare crow after all, because I didn't want to add more things in the scene, but I know Monique and Jolinda did. Jolinda's can be seen here in her autumn scene; click!
The little toad is made by Kim from Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo.

 

Next time, in December, we'll be making some Christmas miniatures. And then next year it's time to continue with the Italian project ;)

Sunflowers and a kite

In October we'd started a small autumn themed scene with the mini club. Afterwards I've  added some sunflowers and a kite.

I started without a tutorial, at first following Jolinda's example. The flowers are made from tissue paper, painted with acrylic paint in different shades of yellow and orange.
I used Jolinda's daisy punch, which looks like this one, I think. Each flower has three layers and in the middle I attached an extra paper circle with a bit of herbal tea/coffee mix glued on :)
The stem is made with floral wire and floral tape. I added some extra layers of tape at the end to get it tapered. Then I glued the stem to the back of the flower.

With another (flower) punch and some green painted tissue paper I made tiny bracts (leaves) and attached 5 or 6 from the stem to the back of the flower.

So this is what it looked then;

When I started working on the next flowers I realized I wasn't entirely happy with the transition from stem to (sun)flower. It wasn't fluently enough imo.
So I experimented a bit and figured out a way. I put a drop from a glue pistol on the end of some floral wire, wiggled it a bit while it hardened to get a tear shape, and after that taped it with the floral tape.
I cut the end straight and glued it to the back of the flower, and then did the brackts like I showed before.

On the left is the one without using the glue(gun), on the right is the one with it (first photo without brackts, second photo with them xD);

For the leaves I used a holly leave punch and the green painted tissue paper (two layers glued together this time). The photo shows from right to left how I cut and shaped the leaves and glued them to the floral wire and attached it to the stem. I wrapped some flower tape around that part as well.

The finished sunflowers together against the fence.

Because the glass dome was a bit higher than was needed only for the fence, I thought about something to add that could fill some of the space in the dome.
The idea of a kite, blown away by the wind untill it's string got tangled in the fence :)

The kite is made of an old plastic bag, two cocktail picks, a piece of wire and Durabel cotton nr 6.
I searched for 1:1 scale tutorial for proportions and came up with these measurements (cm).

To get the kite in the air I've put some glue on the piece of wire and tightly wrapped the cotton thread around it.

In the next blog I'll tell about what we did with the mini club two weeks ago ;)

Update on the cottage (at last)

I haven't been able to write any blogs the previous month, because I was preparing for NaNoWriMo. It started last week, so no crafting untill December, only writing ;)
The Hogsmeade cottage is still on my mind though, since it appeared in my story long before I began making miniatures. So a lot of new scenes about Bianca and Penny (amongst other things) will be written this month.
I'd reached the daily goal of 10.000 words early yesterday, so I decided to write one or more of the blogs that were overdue ;)

I'll start with a couple of things I've done in the living room since the last update.
One of the things I should have done before placing the fire place was making curtains for the little window at the back.
Knowing it would be a tiresome job was probably why it took me awhile to continue with the living room in the first place ;)

While looking for a good way to make the curtains, I found this tutorial for curtains with sewn on rings by Kendra's Minis. It just seemed a match for Bianca's home :)
So I started by making the curtain rod from two beads and a skewer. And for the brackets I used small spiral parts of a laser cut wooden ornament.

I painted the skewer black, and used bronze patina on the other parts. Of course I only glued one bead to the rod, because I still had to make the curtains ;)

Attachting the curtain rod brackets to the wall was as difficult as I imagined :')
I had to remove the fire place and therefore the ceiling with the beams and the wooden floor.

But I persevered ;) The rod is - obviously - removable so I can hang the curtains at a later date.

Having to remove the ceiling and flooring also gave me the opportunity to add the mini LED light strip I'd purchased at the fair at the back of one of the beams. It took me quite some time but especially the added light at the back of the room was worth it.

I used the vener slats from Bibian Angelique Miltkau as skirting boards and to cover the front view of the floor and ceiling.

Then it was time for the curtains. I'd found some nice fabric and - following Kendra's tutorial - I only needed to decided what look I'd prefer for the cottage livingroom; with or without curtain tie back. I think it will be without :)

I couldn't take a good photo from the inside (window) but apart of a window sill it would look like this;

Unfortunately the rod brackets on the inside were placed a bit higher, so the curtains ended up being 1 cm too short.

So that'll be my next task for the living room.

But first - after this writing month - I'll finish the little autumn scene we've been working on with the mini club and then I probably want to do something for Christmas, so yeah ... next year, I guess ;)