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Newly obsessed


Deb

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Good Morning one and all!

My name is Deb and I've just recently become obsessed with miniatures. Okay, obsession may be too mild a term for it. I started the Orchid three weeks ago, finished it last night and tonight, I've got pieces of a Pierce spread all over my studio. Am I in the right place here??? B)

Usually, I'm a textile artist and it's occured to me that I can incorporate my art into the world of minis. I normally work with larger mediums, but I think I can find needles and fibers small enough to make rugs and wall hangings for the mini houses. I made my first mini rug last night (making the fringe was lots of fun!) and am getting ready to make a beaded curtain for the parlor door. I'll be making drapes soon and am concerned that the weave in regular fabrics may be too coarse for minis. Any words of advice or tips from the gurus here for working with fabrics on a mini scale?

I've always loved miniatures but even as a child, I never had a mini house. It must be true that it's never too late, because I'm having a wonderful time so far and it's got to just get better! I can also blame this on my husband since it was his idea. It came to him while he was huffing and puffing and dragging the couch to a new location in the living room and gasped out, "You know, this would be a lot easier if you just got a doll house to play with when you get the urge to play furniture-go-'round." So I did.

The Orchid is my "witches house".......not a haunted house style, just your ordinary "wise woman of the neighborhood" type of thing. There's tarot readings and a ouija board and crystal ball and cauldrons in the parlor and a frog in a rocking chair on the front porch reading the Wall Street Journal. (He must have once been an investment broker and gave some seriously *bad* investment advice!!) :D The Pierce is going to be a purely victorian venture but I had to exercise some whimsy with the Orchid since it was my experimental house.

Enough of my babbling. I'm happy to find a forum of mini enthusiasts and ya'll seem to be really nice people. I'm looking forward to getting to know you all and learning from everything you'd care to tell me!

Deb

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Welcome to the Greenleaf forum, Deb :D

Am I in the right place here???

Most definitely.

Have a thorough look 'round and you shall see places you can post pictures of your Orchid with its newspaper-reading froggy (THAT I want to see!).

We recently went on a nearly three-month road trip & I took along the Glencroft I was building for the few days the weather or scheduling permitted me to mini. It may be difficult to mini in a camper, but it can most definitely be done!

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Welcome to the Forum Deb!! I Love your Orchid house and I can't wait to see your Pierce. What are your plans for it? I took a look at your quilts too and Boy do you have talent! They are beautiful!. Thanks for moving into our community. I am sure there is a lot you will learn and a lot you can teach us too! B) I always wanted to make a quilt. :D

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Welcome Deb! your orchard is wonderful!

we all have to give in to the whimsy once in awhile. I have opened the door to mine and it may never go back!

cant wait to see what you do with a Peirce.

again !Welcome!!

nutti :D

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Have a thorough look 'round and you shall see places you can post pictures of your Orchid with its newspaper-reading froggy (THAT I want to see)

LOL We just got back from a vacation and I found the froggy in a tourist trap gift shop in Kansas! I think I giggled about him all the way back to Colorado! He's not quite true to scale, but he's perfect on the front porch.

Deb

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Thanks for all the welcomes! I'm definitely finding inspiration here already. I was looking thru the pictures and galleries and some of them just literally took my breath away. I've got a long way to go to reach that level, but I think I'm in the right place to learn.

The furniture for the witches house will be here on Wednesday. <happy dancing>

Deb

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I can't wait to see your Pierce. What are your plans for it?
Mainly I'm hoping that it will just come out straight! (had serious problems with warping out of the box with the Orchid) But I've always wanted a victorian painted lady and that's the direction the Pierce is going to take. I'm not quite brave enough to try lighting yet but I'll hide my cowardice by saying I'm staying true to the era. :D Is it normal to be afraid of little strips of copper tape?

I always wanted to make a quilt. B)

So have I. LOL I've made one bed quilt and have squares completed for a couple of others but have never finished them. For one thing, I have the attention span of a gnat and there's too much monotony in making a full sized quilt...but mainly I have problems with following rules. So I do art quits where I can make it up as I go and every stitch is different from the last one. That's what I like about minis! There's so much variety in the process.

Deb

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Welcome Deb!

And WOW!!!!  :D to your witche's house!  Your attention to finishing details is great!  Love the finish on your floors.  That witch must be mighty busy with the floor wax!  Looks totally great!!

Carol

<blushing> Thanks Carol. I'm not sure if I did the floors right or not. I 'bout choked when I saw the price of flooring for mini houses so I took the plywood floors in the kit, laid out lines with a ruler and used an xacto blade to score in the lines of the floor boards, then stained, and varnished/sanded/varnished a few times. I searched around online and couldn't find anything to say that was a bad thing to do. The good thing about the staining was that I did both sides, then papered the bottom for the first floor ceiling and it pulled out some of the warping on the top floor, but I wasn't sure if it as a good idea to use the plywood floors instead of overlaying regular flooring. Is that an acceptable way to create flooring?

Deb

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Hi Deb,

Yes, that's a fine way of doing flooring. If you want to do inlay, craft sticks are a cheap and effective way to do that. I just did a randopm width floor on the second level of my crofter's cottage, and it was easy.

I figure it's s'posed to be fun and as long as it looks good/right when you are done....had at it! B)

Carol

ps. I'm glad to have another fiber artist around :D and as far as working in mini fabric - Fray check is your bestest friend....

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Welcome Deb! I love your Orchid . . . it's so pretty! I had to take a second glance at your wallpaper . . . I used the same wallpaper in my Beacon Hill! B) Great minds think alike!

Can't wait to see pictures of your Pierce. I'm doing my Beacon Hill in the Edwardian era with some leeway into the past (Victorian). I did put lighting in mine and it has added so much to the house. You may want to think about adding a light or two. You won't regret it! Tape wiring is easier than you think! :D

Good luck!! :D

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Welcome Deb

Another frog lover and Coloraden. The house looks great and love your quilts.

You have found a great spot these gals and guys are a wounderful bunch.

You will find there are a lot of creative here anoung them. I know I did.

Donna :D

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took the plywood floors in the kit, laid out lines with a ruler and used an xacto blade to score in the lines of the floor boards, then stained, and varnished/sanded/varnished a few times.

Deb, If you read my blogs, especially the Glencroft & Westville, that is exactly how I describe making my floors.

The frog is great! I have been collecting frogs for the past few years before I retired, not sure how but I have some cute ones & have NEVER seen one like yours before! Have you checked out Mr. Frog's pad? I've posted this link before and had people say it doesn't work for them, but I still get in clicking from "favorites"; Sclarise has a tutorial for making a Murphy bed out of one of the 99 cene Michael's hutches:

http://fp3.antelecom.net/frog

I hope it works, I love the froggy paperdolls on the site :D

Lest I forget, ahoy, maties & avast, ye swabs; it's International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

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If you want to do inlay, craft sticks are a cheap and effective way to do that.  I just did a randopm width floor on the second level of my crofter's cottage, and it was easy.

ps.  I'm glad to have another fiber artist around :D  and as far as working in mini fabric - Fray check is your bestest friend....

Way cool! I went to your site and I think I shorted out my keyboard drooling over your pics! I found the pic of the floors and that looks like a wonderful way of doing the floors. I'll definitely be giving it a try!

Your crofters cottage is just gorgeous. I expected to see a druid coming 'round the corner any minute. And I fell in love with your stonehenge. I'm guessing from your pics that you crochet quite a lot and it's a lovely touch to your houses. Beautiful work! What other fibers do you work with?

Thanks for the tip about Fray Check. I've added it to my list of things to get. On that topic, do you find any particular type of fabric to work best in the mini forms? Some weaves are just going to look out of scale and won't drape well. Is there a trick to making fabrics hang and drape as they should? I haven't started the drapes for the witches house yet, but am considering using a burgandy moda marble. It'll have a rich velvety texture and it's a fine enough weave to look right, but I'm still afraid it won't hang without being stiff looking.

Deb

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Welcome Deb!  I love your Orchid . . . it's so pretty!  I had to take a second glance at your wallpaper . . . I used the same wallpaper in my Beacon Hill!  B)  Great minds think alike!

Can't wait to see pictures of your Pierce.  I'm doing my Beacon Hill in the Edwardian era with some leeway into the past (Victorian).  I did put lighting in mine and it has added so much to the house.  You may want to think about adding a light or two.  You won't regret it!  Tape wiring is easier than you think!  :D

Good luck!!  :D

Teresa, I am in complete awe of your Beacon Hill! The original owner had some strange ideas of how a painted lady should look and it was just painful to see, but you have restored her to a lovely, elegant and graceful thing of beauty. I was oohing and aaahing so loud as I looked at the pictures, that Napoleon, my siamese fur child, had to come see what I was doing. (I'm not sure, but I think his meows were questioning why my house doesn't have live birds in it.)

Looking at your Beacon Hill certainly makes me think strongly about adding lighting to the Pierce. Since the witches house was my first venture, I put in the wall paper before I assembled the house. I really wanted the clean lines of the wall paper under the window frames. How difficult is it to put in wall paper over the wiring after the house is together?

Deb

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Welcome Deb

Another frog lover and Coloraden. The house looks great and love your quilts.

You have found a great spot these gals and guys are a wounderful bunch.

You will find there are a lot of creative here anoung them. I know I did.

Donna :D

Hi Donna! I'm an avid lover and collector of frogs.......well, not the real ones, but you know what I mean. B)

Deb

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Deb,  If you read my blogs, especially the Glencroft & Westville, that is exactly how I describe making my floors.

The frog is great!  I have been collecting frogs for the past few years before I retired, not sure how but I have some cute ones & have NEVER seen one like yours before!  Have you checked out Mr. Frog's pad?  I've posted this link before and had people say it doesn't work for them, but I still get in clicking from "favorites"; Sclarise has a tutorial for making a Murphy bed out of one of the 99 cene Michael's hutches:

http://fp3.antelecom.net/frog

I hope it works, I love the froggy paperdolls on the site  :D

Lest I forget, ahoy, maties & avast, ye swabs; it's International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Blogs??? <looking around for the links> Yay! I'll be zipping off to read them right away. Ya'll are a gold mine of information!

Ah, another froggie fanatic! LOL I've never seen one like this before either, but then again, it's kind of what I'd expect to find in a tourist trap that proclaims it has the worlds largest prarie dog. (After driving across Kansas and seeing nothing but wheat and dust, it's amazing how appealing a giant prairie dog sounds so we stopped.)

I'm getting an "under construction" message from the link you sent. Maybe they'll have it completed soon. I'd love to see the paperdolls there. In the meantime, I'll share my favorite frog link: http://www.froggifts.com All things froggy!!

Deb

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rotflmao! Mini, mini thanks for the site link, which I have bookmarked.

I found mini frogs a long time ago at Wal-Mart (when they carried lots more mini "decorative" items, before scrapbooking was the "in" craft) that I use in a pond from HBS for the front yard of my Cambridge.

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Usually, I'm a textile artist and it's occured to me that I can incorporate my art into the world of minis.  I normally work with larger mediums, but I think I can find needles and fibers small enough to make rugs and wall hangings for the mini houses.  I made my first mini rug last night (making the fringe was lots of fun!) and am getting ready to make a beaded curtain for the parlor door. I'll be making drapes soon and am concerned that the weave in regular fabrics may be too coarse for minis.  Any words of advice or tips from the gurus here for working with fabrics on a mini scale?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hello Deb and welcome! As far as what fabrics to use, natural fibers like cotten, linen, and silk are prefered. Some fabrics may need to be washed before working with them to remove the sizing so they won't be so stiff. I found a great source for silks at www.fabric.com. I also frequent the quilting section of my local fabric store for small scale prints to use in my mini's. These require washing first, in my opinion. But I've found when making window coverings that spray fabric stiffener is my best friend! Here's a link for ideas on an assortment of different window coverings:

http://www.mini-projects.com/modules.php?o...a724bc9aae08e79

Hope this helps!

Oh! And what part of Denver do you reside in? I'm in the Aurora area! Howdy neighbor! :D

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rotflmao!  Mini, mini thanks for the site link, which I have bookmarked.

I found mini frogs a long time ago at Wal-Mart (when they carried lots more mini "decorative" items, before scrapbooking was the "in" craft) that I use in a pond from HBS for the front yard of my Cambridge.

<giggling> There's just something about a frog! The first thing I got for my witches house was the frog pong from HBS. Right now it's sitting outside by the corner with the siamese cat standing watch over it. It'll be moved when I start the landscaping.......probably somewhere between the herb garden and the graveyard.

Deb

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