Hehehehehe it's here

I got this kit for $16.99, and I'm going to see how I can improve it as I build it

Looking at the parts, that won't be difficult: there's a lot that are folded paper, or just some beads glued together

I want to use the framework and large pieces of furniture (sturdy laser cut wooden sheets) and change the details to my liking

Watch this space!

It's a bit of a puzzle: trying to read the instructions, figure out how things are supposed to be in the kit, then what I want to do differently, and which things I should do before or after which other things

But I knew where I wanted to start: replacing the paper printout of floorboards with some "real" floorboards (made of wooden coffee stirrers)

I had to build the fireplace so I can wire all the lights so I can finish putting the room together, so I can paint it, and from then on it'll be more fun than logistics

Although building a little fireplace was a lot of fun

I wish I could add more than 4 photos!

I haven't been taking photos because so far it's just been painting and gluing over and over. It's still satisfying to get parts of it done, just not very visually exciting

But I'm finally almost done with the room! And then I need to make all the furniture and decorations

It's got lights in it but I'm saving that reveal for the end

This balcony? entranceway? (hard to tell what some of the architectural elements are) was supposed to be a thin sheet of laser-etched wood veneer, but I love an opportunity to add some more little bricks

AND an opportunity to fancy them up with detritus from the dried plants, I used some of the green-dyed hulls and stems in the bottom of the plant bag to make moss growing between the bricks

The tiny details are my favorite part, even though there's a lot of potential for mistakes

Scrapbooking sheets are a pretty great way to get wallpapers and tiny graphics for frames. I had intended to use the pictures that came with the kit, they're sort of generic botanicals/paintings, but they were ALL sized wrong for their frames, ridiculous

Back at it again

One of the most useful pieces of advice I got from a craft book on miniatures, probably 20 years ago, is that rustic, old fashioned terracotta has grit in it— so now I save any stale unused remnants of spices (in this case, cloves) and add them to the clay

Maybe my favorite part of miniature making is thinking about what trash could be turned into something else

It's very satisfying how a hint of something in a miniature can look so much like the real thing: a few lines pressed in, a little watered down purple and brown paint, and a tweezer-pinch of fake grass, and these white teardrops of clay look like garlic bulbs

I've been painting some of the furniture pieces from the kit, a standing cupboard and wall cabinet, from yellow and blue to brown. It's going well but they're still just loose pieces

This is something I wanted to make to fill in the alcove above the fire: a fireplace crane with a kettle

Usually cast iron, cranes hold a pot over the fire and then swing forward so you can grab it. I think I'm going to have a hard time fixing it in place, but that's tomorrow's problem

This is a small update, but I can't believe this worked: I wanted a bowl that wasn't just clay again, so I thought maybe I can make a faux basket with some twine

I thought, I'll make a semicircle of wrapped twine around this ball tool, with some clay on the tool to hold the twine, and I figured it would stick inside but maybe I could scrape it out or paint over it

It held the twine perfectly and didn't stick at all, amazing

It's teatime

This actually worked very well: I made two little tabs of cardstock, painted them black, and then glued them to the inside of the fireplace wall on both sides of the wire, holding it in place but letting it rotate. They look close enough to iron brackets, I think

I don't know how you pull a literally boiling hot kettle out into a room on a crane and then pour hot water, but I think the answer is "very carefully"

I got into a groove with these plants, now it's ridiculously late

The foods are going well though, I like mimicking textures

Foods foods foods foods

I made all the jarred pickles and jams I was thinking about, although I might add some more

The one frustration was: UV resin can get bubbles trapped in it, but you can remove them with a needle and a lighter to warm the resin (it doesn't really cure until it's exposed to sunlight/black light). So I painstakingly removed all the bubbles around the peaches and pickles. And then when the resin was curing under its light, it made new bubbles 😔

More furniture gluing, and my first actual issue: the shelves in this cabinet were too long for the sides to fit on, so I had to cut a few millimeters off both ends of each shelf to make it work

And I'm a sucker for assortments of any kind, so I combed through my glass bead assortment to find some of these clear square beads with paint inside, and gluing a seed bead on top makes a nice little spice jar

Today I turned the piano that came with the kit into a desk, the piano was ok but I wanted to see if I could rework it, and now I have a place for the books

The only furniture I have left to build is the couch (that I'm also changing quite a bit), and then it's just odds and ends

Ok that's the desk done, I don't want to make it too cluttered

I'm going to turn the couch into an armchair, I don't love the way the kit fills every inch of floorspace (I'm not building the TV), but I might use the music stand to make a small table to go with the armchair, for some tea

The last of the furniture! I upholstered the chair in a scrap of leather (suede side out) rather than orange gingham from the kit; leather doesn't fray

Did you know you can get leather scraps by the pound? As I said before, I'm a sucker for assortments

I made a table from the piece of wood for the music stand, & the toothpicks that were the TV's legs. I made a cup & saucer from polymer clay (w/resin tea) & some old timey specs with wire & resin

Tomorrow, it's all done

I may add to it in the future, but I feel my mind turning to new things so it's time to declare this project done

I loved building it, it was very relaxing to have the furniture provided & just customize

I thought about setting it very specifically in a time & place, but decided on a cottagey, cozy house somewhere with old fashioned furniture & modern access to vegetables

Thank you everyone for saying such nice things, it was a joy to share it w/you ❤️

1/2

And now, the lights! They were a lot of work with careful gluing and squeezing some with pliers to break them because they would light up in the wrong spot, and hoping that wouldn't break the rest of the string, but it all worked out

A miniature with lights really does seem magical

2/2

You know I got a new kit already

This one is smaller, the materials aren't quite as good (no prepainted furniture, the walls and floor are just fiberboard, no lighting) but it actually cost more than the first one (this one was $20.99, and both kits are supposed to sell for $39.99! What!!

But I hope to make something Lovecraftian this time despite being a total poser, I haven't done any dreaming in the witch house, I can't name one mountain of madness

It's nice how easy everything is at the start, just simple gluing mostly

The consensus for a Lovecraftian theme seems to be dark wood and dark colors, like an ornate library with no warmth to it, often neglected and decaying, in blues and greens suggesting outer space or underwater

This steampunk scrapbooking paper gives me cold and clammy vibes, and all the wooden details and floor will be a dark cherrywood color

The painting and varnishing is coming along, I got some popsicle sticks for wider floorboards than my last project

I think this red is dark enough, I want to still show the variation in the wood grain, and then after I varnish I can add a dark brown or black wash to make the cracks and corners look dull and dusty

I also tried to make a galaxy orb out of resin: my hubris told me it would be pretty easy, and the mechanics of it were but the details were not 😬

I've added some grunginess to the floor and walls, I'll add more once I have some other things in place and this paint and glue dries

I also drilled holes for lights, I don't know exactly what I'm going to do for that yet but I have some ideas

And the dollar store is giving me ideas again, I'm turning these decorative shapes for scrapbooking into ornate picture frames. Maybe I'll do some tiny painting

It's great when little experiments work out

The wall sconces should look roughly 1920s, and diffuse some of the light from very bright LEDs

I wanted to make some of these glass globes look like milk glass with white resin marbled with turquoise (to pick up on the wallpaper color) and although they look opaque, with a light inside you can still see the wires a little— I'll diffuse it more before I put them together

Out of space, more info in pic description!

Got any games on your phone

I haven't posted about this in a whole week! I've been sanding many tiny edges

The kit is only going to give you furniture that looks close enough, because that's cheap and easy. So part of what I'm figuring out now is what I can change to make it look more realistic, like replacing the etched drawer fronts with beveled popsicle stick sections

And a classic miniatures trick: putting a drawer front on some small wood pieces as if the drawer is sticking out

All of the desk furniture is now painted, varnished, and set with hardware and upholstery

It's tricky because I want to age it like weird neglected antiques, not the usual look of faux-aging (weathered furniture with chipped paint)

I think I'll need to really gunk up all the corners like furniture wax that's been there for decades, and maybe sand some of the most worn areas and THEN stain them gray like unprotected aged wood