What's new at The Loft - Episode 99

I'm now on Twitter!!!

I Love Dollhouses!!!

While I was teaching this past weekend at Scrapendipity Retreats', Scrapajama weekend crop, (look for my upcoming post on that) I was talking to the ladies in my class about my love of dollhouses and thought, "I should do a post on that!" 

I have been interested in dollhouses since I was a teenager, but never completed my own dollhouse project until my now 15 year old daughter was just a baby.  I had to really search, but I was finally able to find some photos to share of my first project which was a small two story room box that I made into a bookstore which I called The Novel Works.  And while I wouldn't call this one of my cleaner projects I was still proud of the way it turned out.  I even won a Best in Class prize at my local county fair for it.

Unfortunately I didn't have a camera when the room box was initially completed, so I cannot show you what it looked like when it was at it's best.  However I hope that even through the disrepair shown in the photos I took a few years back, you can still see some of the "mini" magic created.

The brick work is actually a polystyrene sheet with grooves, so that you can grout the tile for a more authentic look.  And while you can get real mini bricks, they generally add a lot of weight to your project.  So if you plan on moving your piece a lot, you have to take the weight of it into consideration. 

The original project also had trees in it, which were eventually removed because the sponge like material that formed the foliage had started falling off the metal tree frames that they were on.  The yellow moulding at the roof, and the black/gold moulding in the middle were actually made of a rubber like material, which again helped keep the weight of the project down. I used Plaster of Paris, and frames to build the sidewalks and the outside stairs are made of wood that has been covered in tile grout to look like cement.  The small square towards the bottom left is where one of the trees sat, surrounded by a red wood chip mulch and small terracotta tile edging.  Unfortunately what you cannot see in the photo is the glass pane in the door it is a transparency created in my computer with the name of the store and it's hours, that has been adhered to a small plexiglass panel.

I love going to the annual dollhouse show put on by the Lakeland Miniature Guild.  I love seeing all the display pieces for inspiration, and all the fun things you can buy to put in your dollhouse.  But I am also one of those people who needs to keep challenging myself, so with this project I also tried my hand at building some of the elements in the piece, along with electrifying it.  

On the ceiling at the right you can see one of the lights.  Just below that on the right side wall are books that I hand made from old book club advertisements.  The piece of furniture below the books on the right is a magazine rack.  I bought the magazines, but I built the rack from craft wood.  I also built the newspaper/display rack at the back of the photo.  Once again I purchased the mini newspapers, and books that are displayed on top.  Unfortunately it is difficult to make out in this photo, thanks to the glare from the flash off the plexiglass backing, but the to the left (the gold balls) is a spiral staircase that I built leading up to the second floor.

This photo gives you a little bit of a clearer view of the spiral staircase and the rest of the first floor, including the plank flooring.  The gold ball spacers for the staircase are wood beads, and the railing for the staircase was made from wire.

This is a view of the second floor.  The bookcase, and the sofa were purchased along with some of the books, but I made all of the books with the covers facing out, again from an old book club advertisement.  I also built the stair railings and hand laid the parquet floor.

After I finished this project though, I moved on to what I call my labor of love, and has been an on and off project for 14 years now.  But I will save that for an upcoming post. so stay tuned.

I hope you enjoyed today's post.  Comments are always welcome, so please feel free to drop me a line or send me a tweet and let me know what you think.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.

What's new at The Loft - Episode 31

Greetings All,

As some of you may know my crafting background is varied.  One of my real passions (although I haven't had the time or the workspace to do it lately) is miniatures.  Which is why every year at the end of July I attend the Lakeland Dollhouse and Miniature show, put on by the Lakeland Miniature Guild.  This annual event is one of the best shows in the area and I love going to see all the great things the vendors have to offer and to see and be inspired by all the projects on display.  I took lots of great pictures but sadly I lost all of them due to my unfamiliarity with the how the mini SD card in my camera phone works.  I was very upset by this fact especially since I purchased a room box project kit, and took many photos of the examples on hand so I could be inspired for my own spin on the project.  It was of a really great 2 story contemporary loft room box with garden style terrace.  However while I can't show you any of the photographs I took of some of the completed room boxes done by guild members, I was able to at least go to the Lakeland Miniature Guild's website so I could download pictures of some incomplete projects that will aid me in construction.  Here's what the kit looks like after it's put together but before any decoration is added.  (Sorry the guild didn't even take these in color)

Here's the exterior

Here's the interior

I had vowed to not buy anything at the show this year but as soon as I saw this I I fell in love with it.  I was good though as I didn't buy anything else at the show this year.  However coming home with another project kit didn't make my husband too happy. 

I'll have to try to remember to post some pictures from some of my past completed miniature projects.

ATC 3.6.5. Challenge

*** Disclaimer on digital ATC cards***. Most, but not all of the digital ATC's here were done with images found openly on the Internet for my own personal enjoyment. I do not own the photos and they have not been reproduced or sold in anyway.

7/16 "On a Short Leash"  A long time ago with the best of intentions I purchased a 6" x 6" DCWV paper pack with a pet theme.  The idea was to finally take all those great photos of my animals and do layouts with them.  The problem is that I never seem to really have time to scrapbook anymore.  But because I have so many of these unused items, I've made it a point to try to incorporate more of them into my ATC's.  So I've used one of the papers as the background, and another paper from the pack I detail cut for added embellishment.  The image of the woman and her dog were cut from a Tweety Jill "Fashion " collage pack.

7/17 "Home Sweet Home"  Today's card was an experiment in paper piecing.  I started by laying down a light sky blue wash on the card with my Neo II watercolor crayons.  I then cut out a tree limb from some brown paper and glued it down.  Next I stamped the birds on white paper, colored them in with a yellow Zig marker, and detail cut them out.  I glued them on the tree branch, and moved on to the bird house.  I cut the house shape from some scraps of beige paper.  I hand drew the two openings tot he house with a black Zig marker, then cut small strips of brown paper for the roof and the birdhouse base.  Lastly I used some letter stickers for the title.

7/18 "Paris Lady"  This whole card was made using Tweety Jill's "Travel to Paris" and "Fashion" collage packs.

7/19 "Forbidden Fruits"  This cute digital card played on the Raphael painting "Sistine Cherubs"  In college I took an art history class in which I fell in love with High Renaissance and Pre-Rahaelite art.  I would stare at photos of these beautiful paintings and wonder what could be going through the minds of the people in them.  My sense of humor however won out over any serious contemplation on this image.  Simple text balloons show where my mind was going that day.

7/20 "Cat's Play"  My cat's own insistence on obtaining some yarn I had laying around inspired me to make this card today.  From a pets ATC paper pack, I cut this cute image of the cat with the knitting needle and yarn and adhered it to a red and white checked paper background.  I then laid a loopy line of white tombow 2 way glue and then pressed some yarn down in the glue, balling a small portion at the bottom and gluing down.  I love how the turquoise blue yarn really pops against the red background.

7/21 "Music is a Lifetime of Love" I created this card by laying down a wash of yellow color from my Neo II watercolor crayons.  Once dried I then stamped the sheet music down in Sepia ink.  I then cut an image from my Tweety Jill "Fashion" collage pack.  For the titles I used some mini letter stickers and a stamp.

7/22 "Vampire Angel Statue"  I found this digital image of the angel statue and wanted to do something fun with it. The first and most important thing you should know is that the original statue had closed eyes. Using a digital brush, and several color layers I was able to give the statue open and blue eyes. I then added several more layers to give the statue red lips and vampire teeth (The photo when reduced to ATC size makes it hard to see the teeth) with just a few trickles of blood to complete the image.

7/23 "Free Spirit"  For this card the background was cut from Tweety Jill's "Travel to Paris" collage pack.  The image of the woman was detail cut from Tweety Jills' "Vintage Photographs" collage pack.  I then inked the edges of the card in Tsukineko's midnight blue chalk in, and the title was created using my mini wooden alpha stamps.

7/24 "Bon Jour"  I created this entire card using Tweety Jill's "Travel to Paris" collage pack.

7/25 "Vintage"  My husband came home with some really great fun stuff for this years trip to San Diego for Comic-Con.  The background image of the car and men was created from a movie promotional postcard for a new movie coming out with D.B. Sweeney, Paul Rudd, and John C. McGinley.  Strangely the card was handed to him by D.B. Sweeney himself who was out on the show floor (and not in a panel conference) promoting the movie.  The vintage title was cut from a clothing tag for some new clothes I bought for my daughter, and the steering wheel is part of the Tim Holtz gears pack.

7/26  "Hope Wonder Dream" For those who know me I majored in pattern drafting and grading in college.  I sewed so much in my high school and college days that I really lost a taste for it and hadn't owned a sewing machine in almost 20 years.  When I started scrapbooking and was introduced to sewing on paper I decided a sewing machine would be a good investment, so I bought a very inexpensive machine (less than $100), with no intention of doing any actual sewing with it.  At first I was happy that I hadn't bought a very expensive machine, as I didn't want to invest a lot of money for just paper sewing.  I then took a quilting class, and made a disastrous quilt, but have since taken up sewing again, and I've completed a few sewing projects already that has rekindled my desire to sew.  This card was make by using scraps from some recent sewing projects.  I used gel medium to glue the fabric to the card as the background, and pinking shears to trim it.  Added embellishments were a metal butterfly, a button and words cut from Theresa Collins paper.

7/27 "Minnie"   I used some scrap fabric for the background on this card as well, adhered with Gel medium.  I then detail cut Minnie from an incomplete deck of Disney playing cards and adhered her as well with Gel medium.  The larger red heart was punched with a medium Fiskars punch.  The word Minnie was stamped onto pink paper using a clear acrylic stamp from a Disney stamp collection.  I then cut out and bannered across the heart.  Lastly I added a pink glitter heart button with the shank removed and glued at the top with Tombow glue.

7/28 "Old Fashioned"   This card was made from a collage of images all cut from the Tweety Jill "Poultry Party" paper and "Vintage Photographs" collage packs. 

7/29 "Simply Ashlyn, Simply Awesome"   I was having some fun again with a digital card created with another cover of the Saturday Evening Post, only this time I inserted my daughter into the cover of the post that the girl on the cover is reading.  I liked the concept but had a hard time trying to make my daughters photograph look more like a Norman Rockwell image.  Even though I don't think I was successful I'm happy with the first effort. 



Well that's all for today.  I hope you have enjoyed what you have seen.  As always comments are welcome so please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.  Thanks for stopping by and please come back soon!