iseecerulean

A revolving bookcase and a wardian case...I call it a terrarium.  Neither of them is done yet.

I didn't spend very much time in my studio today, Kate and I made a pumpkin pie from scratch...yummy.

You have to see what Melinda made for her nephew...

I didn't do anything in my studio this past week because I couldn't figure out where to start with finishing the interior of the dollhouse.  Should I go room by room, or should I place the furniture in all the rooms, then accessorize?  Eventually it occured to me that I couldn't walk down either path because some of the furniture hasn't been built.

I pulled out all the kits I've accumulated, piled them on my worktable, closed my eyes, and choose one.  I picked a chair, and since there are four of them, to go around the dining room table, I built them all at the same time...while I was waiting for glue to dry between steps I built the cradle.

The cradle was easy, it was only five pieces, and since it's made of walnut I won't have to paint or stain it, which is nice.  The chairs had sixteen pieces each, which was a little intimidating, as I'd never put together a furniture kit before, but they went together a lot easier than I anticipated...the tab and slot construction made them easy to fit together and keep square...though I'm going to have to paint them.  They're not done yet, I've got to make the seat cushions, but I won't do that until after they've been painted.

WOW!  I saw Susan's picture, but it's so much better in person.  I'm in awe...

The face Susan sculpted is incredible...the textures of white feathers, vintage lace and toile...oh my!  I love her eyes...no matter where I go she's always staring at me....very cool creepiness.

The details are incredible...I thought it was chipboard from looking at the picture, but the BEWARE is metal...the lining inside the casket is tufted or something where a pillow would go.  The clock case is really cool...and it's bigger than I expected...it just fit in the spot I had picked out for it's permanent home in my studio, overlooking my desk.

Kate laughed at me while was opening it...newpaper and bubble wrap were flying all over...it was packed so well the mailman could have dragged it behind his truck and it would have got here in one piece.  I kept pulling off layers of packing...she was teasing me that it was a trick, that there was going to be a piece of cardboard at the center of it all.

I have to go pick up my living room now, Wakefield is freaked out because Kate was popping the bubble wrap so he won't go in there, the poor scared kitty...he's sitting in the corner glaring...

I picked up some beads at my favorite bead store...it looked like they had dollhouse applications.

I needed somewhere to store the jars of enamel paint I accumulated while building Susan's tomb, so I decided to use a small set of drawers that were given to me and have been knocking about my closet for months...I'm not into the shabby chic look so I attacked it with the closest bottle of paint.

Once the base coat was dry I rubbed on a decal, did some distressing, applied a crackle finish, rubbed some white glaze into the cracks, then did some more distressing.

Bleck!  The crackle finish didn't work very well, it's all brush stroke streaky, and the white glaze left the whole piece looking like someone threw a powder puff at it.  I think I'm going to sand it down to start over.

Susan got her present today...she loves it.

I thought I'd show a few more pictures...

The ghost is really hard to see, she didn't turn out like I wanted her to...I painted her with glow in the dark paint and was going to make the roof of her tomb let the light through to charge the paint, but after an evening of testing different materials I discovered that even with no roof on her tomb she was too shadowed by the tomb walls for the light to charge the paint.  I left her in there anyway...

The owl who sits in one of the trees in the cemetery started out as a green colored ceramic bead...I'm pleased with how my paint job turned out...

A before and after shot of a cheap Christmas village topiary I altered to put in the cemetery in place of a tomb that didn't work out...

A work in progress picture...