North Pole Tea Room

I meant to post this last night and do it as a "Flashback Friday" (you know, flashing all the way back to Christmas time lol).  But by the time I got home it was late and I forgot to do it, but I thought that since I've referenced/mentioned this project several times I should post pictures of it.... It was my first 1:48 scale project (well except for a couple little "rooms" I did up in a display case/frame with some vintage 1:48 scale furniture my husband got me, but I didn't do much with them because the main purpose was to showcase the vintage miniatures)

As well as pictures of the finished project I've got a bunch of different steps in the process as I worked on it so I'll caption each one about what was going on...

at the very start.... the structure started out as a paper mache teapot and I had already cut the back off in this picture

after cutting out the door and window and framing in the door opening and adding the window.  I made the window from 3 regular flat windows that I modified and remade into this bay/bow window

filled in the gap around the window and painted the whole thing gloss white

inside I had to raise the floor a bit both to make it a more appropriate ceiling height to scale and also to give me a bigger floor space

adding the roofs over the door and window

the roofing material is craft paper brown cardstock that I cut and painted by hand to look like gingerbread tiles

the door finished off... trim and door handle

the beginnings of the wreath and it's little wreath hanger that I really loved how it turned out

the fireplace made and decorated.  Those itty bitty glitter houses and paper trees were SUCH a pain to make lol.... hopefully I never decide I just have to have them for a project again....

working on making a bottle brush tree look a little more realistic with preserved lycopodium (princess pine)

the interior coming along, with the tree, trim, the cushion for the bench in the window, fireplace and flooring paper in place.  The flooring was actually a piece of wood grain scrapbook paper with a "varnish" of glue over it to give it it's shine

the start of the counter.  Mini cash register and gingerbread cake pieces on a cake plate. The "cover" for the cake plate is actually a blister from packaging.... I did also glue a little clear bead to the top as a handle, but hadn't done it yet in this picture.

the regeister

testing out a couple of pieces of the un-painted furniture.  You can see the floor better too

after painting one of the tables and draping it's table cloth.  The table cloth is a thin piece of cotton that I draped by cutting a larger piece and wrapping it over the table and tying it with a rubber band under the legs. I then soaked it with fabric stiffener and blowdried it to heat set it.  Once I had done that a couple times I cut the table cloth to length

testing out the furniture layout/placement before I painted all the peices

one of the pieces I broke while painting them..... there were also I think 4 chairs I managed to break.  These were the inspiration/reason behind doing the 1:48 scale attic room box I'm going to be doing

the menu board.  Printed to look like a chalkboard menu board with the days offerings on it.  Two of the teas for the day are "Kenmore Blend" and "Gingerbread Blend" these are actually teas that we sell at the gift shop for the historic site I work at that were blended just for us

testing out the menu board on the wall.  Also the Wallpaper on this wall is scrapbook paper. and the raised paneling on the bottom part of the rest of the walls is a strip cut from embossed scrapbook paper

added a bow to the wreath on the door.  The bow was made using an appetizer fork to form the bow around

the open sign added to the door

and from inside it says "come again".  The chain was the finest jewelry chain I could find cut to size.... it also was so difficult to work with lol.... I really almost gave up, but fortunately I'm stubborn

the furniture all back in place after getting painted and ready to start accessorizing the table tops

from a different view

a tiny tiered serving plate I made.  The plates are paper cut with a hole punch and painted and the metal part is an eye pin from the jewelry department cut to length

the first table I got set... with the tiered serving plates on it

the second table.... the picture is a bit washed out, but there are sandwiches that I made from clay on the plates and a cookie on a little plate (the cookie is also made of clay).

the wreath on the door finally finished with a tiny snowflake and tea pot

tea pot silhouettes as art work next to the door

and with the door in place

the long table with all of it's food and tea pots and cups in place

and in place in the room.  The tree is fully decorated in this one too.

tiny "bags" of Kenmore Tea for sale at the counter

took a while to figure out what other merchandise I wanted to display, but I finally decided on cookbooks ("Mrs's Claus's Tea Time Treats Cookbook") and some plates and a tea set

everything in place

and the counter in place in the room

the steps were the last thing to get done.  I made them myself from individual 1:48 scale bricks and actually ended up using the "frosting" that I had gotten to make cupcakes for the tea room with as the mortar.... it worked pretty well 

hanging sign

the outside with its landscaping

"finished" pictures.... looking in through the window

"finished" pictures..... the front of the tea room teapot

"finished" pictures..... inside the tea room (it's a little dark in there, but the other pictures have shown the details pretty well, this one just gives you the overall look

{Mermaid Cove Cottage} Getting Ahead Of Myself.....

Somehow, even though I didn't sleep well last night and woke up kind of dehydrated and really not feeling like doing much of anything, I still ended up spending most of my day running all over the place... I'd call it running errands, but most of it wasn't strictly completely necessary, I did actually need to go to Walmart, and most of the rest of it at least started out as getting things for Easter, so it was kind of errands..... But anyway, one of my stops (well actually 2 because when I went first thing in the morning I forgot one of the things I needed from there and had to go back late in the afternoon) was Michaels.  Scrapbook papers are one of my best friends when I'm working on miniatures.... I've used them for flooring and wallpaper and all sorts of things, and Michaels always seems to have a good selection of patterns that work well for my projects (Hobby Lobby is another place I find good ones). And today they had them 7 for $1! Soooooo...

I was able to pick up several that I may be able to use for the Mermaid Cove Cottage, and possibly for the Bakery in A Cake, although I'm not 100% sure what I want to do for the floor and walls in there yet so I don't know if I'll actually be using the ones I got today or not.  The teal/aqua marble-y one that you can see under the gray striped paper will probably be getting cut into tiny strips to use in the kitchen of Mermaid Cove Cottage to make a floor similar to this one; the 8.5x11 piece of vellum that's sitting on top (it's a sea glass blue color, sorry the color is a little off I didn't have good lighting where I was taking the pic and honestly just didn't feel like going and setting it up somewhere else, please refer back to the first sentence of this post...), will be cut into itty bitty tiles for the kitchen backsplash (to look like a glass tile backsplash).  And that gray striped paper? the gray stripes from that will be cut into the mermaid scale tiles for the bathroom.

In fact..........

I already cut a few out just to get an idea of how it will look (even though I haven't even started on the structure yet). 

and of course I had to lay my little painted "vanity" up against it to get an even better idea

It's going to be awesome! And actually I don't think the tiles will be quite as tedious to cut out as I was afraid they may be.... I just used a hole punch to cut the curves, I'll need to measure to make sure they're all even when I do the ones I'm actually going to use, but it'll be a lot better than cutting them out by hand. Oh and I think I forgot to mention when I was talking about painting and fixing up this piece that I had gotten it from PrettySmallThings on Shapeways.  Check out their shop they have so many fabulous pieces, the furniture I used in my North pole Tearoom in a teapot was from them.

On a side note, I keep mentioning the tearoom and I suppose I should do a post with pictures of it on here if I'm going to keep talking about it lol

I also got some other furniture kits in for both Mermaid Cove Cottage and the Bakery in a Cake, but I'll wait unitl I have put them to together to do pictures and talk about them...

{Mermaid Cove Cottage} A quick and lucky decor find.......

Well I still haven't done actual "blueprints" for the Mermaid Cove cottage, but I have a pretty good idea of how I want it to be... and I think I've figured out one of the issues I was going to have by how I'm going to do the stairs.... rather than a traditional stair case situation I'm going to do a semi-walled in winder staircase (where the bottom few steps are winders).  I think this will not only not take up much room in the house, but will give me a place to have a little entrance/mudroom/coat hooks and benches area, and I think I can kind of use the wall from this to define the kitchen area some.... it's hard to explain so I won't try until I get it drawn up, but just so you know that's kind of where I am.

And of course I've started planning out decorations and interior design and one thing that I've been trying to find something for is that I know I want a sisal/sea grass rug in either the living room or dining room (or possibly both but right now I'm leaning more towards just the living room) I found a life size rug that I love (in fact I'd like to have it for myself in real life) and I was thinking about maybe stitching the design on it on a fine count cross stitch linen or evenweave cloth, but I wasn't sure if that was really going to work and/or if it was going to drive me crazy trying to do it on this tiny a scale.  Well tonight while I was at Walmart I decided to look and see if they had any material or fabric that I could use to make it and happened to look in the Home Decor section and found this fabric

When I looked at it closely I realized that it looked like a printed tiny scale sisal.  The design on it is a little less fancy than the life size one I like, but it will totally work

And the best part is that .125 yards (an 1/8 of a yard) was only $.50! Score! lol.  once I have the floor plan figured out and more of the furniture prepped and know what size I want the rug to be I'll cut the fabric to size and probably run a bit of white glue or fray check along the edge (or maybe fold it under, but I think that might make it too thick... although maybe not if I glue it down good... I just kind of tried it with my fingers as I'm sitting here typing and it seemed flatter than I expected), and run a thin line of paint along the edge to mimic the binding you typically see on this type of rug..... I could sew (well okay probably glue) a narrow piece of thin fabric as a binding around the edges, but IDK if I want to go through the frustration I'm sure that would bring, especially since I'll be doing a lot of teeny tiny detail work making baked goods for the quarter scale bakery and probably be working on the two projects simultaneously......

They also had a couple different solid colors in the same weave that I might use in like the bedroom or something, but I haven't really gotten that far yet.  I was just really excited about this one and had to go ahead and get it!

{Mermaid Cove Cottage}&{Bakery in a Cake} just a couple little projects getting started

{Mermaid Cove Cottage}

Even though I haven't figured out the structure and layout and such yet for Mermaid Cove Cottage, I did get started on the vanity and sick for the bathroom, because I had stuff for it and I was really excited about it.  I did a little measuring and the little dresser/sideboard I wanted to use was just a smidge shorter then I really wanted it to be for this kind of sink (although it was about the height of the sink in one of our bathrooms so it would have been completely fine.) So I painted both it and another 1:48 scale dresser that I have that was slightly taller but that I didn't really like as much for this project, planning to just fix both of the up and when I was actually putting the room together try both of them and see which one I liked better.  But I really wanted the fancier one so I had an idea..... I glued little tiny seed beads to the bottom of each leg and then coated it with another coat of the spray paint (FYI the Walmart brand matte gray primer worked perfectly for this.... normally I'm not a fan of the Walmart brand spray paints because they are so thin and take forever to cover and I am impatient, but for this it was perfect because it didn't fill in/cover the details.  And it was more the color gray I wanted than the rustoleum primer I would have normally chosen instead).  It turned out looking really good and added just the perfect amount of height, so I think this sideboard should work (it's a little on the shallow side too, but I think that'll be okay) I haven't attached the bowl yet and I need to get a faucet for it, but I did set it on it and take a picture

I accidentally rubbed off a little of the paint on one of the seed beads I added to the legs, but I don't think you can really see that in this picture.  It is sitting on top of my sewing machine just to give an idea of the scale/size

The bowl itself actually had a bit of modification as well.  It started out with a huge bottom part that really just looked weird.

This is actually not even as big as it was at first, but I didn't think to take a picture until I had already worked on it some

I sanded it down until it was more of a normal sized bowl base.  I got it a little uneven (which might have been less likely to happen if I'd had flat sandpaper instead of rolled sandpaper to use on it lol) but I can fix that when I glue it down.

{Bakery in a Cake}

the second Project I worked on today was my bakery in a cake that I have talked about a couple times before.  I've had the CD case to use for it for months now but just hadn't gotten around to starting it and I wasn't sure how I was going to cut the pole out of the center, so this morning after I worked on the sink and vanity for Mermaid Cove Cottage I decided to get this one going too.  I had my husband cut the pole out for me because I didn't really fee like dealing with it (lol), and then I cut the lid myself.  I just used a craft/x-acto knife and then sounded the edges a bit.  Just be super careful doing this sort of thing with a craft knife...... I managed to do it this time without any major injury, but I have cut myself pretty badly in the past........

The very start of my Bakery in a Cake

The outside of the case will be decorated to look like a cake and then the bakery will be inside.  My next step will be figuring out the floor and walls and such..... it should be super cute when done :)