{Whimsy Street Shopping District Toy Store} IT'S DONE, IT'S DONE!!!!

Finishing this particular project was really a long time coming.  Technically I started working on it back in December, and got going pretty good on the building itself, inside and out, and then it got put aside and then most of this year I didn't get hardly anything done.  Then sometime in September I started working on it again hardcore, and got a lot done in a pretty short amount of time, but then I got delayed again while waiting for T-Rex floating charms to arrive from China, but now it is finally completely done! (well actually there's one more thing I might do..... if I ever come up with an actual name for it I'll make a sign for the shop to hang on the outside.  I've also considered trying to make some little balloons for outside, but if I end up making a sign I don't know if I would want the sign and balloons - I think it might be too much with what's already there).  So rather than go on and on about it, I'm just going to post the photos and talk about each area as I go.  Most of the stuff in there I have already posted about in earlier posts, so some of it might be repeating if you read those posts, but I'll try to at least be to the point and concise (bahahahah, hey, I said try lol)

Front view of the finished shop.  As I said, I still haven't come across the perfect name for the store, but honestly, since it says "Toys" real big across the top, I don't think it'll be the end of the world if I don't have an actual name and sign for it.  The lettering for the word "toys" are some glittery red stickers I already had that I backed with white paper and glued to the trunk.  The Trim around the windows and doors is Balsa wood that I soaked and then formed around the curve of the building until it dried and then glued on.  The door I purchased and painted, and the steps are floral foam, cut and painted to look like concrete steps.  The "giant" toy soldier was a little figurine I bought, I think around Christmas last year.  Oh and I suppose I almost forgot the most important part..... the building itself is a little chest I purchased at Hobby Lobby.

The castle and dragon in the window display were purchased as is.  I made the platform they are sitting on and painted the "road" up to the castle and he's kind of hard to see in this picture, but there's a little toy knight between the castle and dragon that I made from the top of a fancy toothpick.  The "Play" banner I made from masking tape and ribbon and the clouds are tiny pom poms that I pulled apart and "fluffed" a bit.

The dollhouse in the window display on the other side of the store I handmade from basswood.  The carousel horse was originally a mini Christmas ornament and I made and attached a base to it and painted it. The doll sitting on the horse I made from the top of a fancy toothpick and tissue paper and paint for the dress and little pieces of curled thread for the hair.  I also made the "giant" tissue paper flowers. The "imagine" bunting is little pieces of glitter tape with the letters painted on them.

I made sure when I was decorating the inside that I worked it out so that it could still be opened even after it was finished.  It made/makes it much easier to place stuff in the shop (or repair stuff if the need ever arises), and also made it easier to take closer pictures of certain parts of the shop

view of the inside of the shop. The green parts of the walls are painted and the cloud "wallpaper" is scrapbook paper.  The kites hanging from the ceiling are made from tissue paper and thread.  (The trim of course is painted stripwood)

I made the display tree that the dress-up wings and shields are hanging on from a toothpick and little pieces of wire.  The wings themselves are punched from velum and decorated with paint and glitter, and their "straps" are embroidery floss.  The knight's shields are cut from cardstock and they are hanging from packaging made from masking tape.  The little train table was a kit I purchased and assembled/painted

The dress-up capes are cut from satin and hanging on hangers I made from wire.  The dress-up tutus are made from tissue paper and hung from more hangers I made from wire.  They are all hanging from a fixture I made from basswood and wire.  The letters on the wall are floating locket charms I bought at Hobby Lobby.

I made the center display tables from little wood circles and strips of scrapbook paper.

The elephant and giraffe in the centers of the tables I made from purchased kits.  The blocks on the table that's on the left in this picture are little pieces of square dowels I painted, the little toy car I made from the square dowel also, carved and painted.  The crayon box it a printed front glued to a little piece of wood painted to match, and the drum is a scrapbook paper covered dowel with sewing pins cut to size for the drum sticks.  On the table on the right, the turtle toy is a bead, the little doll leaning against it on the left is made from the tip of a toothpick and the baby rattle next to it is made from a sewing pin and a seed bead.  The play ball is the head of a pearl head pin.

On the other side of the tables, on the table on the left, there's another toy car carved from square dowel, A Russian doll floating charm I painted, baby toys made from the heads of decorative jewelry head pins and painted, and a Robot I made from pieces of square dowel, some wire and silver paint.  The stuffed bunny on the other table I made from clay, and there's some more wooden blocks and baby toys made from the heads of fancy jewelry head pins

The shelving unit on the wall I made myself from basswood, and most of the boxes on it are printed covers glued to little scraps of wood.  The checkout counter I assembled from a kit and decorated (I'll talk about the decorations in a more close up picture)

The pictures hung all over the counter are colored and printed out to look like kids colored them with crayons.  The register I made to look like a "square" style register, the tablet part is wood and the stand part is made from the tab from the back of a dollar store frame that I had pulled out of the frame because I was using the frame for something else, not as a frame.  Also on the counter is a display of crayons and colored pencils.  They are printed box fronts glued to small pieces of wood painted to match and the display unit I made from cardstock.  On display on the shelf is a Lite Bright box, a coloring book, more crayons and colored pencils, and a little unicorn toy (which started life as a bead). The boxed dollhouse kits throughout the store where made from a purchased kit.

You can't see it real well in this picture, but the bottom shelf in the back of the counter had folded plastic and paper "bags"

You can see the shelving unit and boxed toys and games better in this picture, and the bin full of playground balls is made from a tiny wood disk and scrapbook paper and the balls themselves are the head of pearl head sewing pins.

The platforms that the window displays are sitting on are wood covered with scrapbook paper

The bookcase I assembled from a purchased kit. The horses, dinosaurs, and mermaid dolls on the shelve are floating locket charms I painted, the toy knights are made from the top of fancy toothpicks, the dolls are also made from the top of the same toothpicks with tissue paper for this dresses.  The whale was a bead, the teddy bears I made from tiny pom poms.  The starfish/flowers/whatever you want them to be on the top shelf of the far side are stickers, the octopus toy I made from a tiny pom pom and scrapbooking baker's thread, and the baby toys are the heads of fancy jewelry head pins, cut off and painted.  The castle on top was an unfinished metal piece I bought and painted.  The train set box I printed out and glued to a piece of wood and the rack it's sitting in I made from wire.  The train play mats under it are printed and I made the container they are in from basswood.

The coloring book are printed and the shelving units they are sitting in are pieces of plastic u-beam that I had leftover from another project

And now that the toy store is finally completely finished it's time to move on to the bookstore in earnest.  I've already gotten started on it some but hadn't gotten too into it while I still had stuff outstanding on the toy store, but now that the bookstore is all I have to work on at this point, I'm hoping I can get it done pretty quickly.  Fingers crossed. haha.

{Whimsy Street Shopping Distric Toy Store} One more detail while I......... wait?

Yesterday as I was looking at the outside of the toy store, after going ahead and gluing everything in place in the store (except for the bookcase that I can't finish dressing/stocking without the T-Rex charms), I realized that I needed a couple steps to get up to the front door, so I set to work figuring out the easiest/best way to make them.  My hold up was that there's a rounded trim around the bottom of the the outside and I needed whatever I made the steps out of to at least somewhat mold around it.  I had thought about making steps out of clay, but I wanted the steps to look like concrete and don't have any gray clay, which would mean I would have either had to mix some black and white (which is what I usually do) but then I'd have to square it off after, or I'd have to make them white and then paint them....  And honestly I wasn't sure how well I would do pressing the curve into the back of them without pressing my finger into the front (I'm not always the greatest with clay bahahaha).  As I was thinking about what else I could use I realized I had a little piece of floral foam floating around that was too small to actually use for florals so I decided to give it a try.

It was really easy to cut and shape (well except I cut the top of the first one a little crooked, but it was really quick to make another one that was more even).

My only real concern is that floral foam is so soft and I wasn't sure if it would be sturdy enough to hold up to being on the outside of the building.  I obviously was going to have to paint it anyway though, so I thought that might make the outside of it a little harder.  After two coats of gray paint it looked great, really ended up looking like concrete, with the texture of the foam and it was a bit harder on the outside,

so I decided to try coating it with matte Mod Podge and that seems to have given it a little more toughness at least on the surface so I think I'm going to go ahead and use them because they look so good and just try to be extra careful with the front of the shop. hahaha.

Yesterday I also gave up waiting for the T-Rex charms to actually make it here and went ahead and ordered a couple from a seller on Etsy.  Which I was originally going to wait until today to order more, but they only had two left and I actually wanted at least 3 so I didn't want to risk someone else buying one or both of them.  Of course, anyone want to take a guess what came in the mail today???? BAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....

Oh well, it was only a few extra dollars that I didn't actually need to spend so not a huge loss.  So, as of right now, I'm waiting for the paint on the charms to dry so I can glue them in place on their shelf, and waiting for the last coat of Mod Podge to dry on the steps (I didn't have any Matte so I had to wait until I could run to the store this morning to finish the steps) and then take a few pictures of the bookcase before I glue it in place in the shop and then glue it and the front steps in place and one other thing on the front of the shop and then the shop will be done and I can take pictures and post them! So, maybe tonight, or if not hopefully sometime tomorrow I should have photos taken and posted!

{Whimsy Street Shopping District Toy Store} A Few More Details While I Wait

Well, I suppose there's one good thing about this delay in being able to finish the toy store...... I'm getting some detail stuff done that I might not have bothered with otherwise.  Of course the other day I added some coloring pages to the outside of the checkout counter, and today I finished dressing the counter, and ended up going ahead with a few projects that I kind of thought I might not actually do for it. Originally I had a full size cash register for the shop and I had printed out some crayon and colored pencil box fronts, and wanted to have both of them on the shop counter, but I realized that with both of them on there they took up almost the entire counter, so I was kind of thinking maybe I just wouldn't do the crayons and colored pencils, but then the register still seemed kind of big so I thought hmmm..... maybe I can make a Square POS style register for it; but then I wasn't even totally sure I was going to bother doing that.  Today, though, since I still don't know when or if I'm getting the T-Rex charms (if I haven't gotten any updates on it by Tuesday I'm just going to order more), I was going to work on finishing off the check-out counter so I decided to go ahead and give the smaller, modern register idea a try.

the stand for the register is made from the tab from the back of a Dollar Tree frame that I pulled out of the back of the frame because I was using the frame for a different project.  It's probably a little wider than it should be, but there wasn't really any way to cut the width down (at least not without it being crazy difficult)

the tablet part is also a little too thick, but it was the thinnest wood I had at the time (well, or so I thought, actually found some that was a little thinner after it was completely finished and by then I wasn't going to remake it)

Even with some of the proportions a little off  I still think it worked out pretty well, and I was going to just leave it at that for the counter, but of course I just couldn't let the crayons and colored pencils idea go now that there was {probably} room for them so I made the little boxes of crayons and colored pencils (just glue a printed box front to some wood scraps and cut it to size and painted the sides and back), but then I couldn't really just have them sitting loose on the counter so I had to figure out how to make a little display for them.

the display for the crayons and colored pencils is made from cardstock.  I actually started by gluing the crayons to a piece for the base, then used a little scrap of wood to elevate the colored pencils and glued them down and then just kind of eyeballed the sides and cut them out and glued them onto the base and then glued on a front and back and then cut the base to the correct size

I also ended up painting it because some of the seams (especially where the sides met the base) where a little too prominent and the paint helped cover that a bit

For the shelf that is open to the front I had been kind of waiting 'til I got the last of the charms, because I thought I might want to use one in there, but I just really at this point want as much done without them as possible, and I had enough other stuff to use in there that I went ahead and finished that display without them.

the unicorn was a little bead from a bracelet, the light brite box was something I had had as an option for the open wall shelving, but ended up not using, so I stuck it in here, and then I had an extra coloring book that didn't end up getting put on the wall with the others and of course extra crayons and colored pencils

And, again, because I have some extra time to mess around with little details I put some plastic "bags" and paper "bags" in the bottom shelf that's open to the back to the counter.

the plastic "bags" are folded pieces cut from and actual plastic bag and the paper ones are just little pieces of folded pape

  So now All I have left to do is get those last few dinos in place once I get them and then glue everything in place.  I might actually glue almost everything in before then even though because I made sure that I made it so that the trunk can always open so I think I should be able to get the bookcase in though there if I have other stuff in the way from the back opening......

{Whimsy Street Shopping District} - a little extra detail for the toy store while I wait for mail

Well, I'm still waiting for the little T-Rex floating charms I ordered (although at this point I'm thinking I may not get them and might have to order more, because the tracking for China Post says it has left China and the USPS tracking says they have a label for it but they haven't received the item yet....... and it's been in limbo between the two for quite a while, so I'll give it about another week and then reorder and do an expedited shipping rather than the free shipping. I feel like it being more of a priority will make it less likely to get lost lol).  In the meantime, as I'm sitting here looking at the shop, and everything that goes in it that I can't quite finish until I get the charms, I realized that the check-out counter was looking a little plainer than I was liking.  I didn't want to paint it because I wanted an even distribution of painted and unpainted fixtures in the store so that neither would look out of place, but especially as I was starting to set a few things on the open shelf on it to start to figure out what I'm putting on there (I was planning on having at least one of the dino charms on there, but now I'm kinda thinking maybe I'll just go ahead and use other stuff so it's done and whenever I get them there's literally only like 2 places I'll need to put them), I realized that it looked a little too plain on the outside with just being the plain wood.  Then it popped into my head to have some coloring sheets that looked like kids colored them displayed on the front and sides of the check-out counter.  And, as much as I hate to admit that I used MS Paint for anything, I would have had to get up and go to another room all the way at the other end of my house (which our house isn't that big I'm just being lazy and dramatic lol), and get on my old computer to use my Photoshop software, so........... lol.  But actually, Paint works pretty well for making pictures that look like a little kid colored them with crayons.  I probably could have got them to print out a little better if I had adjusted the resolution in Photoshop, but you know what, at this scale it's not like you're going to see a lot of detail either way, so I was satisfied with how these turned out.

{Sorry the pictures aren't great.... I just snapped them real quick to post on here and Facebook, I'll be getting better pictures of everything soon to do a post of the entire shop - either completed or completed except for those freaking T-Rex's lol}

So I guess, there's one good thing about my wait to see if I'm actually going to get those charms or not (which if I don't I'll get a refund for them so it's not a huge deal, plus they were only a few dollars anyway, it's more just that I hate waiting for stuff and now might have to start the wait all over again lol), it gave me the opportunity to add a little more detail to the shop, and added detail is never a bad thing!

Let's Take A Minute To Talk About....... Floating Charms

Floating charms..... story locket charms..... whichever you call them I really hope that the lockets they are designed for never go out of style.  If you're not sure what I'm talking about, these lockets are (usually) a round see through locket which you can fill with itty bitty little charms the represent your interests, or family, or a holiday, or pretty much anything you want.  The lockets themselves aren't huge so of course the little charms to go in them are extremely tiny.... most of them under a 1/4 inch tall... which makes them perfect for small accessories in a 1:48 scale miniature project, and I figured that while I'm waiting for a few of them to come in the mail to finish the toy shop I might as well share a little of how useful I have found them to be in my projects. I don't remember what first made me think to use them, I think somehow I came across them when I was looking for tiny (1/4 inch) mermaid figurines for my beach cottage project that I have been planning for a couple years now and will eventually actually get made.  I had seen the lockets before, but in our area there's not a huge selection of the charms available and they never made an impression on me as something useful for my projects, until mermaid floating charms showed up as results for this search.

Since then I've used them for quite a few different items.  After realizing that they could be useful I starting doing a little more looking into them and found out that they are readily available in tons of different designs, some of them pretty detailed. You can usually find shops on Etsy selling them individually for sometimes at low as $.50 up to a few dollars, or you can get packages of say 10 for a few dollars, either on Etsy (and I assume Ebay, although I have to say I've never actually looked for them on there), or from import sites like AliExpress.  (Both on Etsy and through import sites they tend to often come from China, especially if you are buying lots rather than individual charms). When you compare the prices, even with shipping, to what you might pay for something specifically made for quarter scale miniatures, they are a really good deal.  And that's assuming you'd even be able to find some of the items they represent sold for miniatures.  (Keep in mind that if they are coming from overseas and you don't pay for some sort of expedited shipping it can take a while for them to get to you - hence me waiting for the last ones I ordered to come in so I can finish off the last couple things in the toy shop lol)

They really work great for small accessories/decorative items/ toys to display on shelves in a miniatures project.  Keep in mind that they tend to be flat backed, so the detail/3d shaping will only be on one side.  This is why I say they're great for shelves, but depending on how you position them they might work for other places as well.  As I mentioned above, I got some mermaid floating charms to use as a little sculpture in Mermaid Cove Cottage (whenever I get to working on that...). They came as a lot of 10 though so I also used a few of them as mermaid dolls in the toy shop, and I plan on keeping at least one to use as an actual story locket charm (assuming I ever get around to getting the actual locket for it.....). 

Also in the toy shop I have toy horses that are floating charms, and toy dinosaurs that are floating charms (I'm waiting for T-rex charms to go with the Brontos)

I did have to bend the mermaids into a sitting position for them to fit, but it was surprisingly easy to do with a pair of pliers and a hammer

and I'm also waiting for some Russian doll charms as well a couple of which I'm planning on using in the toy store and one is for another project that will be part of someone's Christmas present.  Willow: Florist and Garden Shop got a floating charm as well in the form of a tiny garden gnome sitting on one of the shelves in the store.

Also on a kind of related note, while I'm talking about the garden shop from last year, I also used a few regular charm bracelet type charms for that as well...... the two larger garden gnomes in the store and the swan planter in the front window were originally bracelet charms.

  If you just cut or break the little ring they hang from off the top (you might also need to file it smooth where it was) and then paint them us however you want, and they make great larger items for quarter scale, or they would make great smaller items for larger scales..... and you can find a lot of them that are completely 3D (not flat backed) so they could be used in more visible places as well.

So, to re-cap, if you need a teeny tiny item for display somewhere consider seeing if you can find it in a floating charm (search for what you want + floating charm or story locket charm or you could even try floating story locket charm for example for the toys in the toy shop I searched for "horse floating charm".... I've found that floating charm tends to be the more common term used for them in listings, but sometimes it's good to try different wordings if you don't find something perfect the first go-around). There are just a few pros and cons though to keep in mind:

pros: -usually pretty detailed for their tiny size

look at the detail on these little horses

     
         - tend to be about 1/4 inch or less in height so they are 12 inches or less in height for 1:48 scale. (the measurements on listings tend to give the size in metric measurements, but my cell phone calculator has a converter, or you can just google it and it's easy to figure out what it is in inches if you need to)
        
        - pricing tends to be really good, especially compared to other items you might buy that are sold specifically for miniatures

cons: - they tend to be flat backed so probably need to be somewhere where only the front will be visible in the finished project

let's look at this picture again because you can see the back of one of the charms compared to the front

         
          - if ordering from an overseas seller there could be a long shipping time (so don't be like me and decide last minute you want a few more lol)
    
          - if you don't want them metal colored you'll have to paint them, which requires, a very fine point paintbrush (I've started using a rubber paintbrush that's shaped into a fine point, it's been working pretty well because I don't have to worry about the bristles separating and going where I don't want, but you do have to be a little careful because it's more likely to mess up paint that's already there since its a solid rubber tip), a steady had, either good eyesight or a magnifier (which I have really good eyesight, especially for tiny things and I used my husband's reading glasses when I was painting the gnome for the garden shop last year), and something sticky to hold it while you paint (I use a plastic putty knife with masking tape taped sticky side up to it).

the little garden gnome after I painted it.... I started with a coat of spray paint so that's why the putty knife and tape are all the same color, but you get the idea

  That is of course unless it's something that's going to be all one color in which case you just need a smallish brush or spray paint. lol (you should still put it on something sticky to hold it while you paint though)