Okay, as I said at the end of my last post, after searching Pinterest for winter outdoor party ideas I came up with the idea of a snow tubing and S'mores party, but the problem was going to be if that would actually be make-able. My biggest issue really was what I was going to use as the base. A snow tube was the obvious, but like the picnic basket I would have to find a basically miniature version of it. It dawned on me that maybe I could find a drink holder pool float that was just a basic tube, but for a while it didn't look like I was going to be able to find one. They were all some sort of {cool if you're actually using them in a pool for your drink} shape, or they had summery/tropical designs on them, and/or were more than I wanted to pay for something that I wasn't completely sure would really work even if I found one. But then good old Dollar Tree came through for me. I found online that they had solid color ones and that one of the colors would be perfect for a winter theme, but by this point it was probably September and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find one anymore... I did have to go to a couple different Dollar Trees in my area but I did find them and as I thought the blue/green color was perfect. Next was to figure out if an inflated item would even work for a project like this. At one point I was wondering if I'd have to figure out some way to fill it with resin or something, but actually after blowing it up and stuffing a half of a foam ball in the middle (I had decided that would work well for support for the ''snow" base that would be going on top), and leaving it to sit like that for a while (it was probably at least a week) and seeing that it seemed to be holding the air well I abandoned the idea of filling it with anything other than air (I did make sure to leave the air valve accessible though when the project was finished so that more air could be put in periodically if needed over time) .
While I was testing the sustainability of the inflation I started working on figuring out the fire pit and snow tubes, since that was the majority of the scene. I also went through several rounds of trial and error with the snow tubes.... at first I thought maybe I could find beads that would be the right size and shape, and then when I didn't I thought maybe I could partially flatten some Pony beads with my iron, but then realized that while it kind of worked shape wise they were still way too small. I ended up somehow thinking to try punching circles out of paper, punching another hole out of the center of them and shaping them to form one half of the tube, then gluing 2 together around the edges. That actually worked really well. If you look too closely into the inside of the center you can tell that it's just open in there, but I can live with that, and honestly unless you do look really closely its not that obvious. For the fire pit I decided to just go with a metal ring (aluminum foil folded over a couple times to give it a little more strength and glued into a circle and painted black) sitting on bricks (which I still have some leftover from my first 1:48 scale project the North Pole Tea Room). I also started figuring out the log benches to go around the fire pit during this time and ended up using my miniature tabletop chop saw to cut a stick from my yard into logs and then to split them into benches, which also sit on bricks.
Once I was sure of the drink float as a snow tube for the base I had to make a snowy ground on the top of it for the scene. There definitely wasn't going to be room to just have the scene in the center of the tube so I used air dry clay to make a shape for the ground and then covered it with a layer of white decorative sand from Dollar Tree with a little bit of white glitter mixed in.
While that was drying I started working on the fire in the fire pit. I have to say it's the first time I've really tried to make a fake, but realistic looking fire for any type of craft project much less in this small a scale, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I looked for ideas online for how to do it and ended up deciding to try making the flames with hot glue and painting them with glass paint (which I then decided was too expensive so I watered down regular craft paint with spray landscape glue to use instead.) I used more pieces of a smaller section of the stick I had cut the benches from for the fire's logs and black craft paint to char parts of them.
With the base, fire pit, benches, and snow tubes done that only left the makings for s'mores.... marshmallows on roasting sticks, chocolate bars, and graham crackers. The marshmallows are seed beads painted matte white and glued onto pieces of thin wire. The chocolate bars I made from clay, and the graham crackers I cut from brown card stock and embossed a bit (not that you can probably really tell with them in the tray/bucket, but oh well haha). The tray/bucket/serving dish/whatever that the chocolate and graham crackers are in I made from some adhesive copper stripping that I have (it's meant to be used for stained glass design, but I got it to use as copper flashing on a project and its a pretty big roll of it, so I imagine I will have it to use for other stuff for quite a while...). I gave it the hammered look by texturing it with my pointed end embossing stylus.
Once I had everything glued in place I dabbed a little more of the "snow" up around the edges of everything to make it look like it is really sitting down into the snow, not just somehow floating on top of it.
Sadly I don't seem to have any good (in other words not sitting on my messy workbench) pictures of this one finished other than the calendar ones I took the other day so I suppose I will have to give it it's own photo shoot sometime soon too.... not quite sure how I'll stage that yet, but maybe inspiration will strike before I get around to actually doing it.
I think it's likely that at least part of the reason I didn't get more pictures of this one finished is because I moved pretty quickly into working on the Spring miniature and that one was probably the most involved/elaborate of all of them to make in some ways, and I needed to not take too long getting it done since the series was going to be in the miniatures show I participate in every year in December. And that is what my next post will be...... the making of the garden tea party in a teacup
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