Just as I was finishing up the finishing touches on my backyard cookout in a grill miniature, I happened to be at ACMoore and came across an unfinished small decorative basket that looked like a miniature picnic basket, which of course then just had to have a miniature picnic scene in it. I was originally going to do a springy or summery picnic in it, but then before I had really figured out theme/color scheme/materials and such I remembered a "'Welcome Fall' Picnic" party we had had in our side yard a few years before and thought it would be really cute to recreate in 1:48 scale. So I went through my pictures until I found some good ones to work from and got started pretty much right away.
I started by "staining" the little picnic basket (actually just colored it with marker and then used a touch of a matching color paint in some of the areas that I just couldn't get to with the marker. I also glued the lid into an upright position because I needed a fence in the background of this scene. I then filled the cavity of the basket with foam and glued on a cut out piece of the same artificial grass that I used for the base of the backyard cookout.
I think the very first thing I made for this scene though was the pallet table. I did make the pallet myself rather than from a kit, partly because I wanted to start working on it right away and partly to get the exact look I wanted. The pallet itself is make from balsa wood and painted to match the weathered color of the real life pallet table and the table's legs are the ends of decorative toothpicks (which if you've read many of my other blog posts you will know I use A LOT for a variety of different miniature bits and pieces).
The next thing I worked on was what I was afraid was going to be that most difficult part of the whole project (which actually ended up not really being that bad), the teeny tiny pinwheels for the flower arrangement on the table. I had ordered a milk jug from Stewart Dollhouse Creations (along with a few basket kits, but I'll get to them in a minute) to put the arrangement in, and made some sunflowers using a tiny star shaped hole punch and yellow cardstock, but I was actually really dreading those pinwheels, but also determined that I really really needed them. I took apart a couple of the real life ones that I still had stored with my party supplies and scanned them in and reduced them down to scale and printed them out, cut them out, and {very delicately} folded the tips over and glued them down in the middle to make little pinwheels. As I said definitely didn't end up being a difficult as I thought it would be. The whole thing is larger in scale than the arrangement from the real life party was but that couldn't really be helped. lol
After getting the table and the floral arrangement done the project actually got put aside for a while and by the time I actually got back to it it was actually Fall. Once I did get back to working on it, it went pretty quickly though. I made a fence section from balsa wood, and made the "Welcome Fall" banner with paper printed with miniaturized versions of the patterned papers the pinwheels were made from. The real life banner was fabric, but obviously that wouldn't have really been doable for this scale so paper it was. I painted the letters on myself to mimic the original banner. The "blankets" on the ground under the table and hay bales in the real life party were outdoor type vinyl tablecloths, so to mimic that I found fabric with similar looking print and cut them out and coated them with either mod podge or glue (I honestly don't remember now which I used, but either should work... I feel like I used the tacky glue though for this) to give it the shinier vinyl look. The real life party had fleece blankets thrown over the hay bales for seating so I made mine for the miniature with matching (but smaller scale) cotton fabric, which I glued aluminum foil to the back of to hold a realistic shape/drape when laid over the bales. Which FYI worked fabulously and made it so easy, so I highly suggest it as long as only one side of the fabric will be visible. The hay bales themselves almost stumped me. I couldn't really find any to buy that were the right size (normally I would just use O scale hay bales but the only ones I could find were a larger size bale and ones in smaller scales were too small). I went through a couple different ideas for how I might easily make my own and eventually decided to try making them from floral foam (like the green type you'd use for an artificial flower arrangement) and painting them hay colored. I'm not sure the color is 100% spot on, but it was a close as I could get it with what I had available to use at the time and I was afraid to mess with them too much and end up having to start all over again. Once I draped the "blankets" over them I was really happy with how they turned out. I also put together the two 1:48 scale picnic baskets and one oval basket kits I had gotten and stained/painted them to match the baskets I used as decor at the party. The oval basket I filled with red and yellow landscape/brush/bush material (from the model railroad/diorama department) to mimic mums. A Mason jar with striped "straws" (little pieces of white wire that I painted stripes on), and some glasses made from clear seed beads went on top of the picnic baskets.
Once all the larger components were finished all I had left was to make the food. The real party had grilled cheese and bacon on apple bread tea sandwiches, bacon cheddar mini quiches, apple pie cookies, apple blondies, and caramel apple bites with apple cider to wash it all down. This mini version had the sandwiches, quiches, and apple blondies, and apple cider. I made the trays the sandwiches and quiches were in/on from basswood and made the sandwiches from tiny triangles of balsa wood and paint, and the quiches were seed beads and paint. The cake stand for the blondies was a tiny brad from the scrapbooking section with a tiny roll of paper to make the base a little more substantial. The blondies themselves were little squares of balsa with a little paint. For the apple cider I ended up ordering another lemonade kit from Stewart Dollhouse Creations but instead of doing lemonade in the pitcher I made it apple cider colored. The napkins are cut from the napkins we actually used for the real party.
And that finished up the fall picnic miniature. I have yet to do a "cool" photo shoot with this one sitting on the life size picnic baskets like I plan too (gotta have my husband get the baskets out of the basement, he knows where they are and I do not.... but hey maybe that would be a good project for during quarantine... lol). But I did at least take some photos of it finished. And I made a composite with a picture of the miniature and the picture of the real life event for comparison. I'm really happy with how close they are.
At some point in the planning/working process of this miniature I decided that since I already had summer and fall outdoor entertaining themed miniatures, that I needed one for each season, and to keep with the theme it needed to be housed in something that was a part of the scene. I immediately thought to do a garden tea party in a teacup for spring, but winter took a little bit of thinking to come up with. After searching Pinterest for winter outdoor party ideas I finally came up with an idea, but figuring out if I could make it work took a little extra time..... and that will be a story for my next post, which will be all about "Winter: Snow Tubing and S'more's".....
No comments:
Post a Comment