{Four Seasons} Summer: Backyard Cookout

*I will be posting this series in chronological order, as far as how the project developed/evolved, and the order the pieces were finished in, rather than in seasonal order.  Which actually now that I think about it does technically end up being seasonal order, just starting with Summer rather than at the beginning of the calendar year with winter....

So starting with summer....

"Summer: Backyard Cookout"

This was originally intended to be a one off, quick little weekend project, of a little backyard barbecue scene in this cute little toy(?) grill I got from Target from the Dollar Spot (which I know isn't what they call it anymore now that there's multiple price points, but I'm not 100% sure what they do call it now so we're going to just got with dollar spot for now lol) for a few dollars.

  (It obviously didn't end up staying a quick little one off project, but I'll get into how that came to be in a little bit). I actually had gotten a different little toy/decorative grill a year or two before from Target thinking I could do something with it in miniature, but it was a mint green type color, which was super pretty but not very realistic looking, and I never really ended up going any further than buying (honestly not even sure where it is right now).  When I saw the ones they had this past year and saw that the body was black and more "real" looking the idea resurfaced and this time actually happened. I knew I wanted the scene to involve a 1:48 scale grill inside the decorative/toy grill, but that's about as far as the planning had gotten the first time I bought one of these little grills.  This time I ended up with the idea of a backyard cookout party, with a grill and a picnic table set up as a buffet for the party.  Because I wanted it to be a quick project I didn't want to have to figure out the measurements for and cut all the pieces for a picnic table so I went looking for a 1:48 scale kit for it and ended up ordering one from Stewart Dollhouse Creations.  I also ordered a deviled egg mold/kit when I saw that because what good Virginia summer party doesn't include deviled eggs, and I got a kit to make a pitcher of lemonade and glasses, that came with 3D printed pitcher and glasses, and the tiniest lemon slices, and instructions on how to finish it all off. I seriously love everything I've ever gotten from them, they are one of my all time favorite places to shop for things I need for miniature projects!

This project came up right as we were getting ready to spend a weekend at my parent's house dog sitting while they were out of town, and that seemed the perfect opportunity to be able to have a whole weekend completely devoted to it and get it done. It was also a good project to bring with me because I was able to easily pack up everything I needed for it in one backpack and not have to carry too much back and forth.

The first step was making a base inside the grill for everything to sit on, which actually ended up being super easy because I had a foam ball that was just the right size when cut in half to fill the bottom section of the grill. I topped that with a circle of artificial grass that I buy at least a couple packages of every year at Walmart at Christmas time.  Its meant to be for their little Christmas villages they have, but its' perfect for miniatures.  And I really feel like it could work for pretty much any scale other than 1:144. Obviously I used it here for 1:48 and it doesn't look ridiculously long, but I've put it next to some 1:12 scale stuff and it doesn't look crazy short....

I put the picnic table together first of the kits, but the one I was really excited to do was the deviled eggs, and I'm not going to lie it was a a bit of a challenge working with bits of clay that tiny, but O.M.G. it turned out so cute!

I made the cake using the cake mold I had gotten from Stewart Dollhouse Creations back when I was doing the Flutterby Bakery.  I actually somehow ended up with kind of a lopsided cake this time, but I went ahead with it since my goal was for this to be a quick project, and I envisioned the party as being somewhat casual, maybe thrown together at the last minute, by someone who loves to entertain and absolutely would make a decorated cake for it, but was totally fine if everything wasn't 100% perfect for this particular party. The summery bunting is little tiny triangles of scrapbook paper.

The lemonade came next (because again, you can't have a summer party without lemonade!) and it just turned out so stinking cute! the lemon slices included in the kit were the perfect finishing touch!

Of course a party needs more than just deviled eggs, cake and lemonade, and again since I am from Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay, crabs are a must have.  I ended up cutting out tiny pictures of cooked crabs, which at that size they weren't all perfectly trimmed, which you can tell in the close up pictures, but really can't tell that much on an overall picture or looking at it in person.  Also of course had to have a watermelon and I made that from clay.  Coleslaw is another necessity for a summer cookout and I made that by cutting tissue paper into the tiniest little slivers and mixing just a bit of white paint into mod podge to make the dressing for it, I was actually really happy with how it turned out. I had thought about attempting a potato salad too, but ended up deciding against it mainly for time reasons, but also partly because I wasn't convinced that I was coming up with any way to successfully make it. haha. The cake stand was made from a cardstock piece (that if I remember correctly was from a kit for something that I didn't end up using) which I folded down around the edges and then glued to a tiny screw for the base.  The plate/tray the crabs are on was a smaller circle from the same kit (I think it was supposed to make a treat stand or something.... sadly since I didn't post this when I actually made it I don't remember exactly about that), that I just shaped slightly.  The paper plates I punched from cardstock and then embossed to look like paper plates, and the napkins were cut from actual napkins that I separated into just one layer first.  I did also start making some burger patties out of clay, but I didn't get too into doing anything with them until after I got the grill done.

So, the grill. This actually gave me a lot more trouble than I expected.  After going through many different possibilities/ideas I finally settled on using a one of the extra covers from a set of earbuds that I don't really ever even use anyway, which seemed like the perfect idea.  Which it was, it just took a lot more effort to get it from earbud cover to finished grill than I expected.  I started by poking some wire into it to make the legs (which sounds easy enough, but actually was a royal pain to get them in and to stay straight and not distort anything). Then I glued a little circle of cardstock between them (also a much bigger pain to get in there with everything staying in the right place than it sounds...).  Keep in mind the earbud covers are soft so I had to keep adjusting things so that the bowl of the grill wasn't getting distorted.  My first plan was to use little pieces of black decorative vase filler gravel from Dollar Tree as the charcoal and make an actual little grill top for it.  Yeah. That didn't happen, and I actually probably worked on it way too long before accepting the fact that that was just not going to happen, lol, but I finally gave in and tapped out on that idea and ended up just printing and interior for the grill and glueing it on and that worked SOOOO much better.  The shape of the inside of the earbud cover even gave me a good surface to glue it to.

Once the grill was finally done I finished off the burgers and fixings for those.  Ive got 4 burgers still on the grill with cheese gettting melted on top and then 4 plain burgers in the platter on the table along with lettuce (little pieces of crepe paper, colored lettuce green and given some texture with my embossing stylus) and tomato slices (printed pictures of tomato slices cut out).  I had at one point thought about doing some hotdogs too, but when it came down to it I didn't really fee like making anything else and I already had the crabs so there was still more than one meat choice at this cookout. lol.

Once I glued everything in place I considered it done, and took it outside for a little photo shoot with one of our grills when we got home from the weekend at my parents.....

....However, after looking at it for a few days, I realized that I didn't have buns for the hamburgers and started thinking about how I wanted to do them.  I ended up finding adhesive round jewels at Hobby Lobby in the scrapbooking section that were the right size and shape and painted them to look like buns.  I then wrapped them in plastic wrap and tied it off with a little bit of thread to look like a twist tie.  It actually went really well and easily so I will definitely be keeping the little stick on jewels in mind for future projects.

Now it is officially done, but I've been toying with the idea of doing some sort of little fence or gate near the front in all that empty space, but have yet to decide if that's something I actually want to do or not., so it's done. lol

But..... as I was finishing up the finishing touches on this project I happened to come across a little decorative basket at ACMoore, that looked like a mini picnic basket and I thought: oooooo that would be cute with a little picnic scene on it, (which eventually evolved into the full series). But that's for my next post.......