{Hello!: Year of Doors} February Door

Another door caught up! February!

Saturday, when I finished the March door, I gave myself until Monday night to get February's door done, because I've got some other stuff (non miniatures related) that I need to get done the early part of this week, but I ended up not having hardly any time Sunday to work on it, so I extended my "deadline" to Tuesday evening, which obviously I made. Woohoo!  This one ended up being almost entirely scratch made, with the exception of the window itself, which I had leftover from another project.  This is the first of the doors that I've done a window with curtains (actually I'm not sure if I've done any quarter scale curtains before now that I think about it) and I had to figure out how I was going to do them so that they would cover the window properly and lay flat enough behind the wall that it wouldn't affect it laying flat when I install it into the display. (Which also I have a little update about that, but I will save that for the end of this post...)

I was able to successfully pull off my idea for incorporating "hello" into this door, so keep your eyes open for that as well.

To get started, again, the planning sketch as a reminder of what the initial plans looked like:

And now on to the making of the actual scene:

So, again the first thing I made for this scene was the wreath for the door.  This one is a "grapevine" wreath in a heart shape.  I make my "grapevine" wreaths with narrow gauge wire that I wrap around a form and around itself until it looks like a grapevine wreath.  This time I did it a little differently though since it was a heart shape.... instead of the shape itself being made with the thinner wire I actually used a bigger jump ring and bent it into the shape of the heart first and then wrapped the thinner wire around it.  I then painted it so it doesn't look like metal wire. (You may notice there are a couple shiny places coming through in this picture, I messed up the paint a little bit putting the flowers and stuff on the wreath, but that was simple enough to touch up after I had finally glued it on the door and was sure I was done messing with it) The roses are made from paper (the red ones are from a kit that I got off Etsy several years ago and hadn't used yet and the pink one was one I had already made that was leftover from another project.  The "rose buds" are paper stamens meant for doing full size paper flowers and I just painted one pink and one red.  For the bow I tried a slightly different technique for making the bow from ribbon.... this time I pinned the ribbon down so that it had a loop with the ends crossed and then tied the loop into a bow by tying a piece of thread in the middle of it (unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of this so hopefully that description make some sort of sense).  It did make a nice bow this way.  You may notice that I got a touch of green paint on one tail of the bow and there's some glue on the other, but once the bow was on the door I put a touch of red paint over those places and they aren't really noticeable anymore. 

The door itself is made from one piece of thin bass wood and I scored the outline of the door so that there would be a trim around it and then scored the center panel edges

After painting the door and the trim.  Because of the way I scored the outline of the door the paint isn't as perfectly crisp as I would like, but when looking at it in person you can't see it as clearly and it still looks neater that if I'd tried to make a seperate frame for the door I'm sure. lol.  At this point the wreath was just sitting on the door to check how it looked, the wreath didn't actually get glued on until the very end of working on February

Dry fit testing the door and window into the foam core board that will be the base for the back wall/house facade

This is a cautionary picture...... the facade is white brick, so like with the brick for March I glued to it foam core board with the paper peeled off of one side, but the first time I glued it on I did not make sure my glue was light enough to not warp the paper, so I had to make a second back wall and print a second sheet of bricks.....I actually still ended up with a couple really tiny wrinkles, but they were in places I didn't think they'd be noticeable

And again like the brick for March, I scored the mortar lines to give it texture.  I shows up a lot better with the white bricks in photos than it did with the bricks in the March door

The overhang over the door area was made from some scraps of foam core board, some strips of white card stock, and a piece of thin balsa wood for the roof

The roof/overhang over the window was made the same way.  Here I am holding the balsa into the curve of the foam core until it was dry to so the wood would hold the shape

Test fitting it over the window before it was painted

Test fitting everything and checking on how everything is looking as I go along.  By this point I had also painted the "love" sign and the little wooden heart next to it and made the mailbox with a few envelopes with valentine's day stamps on them poking out.  The mailbox was made with printer paper that I embossed and distressed to look like a white enamel wall mount mailbox.

Rather than having to try to have a room scene behind the window I wanted to have curtains covering it.  As I said this is the first of the doors that I've put curtains on and actually probably the first 1:48 scale project I've done curtain on.  Because they only needed to look good from one side, and I needed them to be as flat in the back as possible, I gathered the fabric onto a straight pin, cut the head off the pin and stuck the pin into the foam core in the window opening for the top of the curtains and then glued the bottoms under the window, and held it in place with more straight pins until the glue dried

To keep it as flat as possible I also glued a strip of cardstock over the bottom of the curtains to hold them flatter against the foam core board

Once the window was done I glued the side wall to the back wall.  I read this tip for using building blocks to make sure you get a good 90 degree angle somewhere years ago and that's what I did here.

The overhang over the door was glued on next, then the overhang over the window, and then the door and accessories (well acutally not "love" sign and wood heart because they will be leaning against the house so I need the patio area in front of the door done first).  As well as the decorations and mail box I also added a porch light and a plaque with the house number on it.

And the last little detail before it was done was the doormat.  Same as the other doormats so far I painted the design on a little piece of sandpaper

And here it is all together finished.  Well, finished except for the patio that will be on the ground in front of the house.  I really want a herringbone pattern brick and am having trouble finding that pattern as a printable, and am trying to figure out if there's another way I can do it without taking too much time and difficulty, so for now I'm just calling it done and I'll do the patio whenever I figure out the brick situation..... (Although honestly looking at it just sitting on the floor of it's cubby hole in the display, I might not mind if it ends of being maybe a painted or stained concrete patio... we'll see). Oh and I also made a slightly bigger wooden heart because I ended up having more room than I originally thought I would.

Did you find the "hello"? Here is a close up of it, on the wall mounted mailbox:

Now, as I mentioned earlier I do have a little bit of an update on the display shadow box.  You may remember I'm not installing the scenes in their cubby holes yet because I wasn't quite sure how I was going to finish the bare wood of the display, and I had sprayed it with some spray paint I already had the other day, which was a matte almond that was very close to the color of the bare wood, but of course not bare wood.  Well, when I went to Walmart to get groceries I took a minute to look at spray paint because I liked the color but it was just slightly off to me so I was going to see if I could get basically the same color in another brand and see if it was a little better to me, or else see if there was another color that I thought I would like better.  I ended up getting another color that was very similar but was slightly pink, which I thought I would like better.  The only problem was I could only find it in gloss and I was thinking I wanted it matte, but I figured I could always spray a matte top coat over it.  I repainted the display when I got home and I do think I'm going to like this color better, but I haven't put any of the doors back into their spaces yet because I wanted to make sure it was completely cured first, especially being gloss, it sometimes stays a little tacky for quite a while and I didn't want anything getting stuck before I was ready for it to be stuck. lol.  The other thing I will now have to decide is if I want to leave it gloss or spray it with matte.  So I'm still not installing the scenes yet, but I'm getting closer to being able to actually do that. haha.

With this door finished I am only two doors behind now, January and December, but as I said I've got some other stuff to get done this week in the next couple days, and then Thursday is my birthday, so I doubt I will be making my goal of getting caught up by the end of April, but I plan on getting back to work on the doors next week and hopefully get January and December done and then I might go ahead and to May's door or I might take another break for a week or so and do May's door later.