{Whimsy Street Shopping District} The Librarian and The Bookworm Used Books ~ Accessories

The bookstore is so close to being finished!.... Well, I say so close, but honestly most of what I have left to do it make probably a couple hundred (at least) more books for it, and to be perfectly honest I have been putting that off and trying to do anything and everything else that can be done for the store first. Lol. I mean, seriously the books are not that bad to do, but for me anything that involves having to make tons of something like that, and especially since I need tons but I need variety, and have to figure out sizes and everything is not something I'm eager to work on.  If I really just buckled down and dove into it I'm sure this store could be done with only one more day's work..... but I know myself and there's no way I'm going to be able to sit and focus/work on the same thing like that non stop all day, so it may still be a little while before the store is finished, but in the meantime, I thought I'd share all the accessories/decorations/other merchandise I've made for the store.

The first "extra" I made for the store was some little tote bags with the store's logo on them. I decided the bookstore should sell something other than used books and a tote bag seemed the logical choice.  I printed the logo onto iron on transfer printer paper and then used some scraps of tan cotton that I already had to make the "canvas" bags.

I ironed the logos onto the fabric flat first, then cut out the bags and glued the side seems.  For handles I cut a thin strip of the fabric's selvedge and glued the ends into the open top of the bags.

After the bags were done I decided that the store should also sell mugs with the logo on it.  I ordered some 3D printed mugs (they were actually cups and saucers, but I just used the mugs by themselves) from Stewart Dollhouse Creations.  Fortunately that coincided with when I wanted to take a break from the bookstore to work on June's door, and the timing worked out perfectly to work on that while I was waiting for the mugs to get here.  I printed the logo, in a couple different colors as well as black, onto ink jet printable waterslide decal paper.  (which I was wondering how that worked with ink jet printing since the ink is water soluble and you have to soak the waterlide decal to separate the decal from the backing, but it turns out you just spray it with clear top coat before soaking it, and that worked perfectly).  Normally with a waterslide decal you just soak it until the backing slide off and stick it directly to your item and let it dry and then top coat it if you feel necessary, but because of the teeny tiny size, I just couldn't get it positioned properly and then get it to stay in place well enough to press it down to bond it/ press the excess water out, so I did actually put a very thin layer of glue under it to grip it a little better and that worked perfectly.  Even though I did have to use glue, I would still use the waterslide decals if I did it again, because they are the thinnest thing I know of to use for something like this.

I, of course, then needed some way to display these mugs for sale.  I did use two of them for a little display on a shelf I had left blank for that purpose on the bookcase unit for the downstairs of the store, but I wanted the rest of them on shelves behind/next to the desk/next to the stairs.  I ended up using little pieces of the trim that I used for the crown molding/to hold the second floor.  There was just enough room for the mugs to sit on the lip of that molding.  I also knew I wanted to have some more tote bags hanging near the mugs and to have a bulletin board behind the desk with some info on it, so I ended up deciding to do one large bulletin board, and attached the shelves with the mugs and the hanging tote bags to one side of that and the other info I had planned on the other half. 

The name The Librarian and The Bookworm comes from the name tha one of my friends and I had come up with for a book blog we had talked about starting (the blog was actually going to be The Librarian and The Bibliophile, but I thought Bookworm would be a little more whimsical for Whimsy street and also not be exactly the same if we ever actually do do the blog lol).  I decided I wanted to have pictures of the "store owners" on the bulletin board with their "story", so of course I had to use our pictures for that.  She is "The Librarian" because she works for our local library system and of course I am "The Bookworm".  Of course at this scale you really can't see the pictures that well, but we know it's us, and you can't read the copy for "our Story", but this is what it says:

Our Story:
 We are a bookworm and a librarian, who have been friends for almost 15 years,
who both dreamed of one day owning a bookstore. When the opportunity arose
to open this store we decided to jump in with both feet. We hope that our store is
 a place that people turn to throughout their lives whenever they are in need of
 books of any kind and we firmly believe that books can help us to understand the
world around us, learn, and grow, as well as providing entertainment when we
 may need it the most.

I also added a sign about the store's Buy. Sell. Read. slogan, again you can''t really tell what the smaller type says on that so here is that as well:

Buy.
Browse our selection of hundreds of used books,
 the selection is constantly changing…
Sell.
Sell us the books you are ready to part with,
we promise we’ll find them a good new home…
Read.
The most important part of all….
And when you’re done come see us again
to find your next great read

I had always planned on having reading themed artwork/ posters as decoration in the store and originally thought to find classical artwork involving books/reading for that, but then I decided the store should sell posters as well as the bags and mugs and ended up doing the artwork for them myself.  I incorporated my other most bookish friend into the store with one of these posters.  For the poster with the stack of books over a watercolor background I reused artwork I had done for the invitations to her baby shower for her youngest daughter (almost 6 years ago now).  The shower was a book themed baby shower and the invitations were little books with a baby sitting next to a stack of books on the front cover and all the info for the shower and registry and everything on the pages inside, the stack of books in this poster is the outline of the stack of books I drew for that invitation.  The READ READ READ poster uses images of letters I photographed from locations around my neighborhood, and especially from signs of places that are significant to me.  The other two posters don't have quite as much personal meaning, although I did realize after working on it that the bookshelf/bookcase poster reminds me a little of the bookcase quilts I made for the only daughter and youngest daughter of my two already mentioned friends, (and that I'm supposed to be making, but haven't gotten done yet for the older daughter of the one friend), and the fourth poster is a quote I found ("Reading gives us somewhere to go when we have to stay where we are" - Mason Cooley) which I chose as a little nod to the quarantine/lockdown caused by the pandemic this year.  As a reminder of that I put "Quarantine 2020" in really small type at the bottom of the poster. It's not something you'd probably really notice that it says just looking at it, but it is just readable if you know what you're looking for (or if you enlarge it). 

The posters were framed in black and two of the posters are hung between the door and the bookcase on the first floor of the shop and the other two will be hung at the top of the stairs on the second story of the shop.  I also printed out some extra copies of the posters and rolled them and glued them into little beads that I had bought to use as planters and such.  I also added a little sign on the front of those that says "Posters $8".

I did make one other item with the store's logo on them, although these are not something the store sells, but hands out free..... bookmarks! These are probably the smallest bookmarks you will ever see, and yet they are really probably a bit larger than they technically should be to be in perfect scale. 

Again, of course, at this size you really can't see what they say, but here is a picture of the full size version I printed out to check it out.  (there's some "Easter eggs" in the info on here too, even though you can't read any of it on the ones actually in the store..... the first I guess actually isn't completely an Easter egg on here because I didn't put the entire address, but, all the stores have an address... the address number is just the order they will be on the street, but the zip code - which I didn't put on this apparently - is the Easter egg. The fictional town of Miniburg's zip code is 20170.  Zip codes in Virginia start with 2 so when I was coming up with the addresses when I was first working on Whimsy Street I used 20170 because 2017 was the year I started (and originally expected to finish) the project.  I did recently look it up to see if it was a real zip code and where it was and it is a real zip code in Farifax County, VA.  The second Easter egg on here is the store's phone number.  I feel like it's not as much of a thing anymore, but if you remember how each number on a phone's keypad also represents 3 or 4 letters, and a lot of businesses used to have their phone number spell something, well this phone number spells Buy Book.  Granted now that I know that the zip code is actually a real zip in Fairfax the area code should probably be 703 not 540, which is the area code for my area, but oh well)

I also made a little plastic holder for them out of the acetate sheets I used for "glass".

This one last set of accessories that I have to share with you today I apparently don't have any pictures of the process of making them, or even of them by themselves before being stuck in place on the floor, but they are a trio of antique/old rugs for the second floor of the bookstore.  I printed the rugs out on iron on transfer paper, transferred them onto white cotton and folded the edges under the back to finish them off, you could also easily do fringe on the ends if, rather than folding the edges under you instead pulled out the threads going across the end until you got to the edge of the transfer, but I went for no fringe.

As I type this the stairs are (hopefully) setting in place against the edge of the second story floor as the glue cures, and the platform that will be in the back part of the first floor of the shop and under the stairs (the stairs were a little too short so I decided to do a platform and have the children's book section on the platform as well) is also sitting in place with glue under it and a weight on top of it.  Once the glue has completely cured on both of those the next step will be to install the second floor and then finish making the books and finish off the display units for the children's book section, and then (ugh) all the books for the second floor and the bookcase for them, and then just finishing touches and it will be done!.... So hopefully soon!

{Hello! : A Year Of Doors} June

June's door is finished!

After finishing May's door I got back to working on The Librarian And The Bookworm Used Books for Whimsy Street, but as I think I had talked about before I wanted to do June's door early in the month since I wasn't sure exactly what the later part of the month was going to look like with things opening back up and people going back to work and everything, and fortunately it worked out that that coincided perfectly with waiting on an order to arrive for something I want to try doing for the bookstore that, if it works, will need to the next thing done before I really go any further.  Then my timing on getting June's door done has actually turned out perfectly too because I finished the door on Sunday and Monday I'm supposed to be getting my order according to the tracking.... if only all my miniature adventures worked out that smoothly and timely. Lol.

So here is the planning sketch for June so that you can see what the initial plan was:

This one, like last month I never did a colored version of (although I probably will still do a colored version just for keepsake purposes since the beginning of the year had both, I'll just color it based on my original plans). This one I also had trouble getting to scan so that it showed up well, but if you click on the picture to view it full size hopefully you will be able to see it okay...

And here we go from start to finish:

The first thing I worked on for this month was the "stained glass" both in the door and the window (which you will see in later pictures).  I used a technique that I had seen multiple tutorials for, both for miniatures and life size faux stained glass, where you swirl acrylic paint into glue that will dry clear and you end up with a stained glass affect.  In this picture the door is sitting next to my planning sketch for it.

This picture shows off the stained glass effect better with light behind it, of course in this scene there won't be light behind the door so the effect won't be quite as cool, but I still love how it turned out, and it really would look amazing in a setting where light could shine through it to really show it off! If you are interested in exactly how I did this I posted a video of working on the stained glass in the door on my Joanna's Dollhouse Diaries Facebook page.

You can see the finished window in this picture, but the main point of the picture was the bottom half of the picture.  I decided to use some Wilton cupcake liners that I happened to notice sitting in a box to make the pinwheels for my wreath.  The colors were perfect and I thought that the paper would work really well because it is a thinner paper, but still has some body to it.  In this picture I am scoring my cutting lines, I didn't want to mark them with pencil or pen since both sides of the paper will show, but I wanted to cut it with scissors not a craft knife so this gave me lines to follow to cut without leaving marks.  The pinwheels were made from .25" squares, which would be 12" in real life

Once I had a couple of each color pinwheels made I punched a hole in a piece of paper and glued the pinwheel around it and then cut off any paper that showed behind the pinwheels.  There may have been a better/easier way to do this, but this was what I came up with. Lol.  I really would have probably like more, smaller pinwheels, but this size works and honestly I'm not sure if I could make them any smaller, even at this size they drive me crazy (and yet I keep making projects with them... hmmm....)

And the finished wreath on the door.  Originally I was planning to hang it over the center of the window section of the door, but it ended up blending in too much and detracting from the effect of having the stained glass so I decided to hang it lower on the door instead

Making plantation shutters for the lower part of the window.  I basically had to figure this out on my own, based off of the one single picture I could find on Pinterest of someone making, probably, 1:12 scale shutters, in which the shutters were almost finished, but from what was shown I was able to figure out a plan of action.  I started by marking my edges and cut lines (which in the future I won't mark the lines all the way across where I am actually cutting because I think you could see the pencil a little on the edges of the finished product, but that's okay it was my first set)

I cut each louver by cutting along my cut lines and then cutting the sides about half the distance between them, and then shaped them by pushing the cut edges out at a slight angle.

Here they are in the window.  They aren't perfect, but I'm really happy with how they turned out for this project!

Once the door and window were done the next step was to put the siding on.  The siding is strips of cardstock cut to look like shingle siding.  I really didn't measure any of this as I cut, just kind of eyeballed it, because I wanted a more "casual" look to the shingle siding, and as I was looking up real life shingle siding I noticed that there were quite a few with unevenly sized shingles and decided that was the look I wanted to go with for this door.  I do have to say at this point I was not sure I completely liked everything about the door and how it was coming together.  I was starting to question my choice to not paint the window white with the door frame being white (I tried painting the window white on my test window when I was testing out the stained glass method and I just really didn't like it with the stained glass), but I knew there was a lot left to be done still and that I should just trust myself and keep going (plus I wasn't going to redo anything anyway, I would have just not liked the door that much lol), of course once everything was said and done I ended up loving how it all turned out together. {*phew*}

Next step was to make the portico to go over the door, I used scraps of the shingle siding strips for it's siding

It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do for a roof, I wasn't sure I wanted regular shingles with the shingle siding, and I wanted a light color, but solid white didn't look right, and I definitely didn't want more tan/brown, but then while looking through some stacks of papers and cardstock to see if I could come up with any ideas I found some corrugated cardboard sheets, which I separated the actually corrugated part from the base and glued in onto the white cardstock I had already put on there and then dry brushed some white paint over it.  I gave me the lighter brighter color I needed along with some added texture and without it being to bright/stark of a white 

I added posts to hold up the portico, made my door mat and a small area rug to go under it and attached the wreath to the door

My next project was the house number plaque.  I wanted the background to have a pattern made with colored strips so I cut a piece of paper out to fit inside the plaque, then cut that into quarters and then laid individual strips of cardstock at an angle on each quarter and the cut the excess off

And the finished result.  I didn't get the two halves on the right side completely perfectly lined up, but honestly it wasn't really noticeable at all once I got the numbers on

Here it is with the numbers on.  I painted the numbers with white craft paint, which is really hard to get smooth on the plastic that these numbers are made from so I opted to pat it on and get a slightly textured finish to them with full coverage.

House number plaque attached to the facade.  As with all the doors, the house number is the month and year combined: June (06) and 2020 (20).  Next up was painting the bicycle...

I expected painting this bicycle (from True2Scale) to be really, really difficult, but it actually wasn't too bad. I did take a break from it at one point because while it ended up being easier than I expected it is still stressful to be be doing that much detail on something that small, which then kind of wears you out, which then means you start to have more trouble keeping all your lines perfect, so it did take me quite a bit of time to get it painted and finished, but it really wasn't as difficult as I expected. Lol.

With the bike done and glued in place, all that was left was to do the landscaping, but before I could do that I needed to get the step and the posts for the deck attached to the base so that I could landscape around them, so I glued them in place with the base under the deck, but only glued the step and posts to the base so that it could be pulled back out to work on it

Here are my gathered supplies for the landscaping, I decided I wanted this house to be on the beach and pulled out 2 different colors sand to choose from, a seashell (which obviously is way to huge for this scale... I actually crushed this shell up to make little tiny shell pieces to use around the step and deck posts,) as well as a little clump of dried grasses.

I decided to go with the lighter sand and glued in onto the base and added some of my crushed shell around the step and deck posts, and also added a clump of grasses growing next to the deck

Close up of the crushed shells

Close up of the beach grass

At this point the door could have been done, but I felt like it maybe just needed a little something else in the front right corner in front of the beach grass

I ended up making a couple little pieces of driftwood and they just finished it off perfectly! (I made them by cutting the bark off of a little piece of stick that I had leftover from the stick I used to make the logs for my winter scene from last year's series and then sanded it smooth)

Oh! I almost forgot..... did you find the "Hello" on this month?... It's on the doormat, which says "Hello Sunshine"

As I said this ended up working out perfectly timing wise for me to now clear off my workbench again, and get the bookstore back out and get back to work on that this week.  I'm trying to really work as much on this as I can and get as much done as possible while I still have all day every day to work on it (which I do have a couple bigger projects around the house that I had wanted to get done this spring while we were on quarantine, but at this point I'm not going to have time to get them done in the next couple weeks anyway so I'm just focusing on miniatures instead).  I will also probably be getting started a little bit on the ice cream shop pretty soon here, I don't want to slow down too much on the bookstore by starting another shop at the same time, but I also will most likely need some breaks from the bookstore, especially when I get to the point of making all the rest of the books, so I figure if I'm between monthly doors I'll start working on the building and more detailed plans for the ice cream shop so that once the bookstore is done I can just jump straight in to the interior of that shop, but I'll get more into that in another post...

This also finishes off the first of the display frames for the door series, so I really am at the point now that I need to make a definite decision on whether I am happy with the finish on that or whether I want to do anything else to it, and then actually permanently install the doors, but that also will be for another post....