{Hello! : A Year Of Doors} August

Yes, Yes, I know it's not August any more, but I did actually finish the august door in August.... barely (I finished it on the 30th)... I'm just a little behind on blog posts.  I did post pictures of it on Facebook when it was done, but hadn't gotten a chance to post it here until now.  I also forgot to really take many pictures while I was working on it (except I have a few of making the porch railing), so it wont' be a long post. Lol.

This was one of the months, that from the earliest planning stages, I was most excited for, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.  It's definitely one of my favorites (if not my top favorite) so far.  (Although, I'm pretty excited for the rest of the months I have left.)

I had such a clear picture in my head of how this would look (and also ended up being so late in the month working on it) that I didn't actually do a planning sketch for this one (although I will probably end up doing one after the fact, just ot have it to keep with the others). And, as I said, I didn't take many pictures while making it so this will be more about the details than the actual making of.  So instead of ending with the finished picture like I normally do, let's start with it:

I did actually have a few more pictures of the process of making it than I thought so to start with: putting on the siding. The clapboard siding is strips of pink cardstock glued to a foam core base/wall

Starting to figure out how I'm going to so the porch railing.  I had been thinking about buying a premade railing, but had never completely decided, and of course by the time I actually got to work on it, it was so late in the month that I didn't want to wait for something to be delivered anyway, so I did decide to make my own.  I could have just used plain square dowel for it, but I decided to try using the turned end of fancy toothpicks.

The ends of the toothpicks were just the perfect size, so I glued them between two square dowel pieces and then cut two posts out of slightly bigger square dowel.

Checking the size and look of the railing after painting it white

All of the decor just sitting in place to check the layout

And with the railing held in front

To attach the porch swing I poked hole through the porch roof and used eye pins (from the jewelry making supplies) as "screw eyes" to hang the chains from. The top of the roof piece ends up looking like a bit of a hot mess doing it this way, but it won't be seen anyway and it is nice and secure and at no risk of falling out eventually, lol.

 

So now on to close ups of the details..... porch rocker with a side table with a picture and 2 glasses of lemonade.  Because you can't have an August porch without lemonade!

The kit for the porch swing cam with the forms for the seat cushion and bolster pillows, I just covered them with fabric.  I also added a book (which was leftover from The Librarian and The Bookworm Used Books), because you also can't have an August front porch without a little reading.... especially on a porch swing!

The wreath is tiny butterflies punched from scrapbook papers and details added with paint.  The house numbers are plastic numbers I spray painted with an oil rubbed bronze spray paint. 

The door mat for this month is a little different than most of the others, I wanted something with a more "farmhouse" look to it, so I used some tiny braided trim that I had (it was actually meant/sold as a scrapbooking embellishment) and glued it to a piece of paper to make an oval (-ish... it ended up a little rounder than I meant it to) shape.

And of course, can't forget the "hello".  This one I wrote on a piece of paper with an ultra fine tip sharpie and then hand cut with a craft knife to look like a flat metal sign, and then hung it above the decorative flower element, which also started life as a scrapbooking/paper crafting embellishment.

The one thing I do still need to do that I haven't done yet is finish off the under porch area.  The foam core board needs to be painted to look like a foundation and then I need to decide if I'm going to try to put lattice under the porch or just make posts for it.... I also don't have room for stairs since the porch takes up the whole depth of the display, so I need to figure out if there's a way I can give the impression of the stairs being there without it being 3 dimensional and with me still being satisfied with it, or whether I'd be happier just leaving it as is.

And then one last little adjustment.... after looking at it for a day, I did decide to raise the porch swing.  It makes it pretty high in scale, but you just couldn't really see it well shoved behind the railing (and I do mean shoved, it technically didn't quite fit, but I made it fit lol), and I kind of think it looks more "right" higher even though it was actually more "right" at the height I had it before.  But that happens sometimes in miniatures, especially small scales like this, that it looks more pleasing to the eye to actually be a bit out of scale.

Oh, and I don't  think I talked about the windows any, so last, but not least..... they are plastic windows that I painted white and the curtains behind them are cut from a scrapbook paper I found at hobby lobby that has a crinkled tissue paper layer on one side..... makes the perfect quarter scale curtains.... although probably only if you're viewing them from one side... although you might be able to separate the crinkled tissue paper layer from the backing paper and use them as sheers that both sides of the window would be visible....