Phew..... its been a whirlwind of a couple weeks! If you read my last post you'll know that I was in a {desperate haha} rush to get both the Backyard Art Studio and Flutterby Bakery done before yesterday (December 3rd). What I didn't mention was that the reason I really really had to get them done before then was that they were going to be in a dollhouse and miniatures exhibit at the Historic site that I work for........ (although the Art Studio also had to be done in time for me to send in my entry for the miniatures.com contest, and lets face it I just wanted stuff done before it got too far into the Christmas season because I need to work on stuff for Christmas now lol).
On top of getting them done, my husband was going to be driving one of his RC cars in our town's Christmas parade and asked me to make a mini trailor float for him to pull behind it (which will get it's own post when I'm finished posting this one)..... which also had to be done by yesterday as the parade was last night. So needless to say, I still haven't gotten everything cleared up and put away from Thanksgiving nor have I started decorating for Christmas (which I normally would have done Thanksgiving weekend lol). Although I do plan to at least get the decorating started today before we go to the opening reception for the dollhouse exhibit.
But on to the important part.... lol the finished projects! Now I will say there were a few things on both of them that I had originally planned to do that I didn't end up actually doing, and there's still one or two things I might do to the bakery once I get it back in January, but it's nothing that will really make a huger difference and I'm not even sure I'll actually do it lol.....
{Flutterby Bakery}
For this one I'm just going to post the finished pictures, because I think I've done a pretty good job of posting pictures of everything as I worked on them, as I went along. But just a re-cap on it, The bakery is 1:48 scale with an empty case from a tower of CD-Rs as the structure. This was my first time really working much with polymer clay and definitely my first time making little cupcakes and cakes and stuff, and I think they turned out really well so I'm pretty proud of myself for that. There is one thing I made to add to the bakery that I hadn't posted about before, because I just decided to actually do it (even though I'd been toying with the idea all along) Friday morning...... Little cake pops, which I'll talk more about in the caption for the photos. Also just an FYI cheap paintable caulk, works fabulously for fake frosting (for a real life size application), I used it on the outside of the CD case to make the exterior of the bakery and it went on and worked pretty much just like real frosting would have, so I was super pleased with it, and dried to just about the perfect frosting finish. And it was only $1.98 for the tube and I only used maybe half of it for this size project. i probably wouldn't suggest it for tiny applications though I think it would be a little to thick for miniatures, but for life size fake cakes it is awesome! lol. But now on to the pictures......
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| this little project was one I kept putting off doing and seriously considered not doing at all, because I really wasn't looking forward to trying to make little clay balls that tiny and keep them actually round shaped as I pushed wire into them (or having to glue them to the end of wire after baking them), but then as I was finally like okay, let me try this, I happened to notice my one of my sewing pins and the little ball head on them was the (almost) perfect size, so instead of having to go crazy trying to make them from clay, all I ended up doing was cutting the pin to length and painting the "sticks" white..... also the container they are in is half of a screw type jewelry closure, I just took the eye pin out of it and it was good to go. |
{Backyard Art Studio}
This one there were a lot more projects for it (would those be sub-projects? lol) that got done in these last few weeks and therefor didn't in-progress posts and lots of detailed pictures, and, to be honest, I'm tired this morning and this is already a long post, so I'm not going to probably go into huge detail about them at this point, but I will try to point them out in the photo captions and tell a bit about them. If you want more details definitely feel free to comment and ask! (and I might post more details about them later, but it is December, so I make no promises, lol). {Fair warning, there will be lots of pictures for this one, but I will try to narrow it down so that there's not a ton of almost the same pics lol}
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| So first for some of the stuff I made for it, that weren't posted about in-progress..... The in-progress painting on the easel is being painted from a photo taken (in real life) at an overlook on Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park; the paint tubes were made from the metal part of eye makeup applicators, for the caps for them I used my 1:48 scale cupcake mold and made them from black clay and the work perfectly; the paintbrushes are hand made from toothpicks, some fake hair, and aluminum foil; and the storage cart was made from empty match boxes. |
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| oh, and the jar is a jar that you get nail glitter and stuff in at the dollar store |
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| more brushes in a jar over here, also, a watercolor paint tray, made from foam core board and paint; colored pencils made from shaved down toothpicks; and some drawing charcoals made from clay (in a tray made from several 1:48 scale baking sheets) |
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| I guess I lied about not having a ton of almost the same picture.... ooops.... lol |
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| This was another part of the project I probably should have written more about. It took me a while to get just the right grass. I started with a "grass" landscaping sheet, but it was just too flat and I just couldn't stand it, so I ripped that backup and was looking for ideas for other ways of doing grass and came across the idea of using a towel, and looking at one in my bathroom, I thought, yeah, that does kind of look like grass, so off to walmart I went hoping to find a grass green colored towel cut it out, glue it down and be done with it (this was Wednesday afternoon, and I had to have it all done by Saturday morning....). Of course they didn't have the right color green so I got a lighter green and some green spraypaint, but that ended up working pretty well, so I spraypainted it, then, cut it out and glued it down (with spray adhesive) and was good to go..... and I really like the way it looks. Public service announcement here though, cutting towels makes a huge mess. LOL |
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| this boxwood was another one of my, I just cant stand how what I could find to buy looks, so I need to make it myself things, this one however involved me cutting out and individually gluing in place over 1,000 tiny leaves..... worth it in the long run? yes. Did I hate myself for it while i was in the process of doing it? also yes. haha |
