{Hello!: A Year Of Doors} May... Part 2

May is now completed!

The scale gravel I had ordered did arrive yesterday, so I was able to do the landscaping/ground for it yesterday afternoon/evening.  Of course, like the others, it's not permanently installed yet because I'm still not 100% on the finish for the display (pretty sure I'm going to stick with the color it is right now, but I'm still debating whether I want to spray a matte top coat over it to take the gloss down a bit, or leave it full gloss...). I am really happy with how the whole thing turned out, I think it's my favorite one so far! It does not have a doormat though even though that was something that I had planned for every door to have because I really love the stepping stones and don't want to cover them up any with a doormat (plus I'm not really sure how well a doormat on that sort of path would work in real life anyway). So, we're just going to say the stepping stones are the doormat and go with that haha.

So, without further ado here is the making of part 2:

While I was waiting for the scale gravel to be delivered I tried a couple different things for the ground cover for the non gravel areas.  I wanted it to be an actual groundcover plant rather than just grass, but also didn't want something too overly detailed or time consuming.  I thought this green large grain sand would work nicely, but of course it is too shiny on its own, so I tried putting matte Mod Podge over part of it, just spraying it with matte top coat on another part and then dabbing on some green craft paint on another and it was clearly the green craft paint section that looked the best, so that's what I went with

I applied a bed of glue to the gravel areas and sprinkled the gravel on and then made the stepping stones from clay that I mixed a couple colors together, leaving it just shy of completely mixed to give it some color variation, and baked them before starting work on the path.

I did weigh them down while the glue was drying so that they were more set into the gravel not just floating on top (this is a set of metal stamps so it has some good weight to it, but has a completely flat bottom and isn't too big.... I'm going to have to remember to use it again in the future when I need stuff weighed down this time it just happened to still be sitting on my workbench when I was looking for something to use).  I did end up doing a little bit of a second layer of glue and gravel around the stepping stones in a couple places and in a couple other places where it was a little bare

Here is the finished path and gravel areas test fitted with the wall and the bench to make sure the edges were correct and everything

And here is a close up of the path finished

And a close up of the ground cover finished

With those done I glued the bench in place and then the wellies

And then realized there was one other thing I still had to add.... Can you spot it?

It's this door's "hello", on a garden stake this time.

And just for good measure, since the rest of the ground elements got closeups, here is a closeup of the house number flower pots as well.  Of, course, as with all the other months, the house number is the month's number and the year.

Also, I realized that I should have included this in my last post along with the doorknobs/handles, but I did figure out a way to add the "'hello" to April's door!:

I actually had originally made this copper stamped "hello" for May before I did the "chalkboard" one, but it was just a little too big for a garden stake where I was putting it, and I happened to lay it down near the display and see it and April all in one glance and thought perhaps it would work with that scene.  I had already decided that if I was going to add a "hello" it was probably going to somehow be on the trim above the door, since that's where I was originally going to put the house numbers before deciding to do the oversized number down beside the door, and this little copper sign fit just perfectly there, and I liked how it looked with the scene as a whole.... as I said, since this door was completed before I decided on the "hello" challenge, I wasn't going to add it just for the sake of having it, I was only going to do it if it blended smoothly with the rest, as if it had always been art of the plan, and I think this fit that bill.

I still don't have the light blue cardstock for the siding for January's door (which if it ends up looking like it's going to be too much longer before I can easily shop in store at Hobby Lobby I might try just using white cardstock and painting it light blue, but I'm not sure how well painting the cardstock will turn out), but I'm going to try to get as much of everything else done for that one in the meantime so that when I finally get it all I will have to do will be to do the siding and glue everything on. Other than that I think I'm probably done with the doors until whenever in June I do June's door (unless I decide to go ahead and do December's, but at this point I'll probably wait on that a little while at least).  With the doors caught up (or at least soon to be caught up) it will free up time and workbench space for me to get back to work on the last 2 Whimsy Street shops, "The Librarian And The Bookworm Used Books", and "JellyBean's Ice Cream and Delights".

{Hello!: A Year Of Doors} Quick Update

Just a quick little update here.... while I'm waiting to get stuff that I've ordered that I need in order to finish May, and still haven't gotten the light blue cardstock to use for January's siding yet (although I did start working on January and there is a little bit of a sneak peek picture in this post), I did get the tiny door knobs and handles I ordered in the mail yesterday so now all the doors have knobs/handles!

May's door knob is painted copper to match the mail slot

March has a gold toned doorknob

And February's is also gold, but a handle rather than a knob

And here's a quick shot of the doors so far in their display piece... they don't all have all their accessories in this picture though since they have yet to be permanently installed in the display and some of the accessories can't get glued on until after that happens. (April didn't get a close up of it's doorknob because it's always had one... it was molded onto the door itself since I used a pre-made plastic door for April). This is also the little sneak peek of January I promised up there in the top compartment. (Which, this wasn't really intentional, but the glare on the door kind of helps keep from giving too much of the door away ahead of time HAHAHA)

I did also just check the tracking on the scale pebbles I'm waiting for for the paths for May's landscaping that was not supposed to be here 'til Friday and now it's coming today instead , and did also test out an idea for ground cover "plantings" for the non gravel areas of the yard so I could have May finished as early as tomorrow, but until I actually see the pebbles and see if they are really what I want (it was hard to tell on a picture on an ebay listing lol) I can't be sure that I won't have to figure something else out or how quickly/easily it will all come together. Lol. But I'm hoping at least by the end of the week. And my state is supposed to start phased reopening on Friday, so maybe I'll be able to comfortably go to Hobby Lobby and get that cardstock soon too and be all caught up (except for December, but since I technically started that a year early anyway as long as it gets done by this December I'm not going to consider it "behind").  I'm also, while waiting to be able to finish May and January, trying to make sure I have everything I need for June, July, and maybe August as well since I should be back to by early June and will probably be doing those months as I intended the project to be.... weekend projects...  Of course I'm sure as I work on them I'll come up with other things I need/want to add to them and possibly need different supplies, but also hopefully by then I'll be able to run to the craft store when I need something.

{Hello!: A Year Of Doors} May.... Part 1

After finishing February, I had planned to go ahead and do January's door and be technically caught up for this year before starting on May's door (which I still also should have had December done by now, but as long as it gets done before December this year I'm not overly worried about rushing to get it done... maybe I'll do it in July as a little Christmas in July project) , but I was really excited for my design for May and I had (I thought) everything I needed for it and I need a light blue cardstock for January, which I'm not paying over 6 times as much for shipping as the actual price of the sheet itself to order it, so I'll be waiting until either I have something else that I want/need to order from Hobby Lobby or until I can actually go to the store and get it.  So, May's door it was this past week, however, I did not actually have everything I needed to completely finish it, so I'm currently waiting for some materials I ordered to get here and in the meantime (especially since they're not supposed to get here until the end of this week) I thought I'd post the progress on the door up to this point.  It's basically just the landscaping/ground that I haven't done yet, so it is mostly done.

So first of all here's my planning sketch for this month so you can see what the initial plans were:

I don't have a colored version of this month's sketch, because I never got it copied to have a copy to color, and it feels like it's kind of pointless at this point since I'm already well past the planning stage (Although I still might just as kind of a keepsake with the project, because as I have the previous sketches right now I have both the original sketch and the colored version displayed in page protectors facing each other in the folder I am using for the project so... I'll probably want all the months to have both and the months after this I will probably do a colored version of their sketches too before I start working to better plan out my colors and such, so I'll probably end up doing a colored version of this own too, it'll just be after the fact lol)

And here we go from start to almost finish:

The two main accessories/decorations I had planned for this door were a pair of wellies/rainboots with flowers in them and a watering can with flowers as the "'wreath" on the door. (I ended up adding another element once I got working on it, but we'll get to the in a minute).  This is a picture of the 3D printed wellies before I painted them.  I got them from Stewart Dollhouse Creations and they are sooooo cute!

Close up of the unpainted watering can. Also 3D printed, also from Stewart Dollhouse Creations.

The watering can painted.  I painted the main color with spray paint and the flower/sun/ whatever with regular craft paint (the watering can itself has an embossed flower on it, but after attempting to paint it, I'm not sure if it looks more like a flower or a sun, I suppose it would look more like a flower if I painted a center on it, which I might at some point, but that's just how it is for now)

And the wellies painted.  The main color on these is also spray paint and the white polka dots is gloss finish craft paint, I used to smallest end of my ball stylus to dot on the white

Starting to work on the florals in the watering can.  The idea is that the flowers for this month would have a wildflower feel to them, but the watering can did get a slightly more structured look and also a nice big garden flower (Rose? peony? you decide...lol)

Finished floral arrangement in the watering can (with my finger both for scale and so you can see the flowers better with something behind them)

Seeing how it looks laying on the door.  Also I guess this is the first picture of the door, so let me talk about that for a minute.  This is the first of the doors that I didn't make myself. (Wait, actually no it's not, April's door was a Grandt Line door that I've had laying around for a while from something I, for whatever reason, didn't end up using it for.... but the others I made myself lol) I purchased it from BJ Miniatures (along with several other doors that I will be using for January, June, and July at least, but possibly for one or more of the fall months too, but I haven't decided yet exactly what door styles I want for them.  I fell in love with this door when I saw it, I love the arched top and the diamond paned window.  It's just so cute and cottage-y and I knew it would be perfect for this scene.  I painted the door and the trim and the window (which should start showing up in pictures pretty soon here...) a soft green, kind of a mossy green, with a hint of a bit of pastel green about it.  I ended up having to mix the color myself since I couldn't find a green that was exactly what I wanted (at least not without being able to actually go into craft stores lol).

At some point between starting work on this month's door and finishing the watering can florals I came across a picture on Pinterest of house numbers painted on flower pots and thought that would be perfect for the house numbers for this scene.  I made the flower pots from craft paper cardstock and painted them with terra cotta craft paint, then hand lettered (numbered?) the numbers. 

I decided that the house number flowers pots should be sitting on a bench under the window/next to the door.  I made the bench myself, sort of based off of a bench tutorial I saw on the miniatures blog Cinderella Moments.  That was for a 1:12 scale bench so of course I had to adjust the measurements, and I also did a couple other things slightly different because of how I was using it.  I "stained" it with a brown marker then aged it a bit with a very light layer of white dry brushed on and a little light sanding. 

Checking too see how the bench and flower pots will look under the window..... everything is just laying there in this pictures..... hence the pots leaning at weird angles lol.  The window is a plastic window that I'm not even sure where or when I got it...

I also, kind of between working on other elements, made a little mail slot for the door out of some adhesive backed copper I have (also I think I've mentioned this and/or you may have noticed that, except for the April door which had a door knob molded onto it, none of the doors have door knobs or handles at this point.  That should be remedied soon, I've ordered some in 2 different styles, so I'm hoping they will work to put on the doors.  I had waited to do anything because I knew I had ordered 1:48 scale door handles for the North Pole Tea Room, but was having trouble finding them or something similar to order, but finally found some to get..... which *whew* because I also wasn't coming up with any good ideas for making doorknobs and handles that would look really good)

The florals done in the first rainboot.  I actually did this first one, and then kinda got distracted with other things before I got the second one done (I know, shocker right?)

You probably can't actually see it too well in this picture, but I was checking out how the window treatment I had planned actually looked behind the window (I folded plain printer paper to look (kind of) like Roman Shades or really wide blinds, or something similar (I was going for roman shades, but since it's paper and doesn't really have any drape to it I'm not sure it doesn't look more like blinds lol)

Field stone printed paper glued on the background, "glass" and window treatments installed on/in both the window and the door, and the flower pots glued to the bench and "planted" with some... well something green.... moss, low growing plants. whatever you want to think of it as....

Close up detail of the window treatment for the window

and closeup view of these adorable lace curtains I put behind the door, because with the watering can on the door and everything you really don't see them that well, especially in pictures, from the front side.  These are also from Stewart Dollhouse Creations.  They are actually one of the things I got in a mystery grab bag I ordered around Christmas time.

Finally got the flowers in the other one...

And this is me just holding the back wall in place sitting behind the wellies and bench to get a good idea of what it all looks like together

Closer look at the details.  As I said this is as far as I've been able to get at this point until I get what I ordered for doing the landscaping, but to give an idea (and I think this is listed on my planing sketch as well) I'm planning on having a gravel path with stepping stones going up to the door and maybe gravel area in front of the house as well with maybe a little bit of grass or plantings or some sort in a small area on each side of the path.  That could potentially change somewhat as I go to actually do it.  Also not sure if this one will have a doormat, even though that was an element I was planning for them all to have, because of the type of path going up to the door, but I'll figure that out after the path is made.

Since it doesn't look like I'll have my materials to completely finish this until the end of the week I don't think I really have anything miniature wise that I want to work on this week.... I did get a few kits for my birthday for stuff for the bookstore, which I do really need to get back to work on, but, I think I want to wait to start working on that again for when I can just leave it out and work pretty much exclusively on that for at least a few weeks before having another door to work on (which once the base for May gets done I'm basically caught up until whenever in June I decide to do June's door, except for January, but at this point I don't know when I'll be getting the cardstock to use for that one). I have the door itself for January painted so I might go ahead and make the wreath and other accessories and everything for January this week so that when I do get the cardstock to make the siding from all I have left to do at that point is basically just to put it all together..... IDK we'll see. ;)

Oh! and if you were looking for the "Hello" in this one and didn't find it, don't worry it will have a hello, I just forgot to put that particular item in any of these pictures..... so it will be in the finished pictures when I post the second part of the making of this scene!

{Hello!: A Year Of Doors} February, again...

I know I already posted February's door, and I know I said I probably woudn't be doing the base/landscaping/hardscaping any time soon, but I did actually end up working on it here and there between other things over the past few days and it is completely finished now! (except for being installed into the display and the edges finished of course), so I thought I'd post it real quick before I move on and start working on either some of the stuff for May's door (since it is now May), or January's door.

I ended up finding a herringbone brick to use Wednesday evening and from there it all came together nicely:

I really wanted the herringbone because when laid the right way it vaguely looks like hearts, but is still something that would be a normal thing for someone to use at the entrance to their house, so is part of this particular theme, but also not specific to this theme.  Originally I had planned to have it all the way across like in this picture but I kind of thought it might not seem quite right so...

... I tried it with it just in front of the door area and I ended up deciding I liked that better.  Of course that left the other side of the base to do something with, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Because the brick was only going to be in front of the door area it needed to have a finished edge/border to it, which I was afraid was going to be really hard to achieve and get it to look good, but actually it was pretty easy.  I ended up just cutting individual bricks from extra of the herringbone I printed and gluing them one by one in a straight pattern around the edges and it worked! (I was afraid it would look too fakey doing it that way but it turned out pretty good.... if you pay too much attention you can see I didn't get my edges lined up quite right all the way back so the bricks end up getting a little smaller as towards the wall of the house, but it wasn't bad enough for me to be willing to do the whole thing over lol).  I also had originally planned for the herringbone to be regular red brick, but I ended up liking this kind of faded brick color better, especially with the door being red.  

Once I had the brick stoop/patio taken care of I had to figure out what to do with the rest of the front.  Garden area was the obvious, but since this is supposed to be February I had to figure out what if anything to have growing in it.  I didn't want to do regular shrubs or snow in this scene because I'm planning on January having shrubs on either side of the entrance and being snow dusted, and this door already had a lot of white so I didn't want to add more with snow.  After doing some looking around on good old Google and Pinterest for winter plant/garden ideas I decided that a winterberry bush would be perfect and to put it on the left of the garden area to bring a little of the red from the door area to the other side of the scene as well. (this is a dwarf variety, which does exist in real life, to fit the space better)  The rest of the bed I left bare (the owners of this house have flowers and stuff planted there in the spring/summer).  Unfortunately I didn't get any process pictures really, but I made the bush from two model scenery trees (that are a smaller scale obviously) that I pulled the green off of so that I was left with just the bare branches.  I then glue tiny no hole beads to the branches in various clusters. (the beads were actually purple because that's what I had, so I painted them red very carefully after their glue had dried).  I had cut a small section of a couple layers of the balsa wood the base is made of off so that the garden bed would sit slightly lower than the bricks.  After gluing the finished bush into the balsa, I did the mulch the same way I did for my teacup garden party, I painted the base dark brown then spread a layer of glue and covered it with black large grain decorative sand from Dollar Tree.  I didn't worry about it having perfect coverage though as by February most garden's mulch has been there since spring and isn't in it's prime anymore. 

Checking how it all looks with the house before I move on to the next step

So, next step was to paint the mulch because while the color of the black actually probably would have been okay for this one it does have some sparkles in it so it just doesn't look quite right so I painted it the dark brown

But then because that looked too fresh I ended up doing quite a few layers of fading/aging on it until I was happy with it (I actually started with making it more faded looking but ended up then putting a little more brown back over that because it needed a little more color than the really faded version had I thought)

I also mixed a color to be as close as I could get it to the color of the bricks to paint the edges of that section.  It may end up being covered with a trim piece when I install it into the display, but just in case I want all the exposed edges finished.  I also had a tiny bit where the garden and the bricks meet that you could still see the bare wood so it needed the color to make it blend in properly

And here it is all together.  I'm quite happy with how it turned out

And while I was taking picture anyway here's all three of them. (granted March doesn't have it's doormat and April doesn't have it's doormat or the topiary or bunny statue and still needs its patio completely done.... Which I might actually do that real quick today because it just need to be glued to a base lol)

{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.