{Whimsy Street Shopping District} The Final Shop: Introducing "JellyBean's Ice Cream and Delights"

 Allow me to formally introduce the final shop of the 1000 block of Whimsy Street, Miniburg, VA (drum roll please...........) "JellyBean's Ice Cream and Delights", an ice cream shop in an ice cream carton building.  I actually officially started work on the shop towards the end of July (and started writing a post about it, that apparently didn't get published...), but didn't really get too far before putting it aside for my Christmas Crafting in July week, and then didn't really end up getting much in the way of miniatures done in August, but after getting my August door done I got back to work on this shop and it is coming along actually really quickly (and easily  it's kind of making me worries, lol, I never have projects go this smoothly...). As a matter of fact I think there is a good chance that I could get it finished by the end of this weekend, but if not it will definitely be done by the end of the month.

*I will probably break this shop up into 3-4 posts though regardless of when I actually get it completed so that I can really give all the different aspects of it the attention they deserve and not have one insanely massively long post....

The Planning:

This shop is in a way named after my husband.  His initials are JDB, which if you say them fast enough sounds like jelly bean (or at least does when I say it) so "JellyBean" is one of my nick names for him.  So, of course, when I was brainstorming names for all the shops in my earliest planning stages it was one of the first stores I named.  What better for the name for an ice cream shop on Whimsy street? It was cute, whimsical, and has personal meaning.

This shop has also changed quite a bit from the original plans for it. For one, I had thought I would use an actual ice cream carton for the building, but ended up going with a paper mache box decorated to look like an ice cream carton for 3 main reasons: 1. I wanted a completely generic exterior with no brand visible and a simple exterior that wouldn't distract from the interior, or the shop name and such on the outside. 2. I wasn't sure I could really get it clean enough to not have any remaining residue from the ice cream. 3. I wasn't sure I could find quite the right size.

I didn't really have a clear idea of my color scheme in my original plans, but I did have plans for some of the interior design elements (flooring, etc.), but as I was finishing up the bookstore and getting ready to get started on the ice cream shop, and getting to the point that I really needed to start making color decisions so I could get to work, I was going through some scrapbook papers and cardstock that needed to be sorted and put away and came across one that ended up not only giving my my color scheme (dark pink, light orange, mint, and navy blue as an accent color), but also ended up changing some other interior elements. (what I had originally planned would not have worked right with the new "look" at all)

The Structure/Building:

To make the paper mache box look like an ice cream carton I spray painted it with a gloss finish color (its actually the same spray paint I used for the displays for the door series), then added a striped scrapbook paper around the edge of the lid. A decoratively shape cardstock tag, with door and windows cut out, serves as both a design element of the ice cream carton and to frame the door and windows.  Letter stickers spell out "ICE CREAM" on the front of the carton. 

For the door I used the piece I had cut out to make the opening for the door.  This way it fit both the opening and the curve of the wall perfectly.  I haven't attached the door to the building yet, partly to protect the door and partly so I have at least a little access to the interior from the front of the building still.  I am so in love with how the door turned out though! Which, I know sounds funny to say that about a door, but I love little details that really bring scene to life and tie in with a theme, and I was able to get two elements on this door that fit that bill.  The first was the door handle, which is an ice cream scoop shape!  I made the handle from a tiny tiny punched piece of cardstock glued to the tip of a toothpick (which I sanded a little flatter/thinner on one side of the tip), with two small seed beads as the posts/brackets/whatever they would be called?).  And of course I spray painted the ice cream scoop part of the handle silver.

The other element was the ice cream shaped open sign.  I cut the scoop of ice cream shape from a piece of pink cardstock and used craft paint and pencil to add the details and lettering.  I wanted it to look like it was hanging from a suction cup on the door glass so I did something that doesn't happen a whole lot with miniatures (especially in this scale), and broke out my hot glue gun.  I placed the tiniest dot on the top edge of the sign and pulled it out into a string and held it until it cooled to make the string part of the hanger.  Because the "glass" of the door is actually a thin plastic I, of course, couldn't put hot glue directly on it, so I used sticker paper backing to put a little dollop of hot glue on top of the string of glue to make the suction cup.  I then used my regular tacky glue to attached the whole thing to the door once the hot glue had cooled.

  For the inside of the door I just used pieces of an adhesive metal sheet for a push plate and kick plate.

I knew that my scrapbook paper was not only going to be my color scheme inspiration but that I wanted to use it as a wallpaper on one side of the shop as a statement wall.  The floor I made by scoring "grout" lines into cardstock cut to the shape of the building, and then coating it with a coat of gloss mod podge.  The rest of the interior is just the same paint as the exterior.

And that is where I will leave off for now..... in my next post I will talk about the ice cream and other delights that will be in the shop, but for now I'm going to get off my computer and get to work on the last few things I still need to do/make for this shop so that I can possibly have it finished in the next couple days!

{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....

 

{Whimsy Street Shopping District} The Libarian and The Bookworm Used Books ~ FINSIHED!

You guys, I don't think I've ever been so excited about finishing a miniature as I am about this one! In case you haven't been with me for the whole journey, here's a little background to explain: This bookstore in a book is part of my larger project called "Whimsy Street Shopping District", which is a street of quarter scale (1:48 scale, or O scale if you are into model railroads) shops, for which the buildings are something that is sold in, or related to what is being sold in, the shop. (I have a florist and garden shop in a watering can shaped building, an art gallery with a frame as it's store front, a toy store in a chest, this used bookstore in a building shaped like books, and the last shop - which is yet to be completed - is an ice cream shop in an ice cream carton building).  The street of shops was started back in 2017 and I had planned to have the entire project done that year, which obviously did not happen, so getting any of the stores done and closer to the entire project being done is exciting, but this store even more so than the others.  The other 3 completed stores were all finished in the same year in which they were started, this store however has had a much longer journey from start to finish.  I started it in 2018, after finishing the toy store near the end of the year.  Sometime after getting the main structure of the building done I put it, and all the supplies I had for it in a bin, and stowed it under my workbench, thinking that it would just be for a little while. A little while turned into not actively working on it any in 2019 and finally pulling it back out to get back to work a few months ago.  After having such a long gap between starting and finishing the shop it feels so good  to be able to say that it is finished! It's also really exciting because it means that now I have only one shop left to have all of the shops done, which means I will soon be able to put them all together as one street!  I also have to say that this might be my favorite of the shops, if I had to pick a favorite, I am a huge bibliophile, and this shop has a lot of little details with personal significance. But don't get me wrong I really love all the shops... lol.

The last I posted about this shop was after I had finished most of what was filling and decorating the shop.  I did end up adding a couple more details after that though and of course had a bunch more books to add to the inventory and get all the interior architectural details installed before it was complete.

Let's start with the architectural elements... If you follow the Joanna's Dollhouse Diaries Facebook page you may have seen some of this in progress, and if you read the last blog post you got a glimpse of the railing around the open section of the second floor, but I've yet to go through all of that on the blog itself so here goes:

The second floor of the shop is sitting on molding that creates a crown molding for the first story of the shop.  It is actually meant to be, I believe, chair rail molding for 1:12 scale (purchased at Hobby Lobby), but I originally bought it to make a chunky frame for a quarter scale painting, and have since used it for several frames as well as applications such as this. (This is also the same trim I used to make the frame around the bulletin board behind the front counter).  The little lip on it was perfect to be able to set the floor right down onto, not only for it's final installation, but also to hold it nicely in place to test fit and check different elements before installing the ceiling/floor.

The underside of the floor, of course, is the ceiling of the first floor, and I gave it a "tin" ceiling with a textured cardstock from the scrapbooking department with some white paint dry brushed over it to give it an aged look.

  The second floor floor is done the same way as the first floor, strips of wood patterned cardstock/scrapbook paper glued down one by one.  The railing around the open area I got from MiniMinutia on Etsy, and it is just so perfect I think.  And she was really great to work with, I was able to get a piece custom cut to length and it looks so good!

The spiral stairs I got several years ago from a seller on Shapeways.com, back when I was first planning out the project, and unfortunately I don't have the info for it anymore, but Shapeways is a great place to check out for all sorts of 3D printed items, its kind of like the Etsy of 3D printing....  Because of the height of my structure I needed a relatively tall ceiling height for both floors (although to not make it too crazy the second floor has a much higher ceiling than the first floor) so the stairs needed a little boost at the bottom to fit.  At first I thought to just have a little platform more as a first step for them, but then I decided to use the platform to define the children's book area a little more.  It, of course, has the same flooring as the rest of the store.

  Attaching the stairs was a bit of a challenge, but did actually end up going much better than I was afraid it might possibly go.  Because the stairs really couldn't stand up on their own it was really wonky trying to get them test fit and be positive that they were actually in the correct location and height and the ceiling height and platform height were good, so I was really half expecting for it not to all match up and to have to figure out some way to fix that once it was in place, but miraculously it actually all fit like a glove (phew).  I attached the stairs to the floor at the top first and then glued the floor and stairs in place at the same time.

After having everything in place for a while (and actually after having the children's area downstairs completely finished, which I'll talk about in a minute) I decided I wanted a chandelier hanging from the second floor ceiling down into the opening between the floors.  This was something I had actually considered doing for the store a while back and then kind of decided "eh, it doesn't really need it", but the idea of how to make it was still rolling around in my head (and if I'm being honest I was putting off having to make all the books for the upstairs bookcase), so I decided to give it a go after all.  I based my chandelier and how I made it off of a tutorial I saw on a blog for a 1:12 scale (working) light fixture, and also off of the light fixture I have in my real life living room.  Rather than cut my own pieces though I had a piece of scrapbook paper I was able to cut the shapes from and then cut them in half.  I then glued 3 layers together for thickness and glued them to a tiny piece of a coffee stir straw at the top and bottom and finished the bottom with tiny punched pieces of black cardstock and a seed bead and a dot of hot glue pulled to a point and trimmed to a nice length, once everything was painted black it turned out really well.  The "globe" in the middle is just a frosted bead.  I hung it with very thin jewelry chain and gave it a little ceiling plate by flattening out a decorative bead cap that I already had. (It is a little lopsided from not getting glued perfectly evenly to the straw bits, but rather than redo the whole thing I chose to just be okay with that this time around because the way it hangs in the store it's not terribly obvious I don't think..... but now I know to be extra careful of that next time.)

I did consider trying my hand at making this a working light to give a little more light in the store but 1. I didn't have anywhere to hide the battery box and switch, and 2. none of the other stores have working lights so I thought it would be weird for just one to have anyway.

With all that done, all that was really left was to finish dressing the store (club chairs by the window upstairs, a bookcase along the entire long wall up stairs, bookcase and rack for the children's book area and all the rest of the books)  The bookcases and rack were no problem to get together.  The bookcases, like the first one I made for the first floor, where made from scratch, and the spinner rack in the children's book section was made from a kit from True2Scale.com.  I did shorten the height of the rack a bit though since it is holding kids books.

Now to the books.  I honestly really hyped myself up to not want to have to do the rest of the books and kept putting it off and putting it off until there was literally nothing else left I could do except getting them done.  I did the kids book section first (and then procrastinated on the rest by making the chandelier and a poster for the kids section....) and I ended up using pictures I took of books I have in my own library/collection, for the picture books as individual books with the front covers showing, and for the other books, as rows of books, which I then glued to strips of balsa wood and embossed/ pressed the space between each book to give them a more realistic look.  I had previously considered doing all the books that way, but it just didn't have the right look for the rest of the books, but actually I thought worked pretty well for the kids books..... why I liked it for those and not any of the others I don't know, but it was nice to not have to do all of those books individually at least. Lol.

  For the books for the upstairs though, I knew I wouldn't be satisfied with printing rows (and also getting pictures of rows of books would have taken a ton of effort and time), but I also wanted the books upstairs to look like paperbacks/have printed spines so they were going to need to each have a book cover printed out and each one cut out and glued around the wood individually and somewhat carefully (so that the spines of the books were positioned correctly along the edge of the wood), and I seriously was not looking forward to that and really did keep putting it off and then had to finally just force myself to get working on it.  I ended up using the covers of books that I own sized down and printed, and I have to say I think this part of this store was the most physically taxing miniature project I've ever done....... you may be asking yourself how that could be..... well, just early this year I took all the books that were on the main level of the house in a couple different rooms and carried them all upstairs to the room that I am working on turning into a library, so, I ended up having to carry batches of them back downstairs to where my scanner and computer are in my office, and then back up stairs to the future library.  I actually ended up not doing as many different book covers as I had planned and just made multiple books with the same covers by printing the sheet of covers multiple times.

  I then debated if I wanted to make sure that all the same books were together on the shelves, but by then they were all mixed up so I decided no. You can't see/read the spines well enough to really tell anyway and I wanted to just grab a random hand full of books and glue them together.

Which actually making these last 317 books this way ended up being way easier/quicker/smoother than I expected and getting the shelves filled was much less stressful than the bookcase down stairs because I really did just grab the books randomly and not worry at all about what books were going on what shelf or how they were distributed or anything.  Downstairs I paid a lot more attention to making sure I had a good distribution of the colors and styles of the spines  and I had to worry a little about the height of the books because some of the shelves ended up a little too short, but none of that became a factor upstairs.  Even though it was much less stressful than I expected it did take me most of the day to do and I have to say by the time I was done my back was sore, my shoulders were sore, my head was starting to hurt, and actually even my hips were sore because of the way I had my legs so that my feet were on the bottom shelf of my workbench.  So, note to self, next time I am sitting at the workbench most of the day working on something tiny and precise, take more stretching breaks and probably stand for a while, while working on it. lol.

But it was all worth it because the books were done! I decided I didn't want to put books on the top shelf of each column because they had somehow ended up being taller shelves than the rest and I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to put there, but I knew that, by that point, it needed to be something easy and quick to make.  I ended up deciding to do bookends sets. A couple of them were a little finicky to make, but still pretty quick, and while if you really pay attention to the size too much they are a little big, I do like how they look and turned out.  Once the bookends were glued in place all that was left was to glue a back onto the bookcase and glue it in place in the store and "The Librarian and The Bookworm Used Books" was officially finished!

And here are the finished pictures: (I also did a little photo shoot of the shop with some actual books as a Facebook exclusive bonus, so if you haven't already seen them make sure to check out my Joanna's Dollhouse Diaries Facebook page!)