a wealth of opportunity

2015/03/182015/04/309 Comments

The limited edition 2015 HBS/miniatures.com Creatin’ Contest starting kit

Like some of the other miniaturists who were enticed to participate in HBS/miniatures.com build blog-along, I had already purchased and begun to build this year’s starting kit. And I’ll enter the Sea House Warming Hut in the contest come December 16, even though I have no aspiration of winning, having been honored with the Grand Prize in 2013 for my Sea House Pavilion. (Note to all those who don’t enter their projects because you think you have no chance: no one was more astonished to win than I was. Truly. So show your work and enter! It’s way fun.)

So what to do with this second kit provided by HBS?

Much as I’d like to, I haven’t the time (or space) to do another project. I’d like to offer the kit as encouragement to anyone who might be hesitant to enter the contest, or undertake miniature world building. Leave a comment, and I’ll randomly draw a name on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 from those who respond. I ask only that you consider using the kit to enter the contest, and that you pay shipping costs (I’m in Northern California, and the kit weighs about 11 pounds). What say you?

Perfect furniture by Bruce Dawson, who has shuttered his studio and is closing out inventory :(

Not a lot of progress on the Warming Hut, what with all the March birthday celebrations.

I did see that one of my favorite miniature furniture builders, Bruce Dawson, is retiring (again) and closing out all his inventory through his Etsy shop bedMiniatures. Shown above are the unpainted 1:12 basswood items I picked up. (He has some half-inch scale pieces as well.) Do check out his shop. His prices are more than reasonable. There are still a few cherry Mission style tables and bookcases that are especially wonderful. Don’t miss this opportunity! You’ll be very, very glad.

count olaf’s house

2015/03/072015/03/079 Comments

I got to take a behind-the-scenes tour at Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio, and encountered the model of Count Olaf’s house used in the 2004 movie Lemony Snicket.

Count Olaf’s house movie prop, built at ILM

It randomly occupies half of a small lobby, and stands maybe seven feet (2.1 m) tall. It is fabulous. The sign says it took three months to build in the Industrial Light and Magic model shop, and another two weeks to light and film it on stage.

This is how it appears in the film:

image from the Lemony Snicket wiki

Says the Lemony Snicket wiki:

The house is described as a dilapidated mess. The bricks are stained with soot and grime, the front door needs repainting (and contains a carving of an eye), and the entire building sags to one side. Rising above the house is a tall and dirty tower. In The Bad Beginning: Rare Edition, Lemony notes that his sister Kit has proposed that some of the eyes in Olaf’s house contain secret peepholes, cameras, or microscopic lenses.

Fittingly, they have let the model accumulate dust :)

The ruined chimney:

A disheveled downspout, a course of eye motif blocks, and a great circular window with web panes. Looks like the model builders used bermuda grass roots or something similar for the dead vines creeping up all over the house. (Minus one point, though, for the not-in-scale tattered lace curtains :)

The front door (with reassembly notes :)

Here you can see the dust coat and teeny, tiny rivets. I was particularly taken with them.

The inadequately-repaired drafty dome, with more rivets (and dust):

and its finial topper:

This is a particularly fine eye-paned window, and a closer look at the corbels. Such great distress and weathering.

And finally, a closer look at some of the tower eye windows:

Warming Hut Paint Prep

2015/03/012015/04/304 Comments

There are many, many sides of many windows that must be masked, with many small strips of masking tape. But still, the paint will leak.

With 90 percent honesty, prepping and painting miniature woodwork is as tedious as prepping and painting their full-size counterparts. For the Sea House Warming Hut, I considered staining all the trim — a mildly less tedious process — using the same Minwax Classic Gray that the exterior cladding will be. Instead, I opted to paint a semigloss “Simply White” for contrast. My impatient paint application suggests the multiple paint layers slapped on over the years in an effort to preserve coastal buildings from salty corrosion.

And so I carry on, striving for both mindfulness in the process and the satisfaction that only sanding with tiny squares of 600-grit paper can bring.

Through the unpainted window above you can see the Chrysnbon kit stove I assembled and painted like 300 different colors before returning to matte black, that will heat the hut. Still unsure if I’ll use it. I’m rather taken with this modern “Shaker” stove, designed by Antonio Citterio with Toan Nguyen in 2006. I think it would translate to 1:12 scale beautifully, and be fun to build.

Shaker wood burning stove/fireplace, designed by Antonio Citterio with Toan Nguyen. Beauty.

Finally, this is the unobscured featured image for March on this site’s landing page. It’s a birch tree in Soquel, California that wants to see you.

Until next time, when the paint is dry, and ready to be sanded, then painted. And sanded.

Floor and Build

2015/02/152015/04/30Leave a comment

The Sea House Warming Hut floor is bleached, salvaged wood planks milled from the old mythical Sea House Pleasure Pier. Even though the scale of the woodgrain is off, I favor HBS’s 3/4-inch “rustic clapboard siding strips”. And a lot of sanding and pencil point nail heads.

I soaked a few strips of 1/32 x 5/32-inch basswood in water, and bent them round the rim of the same bowl used to draw the half-circle for the stonework. Then I let them dry in the sun (which made me feel better about the freakishly warm weather we’ve been having).

This part was fiddly. I glued the curved pieces, one at a time, to cover the uneven gap between wood floor and stonework. I held them in place by hand until the glue set up, then clamped to dry fully. This surround will also help keep the debris from the wood stove contained.

A few coats of satin varnish, and I’m ready to start building.

Also fiddly, especially if one first fits the sidewalls overhanging the back foundation rather than the front, as it says nowhere in the instructions, other than “Sidewalls will slightly overhang the foundation”, and have to pop everything off and start again. Even though one did a complete dry fit.

Next up is painting the trim and the sliding door.

Rafters and Stonework

2015/01/212015/04/303 Comments

modern miniatures, Sea House Warming Hut

Sand. Paint. Wait. Sand. Paint. Wait. Sand. Paint. Wait.

Got the first and second coats of paint on the rafters. I’m going to glue it up, then put a third coat on the whole assembly. And yes, it’s the same green (MSL 106 Rhododendron Leaf) used on the Sea House Pavilion :)

The floor is going to be wide-plank salvaged wood from the original Pleasure Pier, inset with a circle of native-quarried stone for the vintage wood-burning stove.

I painted several acrylic washes ( warm and green-gray, black, and “sand”) on 140 lb. watercolor paper and while still wet, sprinkled it with sea salt. Science magic!

When it was dry, I brushed the salt crystals off, and drew concentric circles the diameter of the surround.

And cut them out. With scissors.

I cut individual tiles to fit the area and glued them down.

I “mortared”with a medium gray acrylic glaze. When that dries, I’ll give a coat or two of matte varnish.

Next: wood plank flooring.

Sea House Warming Hut

2015/01/182015/04/303 Comments

The venerable and imaginary Sea House organization has a new logo!

Filled a couple of notebook pages with ideas, sketches, color studies and measurements for the new build for the HBS/miniatures.com 2015 Creatin’ Contest, then went back in time and crafted a new logo for the Sea House Pleasure Pier empire.

It can get nipply on the North Coast, and a thoughtfully-provisioned warming hut is a welcome respite after a beach meander or cliff walk. Maybe even a destination?

and so it begins

2015/01/162015/04/306 Comments

Dry fit of the miniatures.com 2015 contest base kit

Dry fit of the HBS/miniatures.com 2015 contest base kit

Yay! Denise’s City Cottage Kit, the starting point for the HBS/miniatures.com 2015 building contest has arrived. Once again there’s an interesting roof line, and some solid other architectural details that invite interpretation. Here it is in dry-fit. No idea what it might become, but I’ve opened a fresh page in my notebook, and later will pour a glass of wine to help me listen and think.

I’ve 11 months to do so, as the submission deadline is 16 December, 2015. And because we can now submit our entries online, I expect I’ll be working up to the very last day, as my projects tend to expand to the maximum time allotted them.

parsons and peacocks

2014/12/172 Comments

Sitting, waiting, thinking.

peacock rug complete

2014/12/092014/12/094 Comments

After completing stitching and staring at it for a while, I trimmed the edges of the silk gauze to about a quarter-inch (6 mm).

I washed and gently blotted it mostly dry, then pinned it into square(ish) and left it to dry overnight.

The raw edges are turned to the back, corners mitered, and the edge oversewn exactly one row of the 49-count silk gauze with a double strand of Gütermann silk. I pondered the binding color at length, and finally chose the darker gray.

This is what the back looks like, and shows the combination of tent, basketweave and snarled stitches. Mistakes were made. Many were corrected, but some were discovered too late. Kind of like life.

I fused featherweight interfacing to the back, to protect and seal the raw edges. Note to self: dust your build floors more often!

And here’s the finished rug, inviting you in to the Sea House Pavilion for a cup of tea or a glass of wine. It’s a great place to watch the storm blow in.

in no particular order

2014/12/022014/12/042 Comments

Peacock rug getting there! Just the remaining green background left to stitch. Then blocking and binding.

(Finished size will be 4.625 x 3.125 inches (11.75 x 7.9 cm), 227 x 153 stitches, Gütermann silk on 49-count silk gauze, from a design by Roger Fry, as charted by Melinda Coss in Bloomsbury Needlepoint From the Tapestries at Charleston Farmhouse.)

Then I’ve been playing around with Kris Compas’s current tutorial for an upholstered parsons chair, using this great cotton stripe from a thrift store shirt. Other than (endless) work on the Peacock rug, I think this is the first miniature building I’ve done since I packed everything up to move in the summer. (The cording is made from three strands of DMC floss, and is more true to scale than using all six strands. In case you noticed.)

Penultimately, here is my first repeating pattern!

The color palette is a combination of hues drawn from photos of the ocean and from the persimmon tree in Soquel. The simplicity is perhaps underwhelming, but this represents hours and hours of work. Onward!

And finally, I did go back to the indie dollar store and buy up all the boxes of Prang KantRolls.