Hold the Door!

Cat wants out. Sorry Cat, it's a Nowhere Door! The Nowhere Door is installed. It gives me pleasure for many small reasons; the lintels aligned perfectly, there's a little gap under the door for the wind to whistle through in winter, the staircase will fit next to it with a millimeter to spare. Although I hoped for all these things, they happened more by accident than by careful measurement.

This is where it started. After thinking it over, I decided that I couldn't live without a door with a fanlight without illumination. Part of the house had to be dismantled to cut a hole in the back wall. In the process walls got dirty and I had to repaint.

Tidied up and measured for the door.

The Del Prado Dollhouse has a plastic front door with a fanlight (left). It will be installed at the front of the house in the future. I made something similar for the Nowhere Door, using several layers of card stock.

With my own studio door as inspiration ;-)

Somehow I lost track of my intention to take photos for the blog, and when I saw again, the door was finished...

I used some pretty lace tape behind the fanlight once again and the doorknob and back-plate were made of card stock and an electrical contact point. I painted it gold, and even managed to cut out a tiny keyhole. Very satisfying.

Note about working with card stock: It's easy to cut with a guillotine or scissors and one can shape it with an emery board, which makes it a pleasure to work with. Once I started painting it warped and blistered here and there. I don't think I'll use card stock again, wood feels better.

Sneak peek at the soon-to-be staircase through an outside window. I'm making slow progress with that but it's coming together.

When one door closes, another always opens. That's how life works. Important doors have closed for me in the last few years, and for a while, it seemed like every new door I tried was a Nowhere Door. Lately, there's an open door in the distance and I'm so excited to see where it leads I feel like screaming at the Universe, 'Hold the door!'. If it's the right one, it will be open when I get there.

It's been a scandalously long time since I wrote a blog. Thank you for continuing to read, and welcome to my new readers. In real life the studio is busy, the new writing job is going well, and a tarantula had 780 babies. That's newsworthy of its own post, but I'm quickly going to latch it on here if you want to continue reading.

The ball that looks like a mushroom in the foreground is the egg sac.  It's about 5 centimeters in diameter. You can see the tools I work with and in the background the glass incubation box.

 Yep, 780 babies in there! They are 7-8 weeks old. At this developmental stage, they are referred to as 'eggs with legs'. The yellow dots that look like their abdomen is actually the egg they developed from. As soon as I opened the sac and saw that it was viable, I sent the picture to the breeder who mentored me through the process. Breeding tarantulas is not like other kinds of pets, it's so complicated that a viable batch is huge news. Within half an hour of posting the photo, all the babies were sold.

 Babies in the incubator. They are about 2mm long.

Over the next several days, each little spider was carefully transferred on the tip of a soft brush to an individual deli cup with special soil and kept warm in the incubator. The little spiders were delivered in batches of 100 to dealers all over the country. They will stay in their small containers for up to two years until they've grown enough to be sold to hobby keepers.

I kept a few of the babies to raise for my own collection and will show progress pictures as they grow. Right now they are what's called first instar slings. They don't eat yet; they are still absorbing nutrients from their egg and although they can wriggle their legs, they can't walk. When they molt for the first time (in the next week or so), they will be second instar slings and will start on a three-times-weekly diet of dead insects, since they are too small to catch their own food.

You might wonder what happens to baby tarantulas in nature if they are so weak and dependent? The mother tarantula guards the egg sack for up to nine weeks. By that time the slings have molted for the first time, and the strongest ones eat their siblings. When the mother opens the egg sac the babies disperse. Some will die of hunger and some will be eaten by the mother if they don't get out of her territory quick enough. Only a few survive. Since virtually all tarantulas are endangered and some species have disappeared entirely from nature, breeders intervene to try to raise as many as we can.

Plan A, B, C and D...

Ta-da!  The right hand wall of the Del Prado dollhouse hallway is finished. 

Here's the colour reveal you've been waiting for months to see.  I'm continuing with Chiffon Blue on the upper part of the walls, white above the picture rail and the dark blue on the bottom part is called Dutch Blue.  The hallway is going to look suitably formal, just the way the Victorians liked it.  The colours work well together.

I've been reading with amazement and admiration how some dollhouse builders make something, change their mind and do it over, then change their mind and do it over again.  The hallway is going a bit like that for me.  But I'm starting to realize that it's worth working one's way down the alphabet starting at Plan A, till you find that thing that works best.  Here's how the hallway developed so far:

 

You will remember that right in the beginning the walls were grey.  I hated it.  Looks like a prison corridor.

The first big change came with Plan B, when I switched to blue, which is a much softer colour.

I decided to divide the wall into panels.  But it looked incomplete.  It wanted something more, like a decoration inside each panel.

My first brilliant plan was to use my Cuttlebug (die cutting machine) to cut out medals to glue in place.  I even had a die that was the  perfect size and shape.

But I found the solid white centre part too overwhelming.  Then I had a not so brilliant plan - cutting out only the edges and the flower detail and sticking the pieces down individually.  After hours of untidy cutting and strips that broke and tore, I gave up on that plan, and all the bits of paper went sailing into the dustbin.  So much for Plan C.

Next, I rummaged in my costume jewelry stash and found this silver pendant.  I like the design and it has lots of texture, but it had some drawbacks.  I have only one, which would mean making a mould so that I could replicate it.  Even then, it's a little bit too small.  I would have to rethink the entire layout of the wall.  So I coshed that.  But I'm keeping the pendant in mind, it might feature somewhere else in the dollhouse later.

Finally, I found these pressed metal decorations in the bead drawer.  They fit perfectly!  And best of all, I have a whole handful of them.

Several layers of white paint later the wall is perfect.

Even with several coats of paint, there is lots of fine detail on the metal pressings. 

So this is where I'm at right now.  I really can't put off working on the staircase any longer.  That will have to be the next thing I do.

P.S.  Blogger is misbehaving when it comes to leaving comments on my blog.  For some reason I'm not receiving notification emails when there are new comments on my posts.  When Blogger ignored my request for help, I went into settings to try and fix it myself, and all of a sudden everything went G+.  When I finally got rid of that, a whole lot of comments that I had seen, but not replied to, just evaporated into thin air.  If you haven't been able to comment, or your comment disappeared, my sincere apologies!  I hope that the problem is resolved soon.  If anyone has had a similar problem, and know how to fix it, I would love to hear from you.

 

Del Prado Dollhouse - Staircase

I hope you had a lovely Easter weekend.  I spent mine trying to get up a staircase.

One of the more daunting tasks ahead of me with the Del Prado house is constructing the staircase.  I've never built one before.  According to the instructions it should be a simple matter of a dab of glue and slotting the pieces together.   We know how that worked out so far.

I started by finding all the pieces, and doing a test assembly.  Surprisingly easy! Then I put it in the hallway to see how it looks, and discovered that it doesn't fit.  This is not Del Prado's fault.  When I replaced the outer shell of my house with solid sheets of plywood, I didn't take the thickness of the wood into consideration.  As a result, I had to trim 5mm off the back of all the interior walls to make them fit.

Now I had a staircase sticking out in front of the kitchen door.  Sigh.  Why does a small little problem like 5mm always come back to bite you in the bum?  I could cut off the banister I suppose, but the more I stood there and got upset over it, the more I wanted someone else to blame.  Then I noticed something so glaringly stupid that I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before.  April fool!!! A dollhouse person would go running up the stairs and smack his face against the back wall.  There is no landing!  Not even Escher would have done something that crazy.  I'm all for a bit of deceiving the eye. Doors that lead nowhere, for instance, don't bother me at all.  But a staircase that runs up against a wall, just not on.

Obviously the staircase needed a turn in it.  That would make it shorter to both not stick out in front of my kitchen door and not run into the back wall.  I set about making a mock staircase with cardboard to see how I could possibly alter it to make it work.  A bit of Lego to keep the right angles, a bit of glue...  Voila! Much easier than I thought.

Except when I fit it into the house to test it, I realized that it would now run smack up against the side wall.  Duh! In addition to that, there was no way to put a turn in the stairs without cutting the corner off the door-that-leads-nowhere that I intend to install against the back wall.

I learnt something here.  Unless you want impossibly steep stairs that run up against a wall, you need a much wider hall, or much more height to the ceiling.  Neither of which I was going to get without rebuilding the entire house. 
After a weekend of ripping up mock staircases and cursing my inability to think in 3D, I finally found what I think is an elegant solution.

I'm going to make a small downstairs landing, with triangular stairs that angle around the corner.  The staircase is going to run from the back of the house to the front.  How the dollhouse people are going to carry their couch around the corner and up those stairs is not my problem.  I will have a plausible staircase, my downstairs nowhere-door will have more than enough room, and as a bonus, the entire downstairs hall will not be hidden behind the staircase.  Instead, I will have a lovely interesting space under the stairs to play with. 

I will repeat the same design for the stairs leading to the attic rooms.  I will need to re-cut the stairwell holes, but since I haven't worked on the upper storey floors yet, it is not a problem.  After an entire weekend my staircase doesn't look like much, but it will soon.  I can't wait to work on it some more!

The only downside to my design is that once the staircase and interior walls are installed, one won't see much of it. 

Unless you have a periscope.  Or one of those angled little mirror thingies the dentist uses.  Is there a dentist in the audience?


 
 

Plinth box, architrave, dado

The post title sounds a bit like a counting rhyme, doesn't it?  That's one of the things I love about building dollhouses.  You learn things about all kinds of things. Like architectural terminology.

Meanwhile, back at the dollhouse, the cat has left the room.  Not surprising really.  Mrs Smithi from next door came to see what all the banging is about. 

Her full name is Brachypelma Smithi, she's a mature 12cm (5 inch) tarantula, and the loveliest neighbour one could wish for.  Quiet and tidy, a dainty eater, and she's very handy with a thread!  

After she shooed the cat out, she took her time inspecting every corner of the master bedroom, which is the room in the dollhouse I've made the most progress with. 
I've finally decided on a colour scheme for the house.  Blue.  Blue is one of my favourite coulours.  When I found the chiffon blue paint, all my decorating ideas fell into place.  It is a soft and restful colour, and so pale as to be nearly white.  I can use it as the unifying colour in every room. 

In this room, I've made true Victorian tripartite walls.  Wallpaper found on the Internet, rescaled and printed, goes below the dado rail.  Chiffon blue along the middle, and white above the picture rail and on the ceiling.  I haven't painted ceilings and finished cornices yet, need to figure out the electrical wiring fist.

Apart from painting walls, I've been very busy with wood strips.  The skirting boards and door frames are made of strips from the original Del Prado house kit.  They were marked 'roof beams' but I guess I'm so immersed in kit bashing now that I can just use what I like, wherever I like.  The dado and picture rail is made of square and half round pieces of bamboo window blind.

I neatly circumvented the need for mitred corners around the door frame, by making an architrave over the door mantle.  

 I think it also looks much prettier than the original house plans.

Around the bay window, I built a casing with wood strips.  I was wondering how I'm going to make the seam where the window joins to the house look neat.  A casing to hide the join is such an elegant solution. 
You will notice that around the bay window casing and door frame, I made plinth boxes with the skirting board.  I did have to mitre the corners for these, but it was worth the effort.  It makes the whole room look so much more complete. 

Henning criticized my decision to paint the skirting boards white, and not leave them the natural colour of the wooden floor, but after looking at lots of pictures on the Internet, I decided that either would be correct, and painted skirting boards go well with all the other painted rails in the room. Shortly after Mrs Smithi left, the cat started spraying corners to stake his claim to the room.  Seems like nothing around here is mine, sigh.

I am so happy with this room now, and I've already started work on the hallway, where I'm adding Dutch blue.  In the next few weeks I need to tackle the staircase, and electrical wiring.  I've never worked with either of those, so I'm doing lots of research in my free moments.

Wishing you a happy weekend!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Note about Mrs Smithi:
Tarantulas do not commonly live in South African homes, thank heavens!  Mrs Smithi is a pet tarantula, a terrestrial species from Brazil.  She is not poisonous or aggressive.   Tarantulas make the best pets ever, for so many reasons.  They are quiet, clean, and fascinating to watch.  They need very little care, and can be kept in a small space.  Mrs Smithi lives in a terrarium next to the armchair where I sit to read.  She's very good company.  I thought that people who keep spiders are creepy, until I got my first one, and fell in love!

Terracotta Floor for the Del Prado Dollhouse

I couldn't post about the kitchen floor earlier, because I couldn't find the Cat.  It's heard that I'm looking for something starting with C.

I Cornered it at last.  I decided on terracotta, with slate accent tiles, to finish the floor of the kitchen. 

Here's a close-up look.
This part of the dollhouse happened effortlessly, and I'm very pleased with the result.

There were a few ideas for things I knew that I wanted in the kitchen, and had saved on my Pinterest Board. 

This is Marion's kitchen.  In her build of the Del Prado house, she added a false wall and turned the stove at an angle.  This makes the kitchen so much more interesting.  I simply had to have that too!

I wanted my stove to stand at a slightly raised level.  This was often done in old houses.  You can see where I marked the space for the stove, and glued a piece of card stock to the floor to raise the level.
If I was going to go to all the trouble of making individual tiles, I wanted an interesting layout on the floor, with accent tiles.  To help with the layout, I drew a grid on the floor.

Then I went ahead and made lots and lots and lots of little terracotta tiles, using polymer clay.  I started with a block of basic SculpeyIII terracotta colour, and rolled the softened clay to a thickness of about 1.5mm with a pasta machine. I happened to have a little 11mm square cutter in my stash, an impulse buy at a cake decorating shop.  I was very glad when I found it. 
I pressed out the tiles directly on to a ceramic tile, then lifted away the waste clay, and baked the little tiles directly on the ceramic tile.  That way they stayed nice and flat. 
Every time I rolled out a new sheet of clay, I added a little bit of scrap clay, either light brown, or black, so that the colour of the terracotta tiles would have slight variation, just like real tiles.  Whenever the clay rolled out unevenly, or there was a fold line in the clay, I left it like that.  It all adds texture and realism.

I didn't have a cutter for the slate tiles, I just cut those by hand.  I mixed black and white clay to make a really dark grey, then added silver glitter eyeshadow to give it a bit of sparkle.  It shows up as white spots in the photo, but in real life it looks beautiful.  In this close-up view you can see that the tiles are quite uneven in size.  Real life slate tiles would be cut by hand, and would have slightly uneven sides too.

I decided that I would have a round of terracotta tiles, followed by a round of slate, as a border around the room.  Then I would fill the inside with tiles laid diagonally across the floor.

I started gluing the tiles in an L shape, and used a scrap of card to align them before the glue set.  With each new row of tiles, I added an L inside the previous one.  This helped me to keep the spaces even. 

Completed floor.  Where the stove is going to be, I used slate tiles, and made a herringbone pattern. 

If you are curious about what needs to sit on that square of raised black slate, this is what I have.  I constructed the kitchen range and its surround years ago during my first attempt at the house.  Now that I've seen Studio E's incredible recently completed stove and hood, I realize that I have a huge challenge ahead of me to make this look better!

I let the glue set for a day before I started grouting.  The grout was an accidental discovery.  A while ago I bought what I thought was pre-mixed crack filler in a plastic bucket to fix up some spots in the studio wall where I took a shelf down.  I must have been looking for the cheapest bucket, and not paying attention to the labels.  When I opened it, I discovered that the contents was slippery and runny.  The bucket says it is plaster skim.  I have no idea what one would use it for, but it makes lovely dollhouse grout.  None of the grittiness of crack filler, and it has a slightly gluey texture which helps it to adhere. 

 I mixed black acrylic paint into the mixture to make grey.

Rubbed it into the tiles with my finger and let it set for a few minutes.

Then rub away the excess grout with a damp rag, using small circular movements, so as not to remove the grout from between the tiles.

When the grout had completely set, I used a dry cotton rag to put a gloss on the floor.  Polymer clay buffs to a lovely shine without the need to apply any kind of varnish or sealer.

So there's another floor finished.  I'm tempted to try using polymer clay to create old fashioned patterned linoleum to use in the attic rooms.

Happily, I've also figured out the perfect colour scheme for the interior.  I'm nearly finished with the master bedroom walls, and the colours make my heart sing.  But I will keep you in suspense over my choices, and how I came to them, for a little while!