Pondering...

Whilst readying the Chanel mannequins for the upcoming Trunk Show at the department store where I work in Display, I  'came out' of the miniaturist closet to Patric & Susan, co-workers at the aforementioned emporium.

Our store is in the process of phasing-out the 'ye-olde'  accoutrements of yesteryear --namely : cash registers!  It's all changing over to I-Pads, darlings, who carries cash, nowadays?  Anyway, I just happened to casually mention that I was building a dollhouse and was blogging about its progress and in a whirl the I-Pad was produced and the next thing I knew my blog, Merriman Park, was staring us in the face.

I think it's safe to say that Patric is perhaps even more Obsessive-Compulsive Disordered  than yours truly --he collects decorative carrot objets, for god's sake!  (I'm not judging, I'm just saying)!  He peppered me with a barrage of questions:  "what year was Merriman Park built?  Oh, that was during slavery days--how many slaves are indentured to Merriman Park?  What? Oh, no, Merriman Park is most-definitely not a Newport residence, if its not Virginia, it's South Carolina...."

All this forced me to decide, once and for all,  Merriman Park's history.  I guess I've harbored pretensions that Merriman Park was a European residence, but Patric's grilling of me made me realize that it  is undoubtedly and unabashedly American.  I mean, the architecture of  Thomas Jefferson inspired it!  And Thomas Jefferson was from Virginia and the houses that I modeled Merriman Park after, Edgemont and  Bremo are both located in Virginia.  So that means if I accept the idea that Merriman Park is an antebellum Southern house, there were most definitely slaves afoot.

I'm having a hard time adjusting to this reality!

Am I making too much of a big deal over this?  I'm not one of those 'politically-correct' types, but it does make me think a little about my 'hero,' Thomas Jefferson, who wrote so eloquently that 'all men were created equal'  --except, I guess --his chattel!  

OMG! I'm FAMOUS!

It's true that I haven't been at this whole miniatures thing very long.  But imagine my surprise and utter bewilderment at being plucked from relative obscurity and thrown into the center-stage of Miniaturist Limelight! You may be asking yourselves, Gentle Reader, "Oh hell, no, what the @#$ is she going on about now?" and so, I will tell you:  Merriman Park just got a major shout-out from none other than Whitledge-Burgess!

Do you understand what this means?  It's like you're a member of the corps de ballet and all of a sudden they cast you in the lead role...You guys, I'm like, The Black Swan!  

I've been on Cloud-9 all the live-long day!  Even at my job today at the Department Store where I work in Display, nothing and I mean nothing could get me down!   Even knowing that Simon was yucking it up, touring the Stately Homes of England (whilst yours truly was slogging through the hum-drum ennui of making sure all gazillion opera-chairs from our Major Fashion Event  this weekend were properly sent back to the rental company), couldn't get me down).

Whitledge-Burgess is now offering a selection of their gorgeous room-box settings in kit form!  Read All About It in their latest newsletter:

http://whitledgeburgess.com/studio/index.php?main_page=page&id=3


In other news, I made a 'test run' of trying to carve a curlicue finial for my stair railing.  I haven't carved anything in years, unless you count the Thanksgiving turkey.  My Grandpa once gave me a 'whittling  knife' when I was a boy and I totally scared my parents because I developed a certain penchant for carving miniature pagan idols from sticks!  (I was really into Easter Island at the time --don't judge me)!

This was just a test-run!  I need to glue up some stock to match the thickness of the railing.  But I spent only approximately fifteen or twenty minutes with this practice piece of wood and a kitchen paring knife so I think I'm golden.  I really think that I can do this!  I suppose there is some high-tech tool that I should have used, (but don't own), that would work better.  If you guys saw the few, primitive tools I own you would either laugh, or cry!

Indian Summer

It was way too gorgeous outside today to be fussing with miniatures indoors!  Sunny, blue skies and summertime temperatures enticed me out into the garden to apply gilt paint on the Entrance Hall stair.

Enough of that for today!  Time to take the dogs out for a walk down the street to Minnehaha Park!

Wow!  The leaves are really changing...hard to believe that in a month they will all be gone.

The Sumac are really on fire!

In the middle of the park sits the John Stevens House, the first home built in Minneapolis.  It originally sat downtown, where the Main Post Office is today.  It was identified and saved from demolition and moved to this spot in the late 1800's.  I love this little home!  Wouldn't it make a great dollhouse?

John Stevens

 

Also situated in Minnehaha Park is the Longfellow House.  It was built as a 3/4 scale reproduction of the home of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  Longfellow immortalized Minnehaha Falls in his epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha.  The poem was such a sensation in its day, it made Minnehaha Park a major tourist attraction. Sorry about the exposure.

I think this would make a great dollhouse, too.  The pilasters could hide the seams where it opens up!  I made a birdhouse modeled on the Longfellow House once a while back but I don't have any photos of it.

The flower gardens in back of the Longfellow House are winding down.  We've already had a few overnight frosts.

"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer."

Minnehaha Creek flows for several long miles from the eastern shore of Lake Minnetonka, where I grew up, and empties into the Mississippi River, near where I live today.  None of my photographs of Minnehaha Falls turned out --I'll have to show you it some other day.

Whew! Edie & Jack the Shelties are exhausted!  Best get back to the house...Maybe I can get the stairway finished?

Later that night:   The ends of the railing are whispering that they want a curlicue finial to finish themselves off.  I've never used FIMO before, but do you think that would work?  Also, since I finished the stair runners in black marble, should the landing runner be black marble as well? I kind of like it 'as is,' personally.

Slow Going

Lucky for me, I usually have weekends free at  my job at the Department Store where I work in Display.  But not this weekend.  We had a Major Fashion Event at the store today which required me to go in late last night after closing and set up a huge stage set and catwalk and seating for eight hundred.  Then I had to go back early this morning and tear it all down!  So there wasn't a whole lot of time to work on Merriman Park.

When I arrived home this morning my entire body was positively screaming for a little nap (and, I'm not going to lie, a Bloody Mary, too)!  But I foreswore those tempting diversions when I caught a glimpse of poor, neglected Merriman Park, sulking in its corner of the dining room and so, to work!

Here it is, under construction.  I just love my new bannister from Sue Cook Miniatures!  I added some bull-nose molding to the stair landing as per Giac and took Irene's advice and tarted up the stair runners with black marble.  In deference to Simon I thought the bannister splats should be highlighted here and there in gold, all the better to draw attention to the detail.

I'm trying so very hard to resist attaching the railing until it is completely dry!  Patience is not one of my virtues, I fear.  (But having to sand off my fingerprints once already may be deterrent enough!

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In addition to the stair splats, I also picked up this keystone from Miss Sue.  The old keystone, I'm afraid, simply did not make the keystone cut.  This little beauty I also used on the facade of Merriman Park.  I personally love to have continuity between indoors and out, (especially in an Entrance Hall), and I thought this would be a subtle reference to the exterior.  Of course, the stair splats are the same as my exterior balcony, so maybe I am taking this concept too far?  As a matter of fact, I am toying with the idea of replacing my Entrance Hall chandelier with a hanging 'lantern'-style fixture.  I've noticed that this is appropriate to a Hall (thanks, Irene)!  but, try as I may, I can't seem to find a lantern that I like.  So for now, I guess I'm sticking with the chandelier!

Bannister Splats Arrived!

 I need to get a new life.  All day long all I could think about was 'will my stair bannister splats from Sue Cook Miniatures arrive from England today?'  Pathetic, right? --but true! 

I literally sprinted home from the train station this afternoon, even in the unseasonable heat. As I neared  the steps to our shaded front porch, the tension was palpable...

Would there be a package waiting?

I suppose, gentle Reader, you're thinking that the title of this post is a dead giveaway.  But the sad truth is   there was no package waiting for me upon my arrival .  The disappointment cut me to the quick.  I felt just like the boyhood Christmas when I had asked for a 'Big Jim' doll --er, Action Figure, and received 'Major Matt Mason,'  instead. Lame.

 When would the package arrive?  What if it got lost in the mail?  Will the Entrance Hall staircase of Merriman Park ever be finished?  These were the questions that haunted me and swirled through my mind as I retired to the backyard patio for the one thing that could assuage my growing anxiety:

Cocktails!

No, I wasn't day-drinking alone!  Don't judge me!...our friend Eric was there to console me (and shake up the first round).

The afternoon was far too gorgeous to be spent indoors hunched over my work table, anyway.  Won't be many more --if any-  days like this here in Minnesota, this season.  But the barking of dogs at the picket-gate soon snapped us out of our reverie and a quick look-see at the front door brought --that's right!  My dearly-awaited cast balustrade!

 And now....to work!

Oil Paintings

I don't know what I was thinking the day I had to go to the dreaded Scrapbooking Store last week to purchase ceiling paper for the Entrance Hall ceiling of Merriman Park!  In my defense, I think my blood-sugar level was dangerously low that fateful morning, and I was clearly not in my right mind, else why on Earth would I agree to sign up for their e-mail specials?

But sign up I did, because now my in-box is absolutely inundated  with sale advertisements from the aforementioned establishment!  But since today they were running a 50%-off special on color photocopying, (and since I work at the self-same Mall as the Scrapbooking Store), I reluctantly returned there this afternoon to make duplicates of all the Entrance Hall 'works of art.' 

'Why make another harrowing trip to the Scrapbooking Store for copies of my artwork?' you might well ask.  And the answer is, gentle Reader, because I decided to take Ray's sage advice and paint over the images with Mod-Podge, in order to make everything look a little more like objet d'art and a little less like postcards from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Gift Shop. 

I also meant to try Irene's method:  she prefers to print her images onto a linen-finished stock.  But the overly-pleasant, salesladies at the Scrapbooking Store  informed me that while they did have for sale a virtual array of linen-finished papers, their color photocopier could not possibly print on anything so exotic as that.  Apparently, color photocopiers in Scotland have it all over our  primitive, Yankee models! 

When I informed the chirpy salesladies that I guess I would just have to try a professional printers, they looked positively crestfallen! There was so much hand-fluttering at pearl chokers and nervous clearing of throats that I just didn't have the heart to walk out empty-handed...

So I purchased two copies of my Titian's (and assorted other artworks) and spent the early part of this evening dab, dab, dabbing them with the teensiest, tiniest of brushes.  In a moment of personal inspiration, I added a copious spritz of spray-shellac on top of everything.  The Final Effect:  Well, as the girls on RuPaul's Drag Race say, I am positively gagging on their eleganza!  Wish you could savor the difference but I'm afraid the subtleties are completely lost in the  photos!

Sorry, Irene!  I'll have to try your method again another day!

Confidential to Barb in Minnesota:  Never put off tomorrow what you can put off today, right?

New LED Lanterns Arrived!

My heart skipped a beat as I arrived home today (from my first day back-on-the-job after my week-long 'stay-cation.'  Not one but two packages sitting on my porch!  I automatically assumed that one of them was my stair splats from Sue Cook Miniatures and the other?  My carriage lamps for the front facade of Merriman Park!

Naturally I had to immediately  try them on for size...

I would like to drill shallow 3/4" holes to recess the 'plate' of the lamp into the wall a little bit.  But god! it makes me nervous to start drilling holes in my house! 

The 3/4" drill bit I have on hand won't work --it has a 'starter point' on it that would penetrate the wall completely.  I think there are bits that would work better, so looks like I'll be making a trip back to Minnehaha Falls Hardware Store.

Here they are 'on,' and the color is a little off from 'real life' but still much more preferable than the previous pair! 

I think I can live with them (though they need a touch-up of black paint).

Hopefully, I'll find the right bit to drill the holes --and garner up the guts to 'gitter done!'

The other package turned out not to be my parcel from Sue Cook, put my partner's cell phone, which he had left behind in California.  Oh, well!

I also worked a little on chair rail and skirting molding.  In order to finish, I'll have to take everything apart to 

get to the back walls.  Think I'll take a little break and wait until my stair splats arrive before I do that! 

BTW nothing in the bottom photo has been glued down, so rest assured that those gaps will get tightened up.

Have a great week, everyone!