Library Progress

Work on the Library came pretty much to a complete stand-still while I was ill, but here I am again, faithful Readers, back from the dead,  fifteen pounds lighter and raring to go!  I even felt inspired enough this weekend to reupholster some chairs I received from Santa, as well as re-doing my aforementioned recamier.

The set of chairs are part of the Thomas Jefferson Monticello Collection and were originally covered in red "silk" (polyester).  Fortunately, when I purchased my wallpaper from Chinoiseries Miniatures a while back I also snapped up the matching fabric in 'real' silk.  Of course, I want to pipe the edges a la 'Krazy Kords' Catherine, but I haven't gotten around to that, yet!

The recamier I decided to re-do in a gold/red stripe from Renaissance Fabrics. (I think the fabric cost more than the sofa but it was well-worth it).

The curtains are made of the same stripe-y fabric.  So once again out came the fabulous Pretty Pleater!  I know that some of you have in the past  poo-pooed the Pretty Pleater, but I personally LOVE it!  Not only does the name itself make me titter like a little school-girl, but I find it so easy to work with.  And if you remove your curtains from the handy-dandy, Pretty Pleater apparatus while they are still a little damp and block your fabric on foam board, the results are a lot less 'tortured'-looking. 

Once complete, the curtains will hang from brass rings on a matching rod...but I seem to have misplaced the tiny hoops...oops! Back to the bead store!   I will then be able to finally glue all my wall panels in permanently. It seems that I cut my poor, neglected crown moldings ages ago and at long last I will be able to dust them off and officially install them!

I copied the design of the curtain pelmets from a photo I found on the internet...don't you love the fringe?  I made it from a gold ribbon --thanks to the advice of fellow blogger Jeffry-- just sliced a ribbon lengthwise in two and pulled out enough threads to form the fringe.  How easy is that?  (Thanks, Jeffry)!  I am trying to train the fringe to hang downward by combing them with a little starch on my fingertips.

Santa brought me the delightful desk and chair, as well as the grandfather clock and the library steps. I also am receiving a beautiful globe from Master's Miniatures (thanks, Greg)! which is still en route from England.  I have a pretty mirror on order that will eventually hang over the desk.  Really, all I need to fill out the room are some desk accoutrements and a few other odds and ends...

My favorite Christmas gift of all was a new harp for the Music Room!  Ain't she purdy? I can't believe all the little strings it has! I think I might pick out some of the harp's carving in gold, what do you think? 

I take that back...my absolute favorite Christmas gift of all was not going blind in one eye!  That little episode was kind of --scary-- I guess you'd call it...but I want to thank all of you who wrote or phoned with your best wishes.  It was very kind of you to go out of your way, (especially this busy time of year), to check up on li'l ol' me.  Now that I'm getting my mojo back, I look forward to catching up with all of you and all of your blogs...

Best Wishes for a healthy, prosperous and fierce 2013!

XO,
John

Technical Difficulties

We are experiencing some technical difficulties here at Merriman Park involving a nasty virus and your intrepid reporter's right eyeball.  Needless to say, it's become rather unpleasant to try to do any computer work much less perform the subtle intricacies of miniatures!  So I'm afraid I must go MIA for the time being. 

Fear not, faithful Readers!  It will take more than a bout of temporary blindness to keep this bitch down! 

I look forward to catching up with everyone's blogs at a later date...til then, hope you all have a lovely holiday season!

Forward & Backward

Whew!  It seems as if Halloween was just a few short days ago and here it is almost Thanksgiving!  If you're worried that I'm going to torture you with another Top-Ten List of Pilgrim Dolls, fear not, beleaguered Readers, I shan't go there!  My Library is coming along, however slowly...ugh! it's a long story but let me fill you in on what I've managed to accomplish.

First of all, I'm hooking up the lights and chandeliers.  This is never an easy task for me and it inevitably   involves lots of colorful cursing from your intrepid reporter as I fumble to hold onto those damned brass pins!

I decided the Library would have two chandeliers centered on the bookshelves.  I'm not quite ready to build my own fixtures from jewelry findings --yet!  (Some day, perhaps...) But to save a little ching, I revamped some 'stock' fixtures.

So here's one of the little chandeliers I picked up.  It has tiny, gold chains you can just make out in my horrid photo.  I removed these chains and replaced them with strands of glittering Swarovski crystal beads, which I think are much more glam than gold chain, don't you think?

There were extra beads so I added swags of them between the arms of the fixture --because a chandelier can never be too sparkly, right?

Here they are, sort of  semi-installed.  I accidentally broke one of the bulbs because I thought they were bi-pin and --duh!-- they are actually a screw-in type bulb and so instead of screwing the bulb in tighter when it turned itself off I fiddled with it and now I think the glass part of the bulb broke off from the little metal socket part.  UGH!  NOW how am I going to get it out??? 

So this is the sofa I have picked out...I had made a Chippendale-style camel back number from a kit and it turned out pretty well, but it just seemed a little --I don't know-- stodgy.  My original plan was to make the Library a little old-fashioned, done up in an earlier Georgian style but when I put this sexy Recamier in place I was smitten! 

Of course that means I have to go back to the drawing board on all the other furnishings and even the curtains I painstakingly Pretty-Pleated will have to be re-vamped, I'm afraid...but oh well, it's not a race, right?

Hey...if I don't see you, have a lovely Thanksgiving holiday to all the American miniaturists out there in blogland...here's my favorite Thanksgiving clip (only a teensy bit scary, I promise)!

Library Shelves

Finally, my Library components arrived in the mail today and I am able to get busy!  Here are my door surrounds which I am using to frame my built-in shelving. I even got a few books today, too! All I have left to do is glue everything down and fill the gaps with gesso and then touch up the paint.

Here's how the shelving started out:

Shelves are probably one of the easiest things to build, furniture-wise.  You just decide what size you want them to be --in my case, the size of the door surround, and build the little box. 

As an afterthought, I decided to do a mahogany finish on my shelves.  It would have been so much easier if I had finished the wood before assembly!  Oops!  At least I did not glue the back on, yet!

Here it is with the back and the decorative frame.  That's the same skirting molding on the bottom which matches the same on the wainscot.

Here's the doorway, I'm giving the door the same mahogany treatment as the shelves...

And finally, here is the fireplace wall with my Braxton Payne 'Adam' mantlepiece.  Yesterday all my 'glowing embers' --also custom-made for my narrow hearths by Braxton-- arrived in the post, so I'll be busy retro-wiring those into all the other finished rooms!

Pretty soon I will be able to install the Library walls!  Got to break out the Pretty Pleater first and whip up some curtains...

That's about it for now...just wanted to thank everyone for their comments on my Halloween Top-Ten Scariest Dolls list...sorry if some of them have given you nightmares!  But that reminds me:


SCARE-IFIC DOLL #5:  Ideal's Tuesday Taylor!

AND her big sister, Tiffany Taylor...  I only have them on the list because when I was about twelve or  thirteen years old I tried to switch up Tuesday Taylor's hair from blond to brunette or, more likely --the other way around-- and her entire, bi-colored scalp twirled off in my hand!  And it wasn't even my own sister's Tuesday Taylor...it was my best friend's sister's Tuesday Taylor!  ...If it had been one of my sister's Tuesday Taylors, I would have just LOL'd, but I was at my friend's house, it was his sister's Tuesday Taylor and I was completely horrified!  ("Dude...why you playing with my sister's doll?")  I tried oh god how I tried to snap the scalp back onto the infernal Tuesday Taylor noggin but it simply would not go on!  So I shoved the entire, tired mess under the sofa cushion, lock, stock and miniature Cruella DeVille scalp. Poor Tuesday 'is today' Taylor...she looks decidedly un-groovy --and dare I say scare-ific-- without the top of her head. :)

Glowing Embers

My new BFF, Braxton Payne, who makes the most divoon fireplace mantles, was kind enough to custom-make some 'glowing embers' for me.

My fireplace chases are only 3/4" wide, so his normal-sized embers wouldn't fit.  I thought it was awfully nice of him to go to the trouble of down-sizing his embers for me.  I just bought the one because I wasn't sure of the fit (and whether I would even like it or not).  But now that I see it in situ,  I want them in all my fireplaces!

I also got the wallpaper from Les Chinoiseries  for the hallway.  (see above) It looks so pretty it was well-worth the long wait --I think it must have gotten held up in customs...

I took the above photo with the lights turned off in daylight and I think it helps, don't you? (Thanks for the tip, Sophia)!

One of my blogger friends (who wishes to remain anonymous) saw that I was using my jack-o-lantern lights in the hallway, took pity on me, and sent me a whole box of Cir-Kit spotlights!  (Among other goodies). I guess I'm sort of jaded, because when stuff like that happens, it kind of throws me for a loop.  I just can't believe how wonderful this miniature community is!  Thanks, anonymous miniature benefactor!

Here's the newly finished hallway off the back of the Music Room with the aforementioned, new lighting from my gracious benefactor. Just the effect I was going for! :)

Still haven't gotten around to piping the chairs...(sorry, Catherine)!  When I bought the silk embroidery floss for the piping, I picked up several colors because I didn't have a fabric swatch on me at the time.  DORK ALERT!!!  Well, when I made my piping, I inadvertently used the wrong color! Pardon my blooper!

Kilmouski & Me Catherine has been sending me photography tips, too, which I so very much appreciate.  (Obviously I still have a lot of work to do)!  BTW, when I recently admired the floral arrangements Catherine had made and posted on her blog, a few days later the sweetest little box appeared on my porch with some of the preserved statice I had commented on...Of course I had meant to immediately whip up some fabby arrangements and post them but, well, you know how that goes.  But there's another example of  a 'random act of kindness' and I am currently racking my brain in hopes of reciprocating, somehow...

Well, anyway...on to the Library!  The weather is really starting to turn cold here in Siberia I mean Minnesota, but you know what that means, mes chers:  Dollhouse Weather!!!  So now I can truly 'get busy!'  I get most of my components on-line and things for the Library are starting to slowly trickle in...

Sometimes I make precisely detailed drawings of my rooms before I start them, but in this case I'm not, because I have a fairly clear 'vision' for the Library.  I'm using door surrounds from Miniature Mansions as the framing for my bookcases.  I'm thinking of using the same surround cut-down for an over mantle ('Adam" by non-other than my new besty, Braxton Payne, natch)! I've already ordered the wallpaper from Les Chinoiseries and hopefully it will not get held up in customs this time around...

In the meantime, I guess I'll whip out my Crazy Cords and re-do all the piping for my Music Room chairs...I've also got some new floral kits from France and the Netherlands that I could work on, because I decided my current flower arrangements simply do not make the progressively stringent Merriman Park cut. I once thought my hum-drum, clay roses were très charmant (when I first got them) ...but as they would say in South Boston, where I once spent the most enchanting summer of my life: "whenever I saw them paper roses from Europe, I was wicked bullshit!" (Um, for the uninitiated, that's a compliment)! LOL!

 Have a wicked, awe-sum week, everybody! 

CONFIDENTIAL TO FI & ILONA: 

I hope this more muted color text is more to your liking!  I don't want you girls tripping...

This 'n' That 'n' Things

See the little hallway through the door along the back wall of my Entrance Hall?  All six, stately rooms of Merriman Park have a doorway on the back wall --my way of hinting at further rooms beyond.  Originally I meant to have closed, fixed doors and  I only added this little passage off the Hall as an afterthought.  All of a sudden I got a bee in my bonnet and decreed (to no one in particular) that ALL rooms must have this feature, so I unceremoniously yanked off my little hallway and built one, big box to serve as hallways to all six rooms!

Here's the Dining Room with it's new, glimpse of hallway.  (I'm still working on the lighting back there --it still looks like the Ghost of Christmas Past is about to make an appearance)...

I have not yet received the wallpaper for the upstairs hallway, yet.  But here's the decidedly un-glamorous, primed, passage off the Music Room...

I won't even bother showing you the Drawing Room hallway...it looks pretty much like the above photo, with the sad addition of all my wiring hanging down like limp spaghetti in the doorway.  OH!  That's the cool thing...the big, new 'hallway box' in back will eventually hide all the wiring!

As I mentioned earlier, I'm still working on the hallway lighting.  I want it to look sort of  muted and mysterious, with just a hint of je ne sais pas quoi --and not like the aliens from Close Encounters are running a marathon up and down the damn thing.  I thought maybe a simple, nightlight-type bulb would do the trick, but did you know you can't even buy a nightlight anymore that isn't on some kind of timed sensor for day/night?  I know!  When I was young, we turned our nightlights on and off manually AND WE LIKED IT.

Then I got this brilliant idea:  I have these dumb, fake jack o'lanterns in the basement that have nightlights in them already attached to long cords...sweet!

Boo! Mr. Pumpkin smiles for the camera while Miss Tina the mannequin strikes a pose in the cellar.

Ooh, girls, when that scary pumpkin face popped up on my screen I about jumped out of my skin...spooky!  Don't you just hate fake jack o' lanterns?  I mean, why even bother if you're not going to carve a real one and scoop out the disgusting, slimy guts and stick a real, wax candle in there and light it and smell your house up with burnt-pumpkin stank? Seriously.

Now all I have to do is get me some clear, nightlight bulbs. Because red/orange flame-tip bulbs from fake jack o' lantern make Merriman Park look like there is some pretty funky, weird shenanigans going on in that dollhouse!  LOL!

...IN OTHER NEWS...

Don't ask me why, mes chers, but I also recently decided that my newly-reupholstered, Music Room chairs simply screamed for piped edges.  I've seen it used to brill effect on the blog of Catherine of Kilmouski & Me and so now my new mantra du jour has become "must have fab piping!"  (In Buddhist, when I chant it correctly, darling)!

Non-other than Catherine, herself, steered me toward CRAZY CORDS, which make mini piping-making a SNAP.  No more tired, twisting and turning of embroidery floss the old-fashioned, manual way...with CRAZY CORDS you just simply attach your thread into the patented, handy-dandy CRAZY CORDS  tool, press the button and voila!  That's right, folks --just SET it, and FORGET it!

Perfect 1:12th scale piping without the FUSS.  Without the MUSS of tedious, labor-intensive spinning by HAND!  But don't take my word for it, darlings...

"I would have gone CRAZY making my miniature piping without this god-send device.  Thanks, CRAZY CORDS!" --Eileen Dover, Aimes, Iowa

"I've been making dollhouse piping for years, the old-fashioned way.  If only I had CRAZY CORDS back in the day, I might still have the feeling and use of my thumbs..."  --Mrs. Wilma Ballsdrop, Battle Creek, Michigan

"WHOO-HOO!!! We LOVE ya, CRAZY CORDS!!!"  --Miss Iona Trailer & family, Columbia Heights, Minnesota

http://www.schooloftoy.com/Products/crazy-cords-friendship-bracelet-factory/

 

Chairs! Chairs! Chairs!

So I finished reupholstering my Thomas Jefferson chairs in the Susan Bembridge fabric and I have to say I am rather pleased with the results.  Normally, I am not a 'matchy-matchy' kind of guy, but somehow in this setting it WORKS, as they're always saying on those HGTV shows.

 It was a little touch-and-go with the upholstery job, mes chers, as the pattern on the fabric had to be centered on the furniture backs and seats --so there was a lot of waste.  Would there be enough fabric  to complete the job??? 

The venerable Susan Bembridge herself thought that one piece would do the job, and she was right!  She even steered me toward the cotton sateen instead of the silk, which I originally favored.  She told me that non-other than John Hodgson preferred the cotton --and who am I to argue with  the likes of that?  I'm actually glad I heeded her sage advice because it was tough enough to line up the pattern without the added misery of slippery silk!

I'm thinking about adding some piping to the edges of my chairs, à la manière de Catherine of Kilmouski & Me, a blog I have come to adore.

But for now...I'm calling the room 'complete!'

 Here's another House of Miniatures chair I built for the piano.  It's actually one of the same chairs from the Entrance Hall, but in a walnut finish and gilded detail on the lyre back. 

I decided to do the seat cushion in the red silk to go with the balloon shades at the windows. 

I also, one morning tossed the sheet music into my cup of coffee because it just seemed too white, lol!

I am still looking for an appropriate image to go under the spinet lid...send me one if you think it would fit the odd shape!

There are a few other details I would like to change... but isn't that the way of dollhouses?

I have another chandelier for the room in mind, but it might have to go on my Christmas list.  I also have my eye on a harp.

Did you notice my new, seven-tier candelabras on the tables along the back wall?  They are from Patre's Dollhouse Miniatures, and I just LOVE them!  Of course, what's not to love about gold and sparkles, right?The three-tiered candles in the middle ground are hers, as well.

Then there is the 'little person's chair' in the foreground...it was actually a mistake-purchase but I almost NEVER return things to stores because --well,--I don't know why...  I was not planning on having any references to children in my house because I sort of have this love/hate relationship with children...and by that I mean I love to hate them, lol!  I was telling Fiona the other day that I believed all children should be shipped out to Military School until they're eighteen and are able to talk intelligently about Art --but that's just silly ol' me talking, so attention must not be paid!

But I decided to include the little chair, after all, and am looking for a 1/24 scale violin to set on it...for a little, budding Mozart, perhaps?  Gods! Am I getting soft in my old --in my-- in my-- as I approach middle-age?