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...