And the winners are...

How many of you have responded on my give-away! Too many to write down, but our printer and computers seem to have a row, they mysteriously won't communicate with eachother. Leaving me with no possibility to do the old-fashioned draw from a bowl, no possility to let my hands go through the papers and chose one by feeling that it's the one. Instead of that, I made two lists in Excel, and let the computer chose randomly.  It feels a bit empty, but it does the trick.

The first draw for the metal set...

... is won by Norma of Make Mine Mini! To my surprise, as some of my work already has found the way to her home.

The second draw, for the wooden set... 

 ... is won by Genevieve from Miniacollection!

Congratulations both of you! Genevieve, I send you an e-mail for your address. So little Lucie will be able to play in the snow with her new sledge soon!

Thank you all for participating!

Marit

~♥~ Give-away! ~♥~

To celibrate that over 200 people chose to follow my blog (can you believe that?!?), I have prepared a give-away...

Two hundred has a 2 in it, so I made two sets of gifts, both in winter/Christmas-style. The wooden set contains a sledge (as some of you already had guessed), a box and some candy-canes (well, it needed some colour). By the way: if your car needs new windscreenwipers, don't trow away the old ones! Those have a rustproof iron strip, which can be very useful, for instance for irons on a sledge...

The second set is the metal set: a angel to hang, a decorative tree and a candlestick.

To enter the give-away you need to be a follower and leave a comment on this post before December the 5th (Dutch time). You may anounce this give-away on your blog and use these pictures for that, but you don't need to.

In the Netherlands we celibrate Saint Nicolaas on December the 5th. It's the origin of Santa Claus. It's a party where children get presents and families give eachother presents. A perfect day to draw the winners. I will write the names down of all contenders twice and get a bowl for each set. If you said to have a preference for the wooden or the metal set, I will put both papers with your name in that bowl. If you have no preference, each bowl gets one paper with your name. So you all have the same chance to win. (And no, it's not possible to win both sets)

Good luck to you all!

Marit

Welcome & Preparation of give-away

I have been silent for a while, only showing Norma's wonderful gift, but not my own work. But I have been busy and still am!!! I saw the number of my followers getting close to 200 and then passing it! A year ago, when I started this blog, I would not believed it if someone would have told me that I would get so many followers! I am preparing a Christmas&winter themed give-away, but I'm not ready yet, so here some hints to make you curious:

So let me welcome my new followers:

Sharon

Kaisa

Marieke of Marfolhuz

Merylu

Giulia

Titta

Katie Arthur

Mandy

Melissa

Carla

Susi

Lisa

I hope you will continu to like my blog!

Marit

Gift from Norma!

Some time ago I send Norma some items, and she told me that she would make me a swap.  She made me a daybed for the beachhouse:

Isn't it just lovely? The matress can be reversed, and the other side has the complementary fabric:

The beachhouse is still under construction and quite empty, so I have nothing yet to show the daybed in a scene, except for the kitchentiles. But the colours mix so well!

Thanks again Norma! I am very happy with it!

Marit

Welcome!

(the result of an evening turning and twisting metal tread and soldering it)

I have new followers!

Dark Squirrel Victoria

Ana

Diane-Enaid

Liliane

Linda and second blog

Thomas Scales

Marie

Beatriz Fernadez

Nyork

Natalia

Lataina (please let me know if you have a blog!)

A warm welcome to you all and I hope you will enjoy my blog!

Marit

Holiday

The last weeks I got myself through my working hours dreaming about miniature making at a table next to a woodburner, cup of tea, glancing outside every now and then, seeing nothing else than coloured leaves and birds... and most important: NOTHING ELSE TO DO! Well, we just came back from that autumn holiday, and we had such wonderful weather, that I almost did no miniature working! :-)
But this is what I did:

I sewed a bag and sawed a little bench.

I haven't glued the bench yet, still deciding if I will use it to make more.

And now back to work again, and no holidayplans to dream about...

Marit

Sidetables & silverware

The beachhouse will get a kitchen with a work top of soapstone, which I will make from a stone myself. I had one piece almost ready, when it broke in two. So I decided to make two sidetables with it.

It's not well visible on the picture that the tops are made of stone. In real they look a bit like marble. I made them the right thickness for a kitchencounter, so they are a bit too thick, but it doesn't bother me. The dark one has little wheels beneath it. Work in progress:

The silver I've put on them are my oldest (candlesticks) as well as my newest boughts (bowl and sauce-thingie). Aren't they wonderfully detailed?

Hope you'll have a good week next week, mine will be very busy, probably no time for mini-work... :-(

Marit

Welcome new followers!

Beautiful scene to be seen in the cathedral of Chester (UK)

A warm welcome for all my new followers!

Usvis

Aproshkina

Lia e Alma

Csilla

JRB Creations

Sarah

Chipironini

Angelrib

Ernesto

Rosamargarita

Peggy

Berri Jones

Caroline

Lotte

Jenya

Catherine

Yvonne

M Carmen Casanova

Casita Mini

Gonda's Miniature

Dreamkeeperfae

Alienora

Heleni

Sans DD

Julia @ Bearcabinminiatures

Marta y Carla

Marillum

Little Miss Kris

I hope you will all like my blog, and leave many nice comments ;-).
I don't seem to be able to find a blog of some of you, while I'm sure that I visited at least one of those blogs. Please let me know if you have one!

Marit

Step by step

Sometimes I think I must be the clumsiest miniaturist. I don't see any of you damaging their wallpaper when you're not working on it, cutting grass-paper 3 times and still too short, trying paint-techniques on the good piece of grass-paper (instead of the remainder after cutting), ... Oh well, I get there, slowly progressing step by step.
The spot on the wallpaper is covered by a bouquet of dried flowers (some real flowers fit the miniature world perfectly). You can see the new windowsills on this photo too.

Next to it is the door with the new hinges. They match the handle well, after I removed the black paint on them.

Two snails found their way on the outside of the conservatory.

I had to make close-ups of them, as one has to take a very good look to spot them on the next picture. I made the second wall around the garden. Now I have to finish the gate, and then paint it. As I said, I cut grass-paper from a model-train-shop to fit the garden, which it does, more or less. But I guess I can fill gaps between wall and paper with plants, like one would have in real life, as the mower can't cut the grass close to the wall. The grass is not glued yet. I need to paint the walls first.

I thought the grass-paper was too yellow, even though I bought the darkest shade. I tried various ways to paint it, and had a very nice result by spraying a solution of watercolour on it. A brush flattens the grass too much.
I end with another picture of the lion-tap. I know I've shown this before, but I like the result much.

Have a nice week,

Marit

End of Eurominies :-(

Last week I got the news that 'Karweipost', owner of the brand 'Euromini's' will stop their activities. I think it's a pity. It's a very affordable priced brand. I must admit that for me it's not detailed enough, but hey, what to expect for the price they ask? But they also sell most of their furniture as bare wood, and that I like very much! Those furniture are the perfect base to make your own furniture: all the difficult work already has been done. So today I went to their shop in Veenendaal to shop before all the good stuff is gone. A treat from my husband: he told me that he would take care of the bill :-). It was quite busy in the shop, and some items already had been sold out!

Don't you just love the desk? Ever since I saw it on Marmod's blog (scroll to the 'Lavendel kamer', half-way the page), I thought of pimping one myself, but never had a purpose for it. Still haven't.  The chests of drawers are so nice as well, even though I have no place for them yet either. They are what we call belly-cabinets in Dutch: they are thicker in the middle of the drawers. The chair will become a throne for the ice-queen in my fairytale cabinet. And of course I bought lots of lights for the fairytale cabinet!

I wonder how the Dutch dollshouse-world will recover from this. I think it's the most sold brand around here and some shops dedicate more than half of their shop to it. How will they fill that up? Time will tell, I guess. The importer stops for personal reasons, so there is hope that someone else will take over. But at least I have my long-desired goodies.

Bye for now,

Marit

On the wall

My projects stood on the same tables where I do my miniature work, always taking a lot of space. And now also the structure of the conservatory is becoming more fragile, so I thought it was time to give them their place on the wall.

My hobbyroom has the shape of an 'L', and this temporary desk in the foot of the L is where my computer stands (behind the cottage). It's a nice and secure place for my projects. The rest of the room is working area, where things can be made... or broken...

To see how it would look best on the wall, I tried it on the floor. But now it's on the wall, I think the conservatory should hang higher. Oh well...

The left cupboard is made for cd's, but I will make a fairytale collection of it, with in every box another scene with fairies, gnomes, a witch, or ... So many plans, so little time! But now it's up the wall, I finally may have the room to work on it.

I do see that history repeats itselve. I started on the beachhouse, soon I had to devide my time between the beachhouse and the conservatory, and now -without coming close to finishing those two projects- I'm thinking about starting on the third one... At the end of my life I'm probably surrounded by loads of dollshouses and boxes, without any of them being finished. I can't say I mind. Working on them is the fun part. I might enjoy the house less when it's ready.

As for the conservatory: the new glass has been put in, I've made windowsills and I started on the outer wall of the garden.

And now I'm going outside to enjoy the sun (after having had weeeeeeks of rain)!

Marit

Michelle's give-away present has arrived!

As you may remember Michelle of Little Rabbit Miniatures had a give-away to celibrate the opening of her Etsy-shop and having 105 followers, and I was the winner of a beautiful Cinenaria. It arrived this weekend, and in real it's even more beautiful than on the picture!

A close-up:

As said: the give-away was to celibrate the opening of her Etsy shop, where Michelle sells plants and flowers, all very different, but all very detailed and beautiful. If you want to see her wonderful works, visit her shop here.

Thanks again Michelle!

Bye for now!

Marit

Welcome!

My hobbyroom has a door to a roofterrace, where I can do dirty work as sanding, take pictures of my work in good light, feed the birds out of reach of my cat, or just sit and enjoy the view (preferably with a glass of rosé wine and the evening sun). It's raining now, but look who visited me on the terrace last week:

I have more welcoming to do, many new followers!

So a warm welcome to:

Tebbina

Sarah J

Maria

Mini_babies

Tabitha Corsica

Pilar

Carolyn

Glenda

Otterine

Kat the Hat Lady

Kim@Fairytale Cottage

Art of Mini

Momy

Clara

Keli

Marie

Anything Miniature

I hope you all will like it here and leave many nice comments :-).

Marit

Little creatures

I want to finish the base of the conservatory, so I can glue it on the wall and shelf, but this sure isn't my best week.

I've put scrappaper beneath the windows, and the windowsills are ready to be put in, but first I had to glue the acryllic glass back in again. But the glue I used reacted with the acryllic glass, didn't glue, became runny and left white stains on it... In other words: the glass is ruined. In the proces I pushed a window ornament out (easy to fix) and broke one of the hinges of the door (beyond repairing). So I need new glass and hinges, before I can go further here.

I thought I could make some small creatures of Fimo, to live in the garden. Here they are:

A hanging mouse:

A mouse on a pin (to put on a stem of a plant or flower):

A dragonfly (only 5 mm in lenght, with 6 legs and musquito-wings!):

A mole:

And 5 snails:

Yes, I did say 5, I did make 5, but one never made it to the oven (was found in my hair (?) later), and the other two with real snail-houses didn't survive my clumsyness... (see first picture) As I said, this week was not a good week for me to work in miniature.

They all need a bit of paint and some need some flock, but even the mega-scrap-shop nearby didn't have that, did not even know it exists. Thank God for webshops! Now I just have to wait till the postman brings me my glass, hinges and flock (and the other nice stuff I saw in those webshops ;) ). 

Have a nice week!

Marit

Backwall

A conservatory usually doesn't stand on its own, so I needed to make a wall, behind which the rest of the house would be. So last week I have been busy with self-drying clay and paint. Here is the result:

The lion-plate with tap is bought. It just needed painting.

And here is how I did it:

First I've put the clay in place. It doesn't need to be flat. Then I sketched the stones, following the lines of the unflatness, making stones in various sizes. On the right you see the next step: defining and shaping each stone. On some stones I made cracks and bumps. Then the whole wall gets texture by beating and stroking with a firm brush. I applied several layers of paint, but also gave a few stones one layer of a different colour, so not all stones will have the same colour. It needs a bit of variation to look realistic.

To show my husband what I did, I placed the lion-plate on the wall, and it stayed there while drying. That was by accident quite a good choice, as the clay shrinks on drying. With the plate in place, it kept his place. It was quite stuck after a few days of drying!

I still need to add moss, climbing plants, a little bird-nest in a hole between the stones, etc, but so far I am pleased with the result.

Update on my cat: he still sleeps a lot and surely has muscle pain, but he's doing very well. You already said it to me: cats are really tough creatures!

Marit

Finished bench

It got late last night, but I finished the bench!

Did you notice the M before?

Inside I've put a pink lining in contrast with the turquoise colour beneath the white paint.

 It will get a place in my conservatory.

 Left, right, I'm not sure yet.

It took 4 layers of white to cover the turquoise, and when it was fully covered, I sanded it again, showing the turquoise and bare wood, to give it a used look. It still feels silly to 'damage' a neatly painted piece, but I do like the effect, giving a dolls house the feel like it's being lived in, a home, instead of a show piece.

Hope you had a nice weekend full miniatures to enjoy as well.

Marit

Present from Sonya and progress on bench

When Sonya received the present of my give-away, she wrote that she would send me something in return. But I didn't expect this much!

How nice is that! Thank you so much, Sonya! I'm sure I'll find a place for everything!

I have been busy myself too this week. Here's some progress on the bench:

The turqoise will be covered by white, so the colour gets trough the white when sanded for the old look. More on that next time.

Marit