Cupcakes!

I made some cupcakes while watching the Olympics tonight.  The color of my picture is just terrible!  They are pink iced and I must add this is PURE trial and error, heavy on the error.  I just could not get the icing to hold any shape, so these ended up as good ol' dipped cupcakes instead of the beautiful piped creations that they were intended to be  :-)  I used tls and white and red clay  to color it and then added some cornstarch.  I think I read that somewhere, but who knows where or even if it stayed in context in my mind.  I may have created pink brick mortar!  Anyhow, if anyone knows and is willing to share how to get a texture that can be piped through a monoject syringe, I would be indebted to you and very thankful!

Ok, so now I've made the obligatory bread...

I also made some cookies, i guess in honor of Valentine's day.  My hearts seem a little more like enameled metal, than iced cookies, though.  Maybe it is the shine on the icing.  It's more like a glaze than the other cookies I've seen in everyones wonderful valentine's blog posts.  I used liquid sculpey.  I've been looking at some of the Grace clay products and wondering if I need them.  I think I do!  :-}

I tried to paint this chair

I painted this chair to match this desk. It actually used to be maple colored.  My furniture-to-dollhouse ratio is way off right now in favor of the furniture, but not a lot of it will work in the only finished house that I have. This stuff definitely will not go. I think I may try to paint more of my furniture.  I guess I could even try to make some rustic looking furniture. I've tried making everything else!

Working in the second floor

I am working on the layout of the second floor of the Orchid.  Those of you who have seen the Orchid know that the second floor is a nightmare!  The windows and the sloped roof make the layout very dysfunctional, to put it mildly.  I am attempting a false wall that will make a bed-space out of the middle window and will make wall space that is actually perpendicular to the floor under the smaller windows!  I think then I will be much happier with the space.

 

After looking through Sylvia's blog and seeing how wonderful her little chairs from Lea's tutorial turned out, I attempted my own.  I did not have any staircase spindles, so I made the front legs out of polymer clay.  Needless to say, it is a bit wobbly, but as attempts at miniature-making go, I am quite pleased with it!  Thanks for the inspiration Sylvia!

More food

Here are some more pics of my food experiments

I am all over the place with this miniature stuff!

Everything is so cool and I want to try to make it all!!!  Like I've said before, I am going to have to be stopped soon by some force other than myself.  Here is a cheesecake I made.  I also made the platter.   I have been messing around with the settings on my point-and-click camera, but if I truly want to photograph this stuff (and I do!)  I will probably have to break down and buy and SLR camera.  I have a couple of people who photograph my portraits for me, but I can't call on them every time I make a polymer clay orange.  Well, I could, but it would not last.  Anyhow, I am enjoying every bit of this and I will try to photograph more.  I finally found the cable for my camera so I will mess around with it some more to see if I can get any kind of quality out of it.  It's a nice camera, just not meant for this 1 inch detail-ish kind of work.

The Orchid dollhouse interior

Today I have begun to layout the interior of my Orchid! Hard to to see it yet, but it is going to be a bakery with a kitchen and a little apartment upstairs. I added the fireplace and turned the stairs from the kit and added a landing. I really wanted a fireplace and stairs and this was the only configuration I could come up with. I need to add a wall upstairs in order to accommodate an oven. I do not have a clear plan for that space yet. I don't really care as long as I can fill the whole place with mini cakes, pies, tarts, macaroons, cupcakes, and the like. I need to paint the beadboard before I attach it to the wall, and the baseboard and crown. I wish I was working on it now, but I have to watch 24! Again, sorry for the crummy iphone photo:

Moving on

Here is my first miniature oil painting! It's 1.5" x 2" and I stretched and gessoed a piece old 600 thread-count sheet. REALLY bad iphone pic, I know, but I lost the cable to my camera so this will have to do. I had to take a break from painting the "old people." I mean that in the nicest way, really :-)

I just bought a new house on Ebay!

Here is the Ebay picture. It was listed for local pick-up only in my town! Also, my "Ebay bucks," that I know nothing about, are redeemable tomorrow! I thought that meant that I should definitely buy it. Hopefully I can pick it up tomorrow when I am out and about :-) I know that I sound like a goob :-B

Fully shingled!

I could not be more pleased with these shingles! Whoever you are who posted the vinegar/steel-wool technique wherever you posted it, THANK YOU!

Shingles

Updated progress on the Orchid doll house

Did a lot of painting this weekend and also electrified the house with Dad. Can't quite decide on the interior design. Definitely a bakery. I want to bash the stairs to contain a landing. I am also working on the shingles. I found an aging technique that involves soaking steel wool in vinegar and painting the result on the shingles, producing a blackened look. I could not believe it worked! The end is in sight if I can make some decisions!

Here is the progress on the orchid doll house

A base, some shingles, paint, and landscaping and we will be done with the exterior

Here is the beacon hill in progress

This has taken my Dad 100s of hours to get to this point! You can't see all of the detail, but he has endlessly sanded and filled those jagged little Greenleaf pieces to an unrecognizable smoothness! We can't WAIT to get our(my) hands on this!