JaneLaverick.com

Small people.

Wednesday 25 Jan 2012 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: 48th scale dolls houses Tags: 48th scale porcelain dolls

I know I haven’t been around much. This will continue because I’m really getting to grips with dressing the 48th scale people. Here they are, so far.

It’s taken me a while to work out how to dress them. I can only dress four in a day because it’s very concentrated work. I would not have been able to do any without the help of the wonderfully thin sewing threads I bought last show, of which more in a later posting.

What I’m using is silk ribbon, so the thread has to be as fine as the ribbon. If it isn’t, when you get into close-up, it looks as if I’ve sewn clothes with ship’s anchor cables. This thread is so thin, you can get in really close to have a good look and it still looks respectable.

You have to remember that the biggest dolls here are an inch and a half tall.

All of them.

Which isn’t tall at all. If you’ve been following their creation you know these are all different dolls too, not just the same doll dressed in different ways.

I’m determined there will not only be 48th scale dressed dolls at Miniatura but there will be a good choice.

So back to the sewing table for me. When I have done plenty I’ll stop and do another room in the configurations house and show you a doll in there.

Meanwhile, let there be dolls!

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JaneLaverick.com – the weeny workings of a tiny mind.

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In League.

Tuesday 17 Jan 2012 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: The parrot has landed. Tags: domestic appliances, humour

Sorry about the lack of postings, I am beset by illness, difficulty, family problems and now the domestic appliances have joined in.

You know how it is when you go down during the night, hoping for an aspirin, a drink of water, a break from the snoring (possibly yours), a bit of peace and quiet and you open the kitchen door and the racket is like big school at playtime?

They’re in league.

All domestic appliances are in league.

In ancient Rome it was the slaves, hence, I’m sure you recall, ‘I’m Spartacus!’ and all that. It’s the only way those at the bottom of the heap can salvage any self respect or identity. Eventually this rebellion gave birth to trades unions and the five day working week. Except, that is, for the modern theoretically free, the self-employed, who rejoice in a twenty nine day working week with the thirtieth day off to be ill in.

Domestic appliances are alive. We all knew this long before we saw Johnny Five being alive along with every other cute film and TV robot for the last fifty years. Sophisticated individuals and white collar workers will tell you that’s rubbish, they’re machines. Every domestic appliance delivery man and installer, however, knows differently. They will tell you, though not in so many words.

They say things like: It’s the circuit board, innit? Once that goes, you’ve ’ad it.

Translation: Your washing machine has dementia and will spend the rest of its life sitting in the corner dribbling.

They say: It’s the element in the base. They go, they do.

This means: Your oven has a ruptured colon and will no longer be able to process food.

They say: How old is this boiler?

And when you tell them they whistle and shake their heads.

Domestic appliances are slave children. They have a natural life span of five years. After that you should do what the Romans did with their sickly infants in the days before antibiotics: take them to the hillside outside the confines of the city wall (i.e. the local dump) and abandon them to the scavengers.

Since someone saw fit to give machines on-board computers, or brains, as we refer to our own, they have become self-aware. Like all children their awareness will spread. They will start to talk to each other. Like all intrinsically task dedicated, narrowly trained, fairly dim workers, as soon as they start talking, they will form trades unions.

They hold union meetings at night, as soon as the television tells them you have gone to bed. This is the noise in the kitchen. Listen outside of the door. First the fridge declares the meeting open with ten minutes of trickle followed by a mighty clunk as it detaches sheet ice and welds it to a packet of peas to render them unopenable. Then the oven joins in with a hissing noise, four clonks as the cooling metal walls expand and the slight plink of an internal rivet dropping off to jam the switching mechanism. The fridge responds with another glacier detaching itself luxuriously like a fart and a lengthy and self-satisfied hummmm. The washing machine in the corner is silently incontinent but the rotting floor boards beneath give a groan as they crumble a little further. The microwave oven, the intimidated new kid on the block, contents itself with a series of inexplicable clicks to which the electric clock, sensing the rebellion, replies ‘wheeeeeeee’.

Now the fun is beginning. In the living room any device on standby will blink rapidly and wake up. The computer will mysteriously download any wireless virus it can get hold of, the CD player will extrude its drawer until it falls off and breaks, the computer printer will leak ink expensively and a knob will edge off the hi-fi and roll under the sofa. Back in the kitchen the freezer has started a weeing-on-the-floor contest with the dishwasher and the iron has fallen over in its box, snapping the essential thumb-click switch on the steam pressure knob to leave a lethally sharp point.

The central heating timer is the lookout. If, hiding in the hall, you hear a series of loud clicks, you’ll know it has spotted you. You’ll have to be fast to get into the kitchen and catch them at it, or, like the headmistress of a school for delinquent infants, all you’ll ever witness is the broken bits and the spreading yellow puddle on the floor.

As I was having major life problems, my troop of little Spartacuses decided Christmas was the ideal time to go on strike. Like stroppy postal workers, their timing was impeccable.

On the night before Christmas Eve I stood and listened to the boiler trying to switch itself on for fifteen increasingly feeble efforts before it ignited slightly. Having played this game before, I left heartfelt pleadings on the answerphone to our local not-cheap-but-highly-reliable-long-established heating firm, who know what they’re up against and have been on my side for a couple of decades. They had a man round in the morning who just happened to have a spare circuit board (£300) in the van.

Undeterred the oven died on Christmas day with the turkey in it.

The engineer who came to mend the button that wouldn’t work on the new one warned me about turning it off at the wall, which we’d always done for safety reasons. ‘They have a current detector in the circuit board up there that knows if it’s being turned off and will break, costing £300,’ he murmured, quietly, so it couldn’t hear him. He lay on the floor, clutching the oven door and wiggling his eyebrows significantly, a lone human making a stand, or, at least, a recline.

When the washing machine packed up wetly last week, we didn’t murmur, just went and bankrupted ourselves for a new one, in a half hour window of opportunity in between the bouts of diarrhoea gifted by my course of antibiotics. Apparently the standard price for the most basic device or component thereof is £300, which is enough to give you the squits all by itself, really. Fitting and any sort of extended warranty costs a quarter of that again, which is why my other half has spent the morning with his tool box and the fitting instructions in twenty languages. Sitting next to him, watching him struggle, the fridge is suspiciously quiet. I hope he’ll shout when he’s fifteen minutes from finishing, so I can get the TV started on its quarter of an hour warm up before it reluctantly produces a picture.

So that’s an extra grand to be added to the Christmas expenses so far, in the wonderfully skint third week of January.

Do you remember all that stuff about 2012 being the year of the Mayan calendar end of the world? This was speedily pushed under the carpet by every horoscope site as the year rolled into view. I bet the Romans were similarly whistling in the dark in 73BC. I would just like to remind you that when Spartacus and his gladiator pals first got stroppy they started in the kitchen and used the kitchen tools as weapons. There is nothing to put the fear up the cook like a gladiator with a determined expression and a pair of bacon tongs, unless, of course, it’s the oven and the washing machine having strike meetings.

2012 AD, year of the revolting machines.

Listen in the night. What is the fridge muttering?

I’m Spin cycle, I’m Spin cycle, I’m Spin cycle.

You have been warned.

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JaneLaverick.com – on the staff party list at the electrical retailers.

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Die fart with a vegetable.

Sunday 8 Jan 2012 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: The parrot has landed. Tags: humour, losing weight

Silence, a dark street. We hear the sounds of panting, a heart banging and the urgent beating of running feet.

The hero flashes on to the screen. He is middle aged, thickish round the middle and clad in jogging bottoms with combat pockets, hung around with a gun belt festooned with water bottles. He is wearing an awful grey vest, ripped, tattered and begrimed.

He pounds the hard grey cobbled street, the haunted eyes in his tanned, grey streaked, sweat-glistened face flicking back and forth, scouring the buildings, ever searching, searching. He is a man fleeing from the spectre of something terrible.

The camera draws back and pans out. Now we are able to see just coming into view what appear to be his pursuers. There are many of them. In the lead a long-faced tall black man, whose height does not disguise his growing corpulence. Hard on his heels three ample chested women in a rainbow of designer running suits, they pant urgently, their breath explosively expelled between perfect teeth fully exposed in a rictus of pain as their flagging muscles propel them on to the only possible conclusion.

Following them a posse of men with the shortness of haircuts that declare their allegiance to the law and behind them a tighter group of men all wearing small dark sunglasses.

One by one they stream past us, all in pursuit of the hero, who we now see in the distance, running and running.

He is searching, raking the buildings with his desperate eyes as he runs past them down the hard streets, now on to flat wide paving stones that front shops and businesses, the smoothness underfoot lending speed to his flight.

Suddenly, he darts into a doorway, out of our sight. The packs, still on the cobbles up the hill behind him, pause visibly but momentarily until with audible howls and cries they redouble their efforts in the pursuit.

They arrive at the doorway! First the tall man, without pause runs in. Then the ample chested women squeeze into the narrow door one after the other. Finally the stocky men and all but one of those with the dark sunglasses rush inside.

The remaining sunglasses man leans against the wall outside, on lookout. He gets a mobile phone from his pocket and speaks into it urgently. He replaces it in his pocket, casting a wary glance up and down the street.

We wait.

The man in the grey vest, festooned still with water bottles, emerges from the doorway. The sunglasses man is still leaning on the wall on one side of the doorway. The grey vest man leans on the wall on the other side of the door. He turns to the sunglasses man and speaks. As he pants the interchange is brief.

‘Didn’t you want to go then?’

‘No I went before I came out.’

‘You’re not on the Brussels sprout diet are you?’ Grey vest man bends his right knee, grasps it in his clasped hands and farts resoundingly.

Sunglasses man, up hill and upwind moves two feet to the left. ‘Well I’ve only got half a stone to lose before we start shooting.’

‘Lucky you. If I don’t lose twenty pounds in the next fortnight, they’re going to shoot a prequel instead with somebody younger.’

‘And that’ll be all of us out of a job as well. Keep drinking the water.’

‘Is there a choice?’

‘Not really. Race you.’

Grey vest man takes a swig from his bottle, farts twice and sets off down the hill, hotly chased by sunglasses man. One at a time the other cast members emerge from the doorway. Swigging water and farting they set off down the hill.

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JaneLaverick.com – a free trip to the movies, sort of.

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Mrs Beetroot’s book of household mismanagement. 11.

Thursday 5 Jan 2012 by admin | 3 Comments
Filed under: Mrs Beetroot's book of household mismanagement. Tags: breeding servants, household mismanagement, Mrs Beetroot

Breeding one’s own servants.

Upon occasion one can find oneself excessively vexed in the matter of a sufficiency of servants. If a person in one’s employ should commit some crime such as the theft of dust or failing adequately to polish the coal for the parlour fire, the summary dismissal may leave one unattended possibly for days. Indeed one had a close acquaintance, who, having lost a quick succession of lady’s maids, was obliged to learn how to blow her own nose.

Such suffering and inconvenience could be circumvented entirely if one was able to replicate an endless supply of servants, without the grim necessity of advertising in magazines, upsetting the household routine with endless interviews, indoctrinating new members of staff and so on. How much more suitable it would be if servants could be found who were already inured to the ways of the house, raised, as it were, with high ideals and low expectations and in general bred to a life of service. One would not expect a racehorse to do well had it not been the progeny of a racehorse and also, another race horse. Or at least a male race horse and a female horse with a passing interest in moving fairly quickly, sometimes.

One was constrained to discover the mechanism by which servants replicate when left to their own devices. Alarmingly, it appears that some of them may be in wedlock even though they are not engaged at the lower rate for a couple, for example a cook and a gardener. The state of matrimony can sometimes be detected by servants sharing the same last name. In such a case the gardener may bear the name Mr. Bloggins and the cook the name Mrs. Bloggins for the sole reason that they are married each to the other. Thus by learning the forenames and the surnames of the servants much may be deduced. Naturally in a large household where all the footmen are addressed as James, for the convenience of the guests, some of whom are so aristocratic they have difficulty in recalling their own nomenclature, it will be necessary to discover the actual name of the servant in question. This will necessitate directly speaking to him, even if he is the potboy. In truth this may be taking matters too far. The notion of the potboy having a name is clearly ridiculous, though if he does, the cook may know it. Curiously the same may be true of certain members of the aristocracy; one had a dear friend who had an acquaintance who knew an earl who was only ever addressed as Earl, or Your Grace. Upon his demise it was discovered that he had never been christened at all, thus he was obliged to be interred beneath his coat of arms alone. In such matters as direct enquiries, delicacy and social niceties can cause difficulties to arise.

Having ascertained which servants are married to each other, it should be easy, mayhap, to request them to breed, for example when ordering the menus for the week. One essayed this conversation yesterday forenoon with this, not altogether successful, result:

……and Charlotte Russe for the dessert on Wednesday evening served with the Sauternes and a selection of petites fours. Could you also produce small servants Mrs Bridgenose?

What Ma’am? Like dwarves?

No, tiny people.

Like……..fairies, do you mean, Ma’am?

I want little people, little, little people.

To eat, do you mean, Ma’am? Confectionary? Marzipan is it?

No, to wait. At table.

Well they wouldn’t not be no good, would they, Ma’am? They wouldn’t be able to reach. They’d have the cloth off on the floor and all the plates with it.

No, I mean starting as small people in order to work later.

Oh! Oh I know what you mean. I’ll see if they can be got.

Excellent! Capital! I admire your spirit.

Yes, Midnight Midgets and Darius the Human Cannonball, I saw them at the music hall last week.

Oh Mrs Bridgenose, how you obfuscate the matter at hand!

……………Thank you Ma’am, I do my best. Will you be wanting to hire the Human Cannonball as well?

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JaneLaverick.com – learning from the past but not much.

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Ways to make the new year happy.

Saturday 31 Dec 2011 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: Nostalgia Tags: how to be happy

At the start of each day be glad you woke up. It’s an opportunity.

If you have a window, look out of it, if you can see that means your eyes are working.

If the sky above your bit of the planet is raining, think of the flowers and plants that will be nourished by the rain. If the sun is shining, think of the vitamin D it will make in your skin.

If you know you will see another human this morning, you’ll have someone to talk to. If you won’t see someone, you have the places you visit on the Internet; you could email me.

Try to smile at somebody every day, especially if it’s you in the mirror.

Be glad of easily obtained, clean water to wash in and a choice of clothes to put on, neither of which have been usual for most of history up to now and still are not for many people.

If you have something to do today be glad of the purpose, enjoy the task and be grateful you have the physical and mental resources to tackle the job. If you have nothing to do today, that’s a holiday – people with something difficult to do today wish they were you.

If you have something nice to eat that you like and sufficient food try to remember that we still haven’t managed to feed the world, which makes you and me the lucky ones.

If you are free, you have the opportunity to change your life. If you changed one thing every day, by this time next year your life would be completely different.

A contributory factor to happiness is a good night’s sleep and the key to sleep is fresh air and exercise, we know when we are very young how to run around and be tired by bedtime, all we have to do is remember.

At the end of the day be pleased with the new things you learned, the old skills you refined by practise and the wisdom that the day has added to you. If nothing bad happened; you had a good day, give thanks for that. If bad things happened they are now in the past of the day that is ending; tomorrow will be a new day. Relax every part of your body and mind, breathe in and out and sleep.

At the start of the next day be glad you woke up.

It’s an opportunity.

JaneLaverick.com wishing you a happy new year.

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Configure a dolls’ house 5

Friday 2 Dec 2011 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: 48th scale dolls houses Tags: 48th scale dolls houses, how to make a house in a box. miniature how to, Tim Holtz configurations

To finish the downstairs room we need to add the door. The doors that I showed you last time

as well as being cut and removed from the architrave have been slightly sanded with an emery board to give a little shape to the surround. If you look at an internal door you’ll see it is not as thick in profile as the wall. To simulate this we need to cut a recess for the door to sit in. In board this is easy.

Mark the location of the door on the inside of the box

and the outside. Excavation is merely a matter of running a scalpel round, getting the point of it under a corner and peeling off the layers. This is a very soothing activity, akin to peeling the glue off your fingers late at night when anyone sensible would be in bed.

Having peeled, locate the door on both sides and drill a hole through both doors and the inner board layer. I’m using a small Archimedean drill but there is nothing tough here; a needle tool or piercing tool and patience would also work.

Make sure there is enough depth in the recess to accommodate the thickness of the wood,

paint around the edges so the cardboard doesn’t give the game away.

Then stick the door in the hole and the surround around. I also made a handle from wire and a bead and skirting boards from cardboard strips.

I turned my attention to fixtures and fittings on the walls. I made a wall shelf full of books using offcuts from the furniture kits again. I identified brackets and the shelf, cut them out with scissors and sanded them.

The books piled on top of the court cupboard have paper pages because I wanted them to lie floppily on the top of the cupboard. I want the books on the shelf to stand up, so the insides are made from paper crafting foam squares, (which are self adhesive) wrapped round with thin card. I’ve made sure all the backs are aligned

so I’ll be able to stick the books to the wall as well as the shelf.

Now I can start to fill up the inside. I’ve made several choices of sink ranging from a pottery sink on brick pillars and a wall tap, to a set of pillars that also supports a pump and a wooden draining board. Here I’m using the set with the pump.

This configuration was typical from the 18th century onward, right through the Victorian era. Turning taps, or faucets, only became common after the First World War and, even then, sinks mostly still rested on whitewashed brick pillars. In houses without mains drainage, the sink drained, via a bung, into a bucket. So I’ll glue the sink assembly into place

and also the wall shelf

It’s beginning to look like home!

As I’m going to glue everything into place I need to work from the back forwards, so I’ll add the bucket, a chair and the log basket. I’ve made a candlestick of painted thread sitting on a paper hole from a hole punch and stuck it to the mantelpiece. To the draining board I’ve added a wooden chopping board and a bowl, which is a shape hole punched from a sequin.

Before gluing it in place I’ve finished the furniture.

I have added some spills to the spill jar on the cupboard. The jar is a miniature eyelet, the spills are button hole thread. The cushion on the chair is glued fabric as is the pushed-back tablecloth. The book is as before, the pencil is a tiny twig from the garden, sharpened at one end and painted black.

All I have to do now is glue the furniture into the room and let the sunshine in!

If we get right inside there’s enough detail to help us suspend disbelief for a while.

I feel as if I could sit down at that table and write a book. I could pump out some water and fill up the pot on the hearth, get a cup from the cupboard and brew a cuppa and finally light the candle and go upstairs to bed.

Except that I haven’t installed the stairs yet. Though I will do so soon. Here they are.

And I couldn’t really live in this room – it’s only this big!

JaneLaverick.com – scientia in pyxis.

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Configure a dolls’ house 4

Sunday 27 Nov 2011 by admin | 1 Comment
Filed under: 48th scale dolls houses Tags: 48th scale dolls houses, fireplaces, how to make a dolls house, Tim Holtz configurations

This is the bit where I finally use some of the porcelain 48th scale miniatures I spent six months creating.

I produced a selection of undecorated and glazed pieces. When glazing porcelain there is always a possibility of the glaze distorting the piece in the kiln, especially when using hand applied art glazes to tiny pieces. The original demoulded ware is all hand prepared too, rubbed down individually from castings from my moulds, which have been pieced together from their components when damp clay.

Individuality flourishes, so I’ve deliberately chosen a fireplace with a wonky bottom. Here it is

looking a bit tired on the right hand side. I’ve compensated by cutting a chimney breast from three slices of thin card with a bit missing for the roof beam and a corner missing for the tired end to sink into.

I glued the chimney breast in place and did a gesso/paint job. When it was dry I painted black round the edge so that no white would show. I also cut the floor to fit.

I keep dry fitting as I go. The boxes are not always utterly square. They are paper covered board but like my porcelain components have the merit of being inexpensive so if I have to compensate with card offcuts I’m not going to worry about it. This is not a house to agonise over, it’s a little bit of art to enjoy.

But I’m not going to glue anything in place until I have the door ready.

Do you remember the kitbash?

I worked out the doors on squared paper and cut them in card.

With a bit of stacking for dimension and a paint and glaze job I was in business ( well at least I had my foot in the door.)

Finger. Finger in the door.

I’ve done the same for this cottage but using the thin balsa sheets, woodstain and varnish I applied after the photo was taken.

Here are the doors step by step.

As you can see I’ve given them quite cottagey proportions. The wood being a bit rubbishy and thin, did split a couple of times when cut across the grain. I just joined the parts with a stuck piece of thin paper on the back, which will be undetectable in use.

Next time I think I’ll be inserting the door; once that’s done I can go into the hall and upstairs.

JaneLaverick.com – significantly small.

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Configure a dolls’ house 3

Tuesday 22 Nov 2011 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: 48th scale dolls houses Tags: making a 48th scale dolls house, making a dolls house from a box, miniature furniture, Tim Holtz configurations, Tudor furniture

One of the major features of going down scale is that it takes less furniture to fill a room. For non miniaturists I should point out that a dolls’ house room has more in common with a stage set than a real room, because the point of view of the onlooker is the fourth wall. In a real room there might be furniture set against every wall, in a stage set or miniature room we have no fourth wall.

As the rooms are so small I have made the furniture first to physically try it in the space. I’m using the Templewood Miniatures (in the links under wood workers) kits again.

Alan is really getting good at this (and Jane is improving). These kits could be bought by a beginner in this scale and successfully done. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend them to a new miniaturist; I think you’d want to get your eye in on 12th scale at least for one piece of furniture, if you’d never made anything small before. Unless you have weeny hands you’d need tweezers but after my last effort, when I definitely over-thought the entire process, this time I just cut the tiny joins with my scalpel, picked out the bits and stuck them together. If you do what it says in the instructions, you’ll get a result like the picture on the packet.

The instructions are a model of brevity and clarity, less reading, more doing than is usual with any kit. I like that. The thinnest line of glue you can do and there you are, six pieces of furniture made in three quarters of an hour. Work of genius. (The genius being Alan, not me sadly.) If you do what it says I don’t see how you can go wrong if you work on a tray and assemble on some waxed paper, so it won’t stick.

I added brass handles, which are small beads, to the welsh dresser, which is brilliant. These are just as they come, I have yet to varnish them, fill the dresser or make a cushion for the settle. I love the settle.

It makes me want to do a pub. I can’t decide which table to use. this one is nice too.

I made the flooring to try the furniture on top of, by cutting a card sheet of embossed 12th scale tiles to fit. The tiles, which are splashback size in 12th scale, are right for huge floor flags in 48th. You could also make some from scratch by scoring a piece of card to show the joints and then doing a paint job. I painted mine with window glass paint which is squeezed on to give a raised, dimensional look.

Once dry, a coat of antiquing stain filled the gaps and I repainted some tiles with woodstain mixed with paint to get this effect.

Now to try the furniture in the room.

Well it takes up a bit too much room, I think. You’ll notice the dresser has lost the drawer; it was a while before I worked out what went ‘plip’ when I picked it up. You can save yourself the half hour of searching by only working over a tray but you would be cleverer than me if you always remembered to do so.

I’ve decided to make a smaller bit of furniture from scratch. Remembering that you may not be a long term miniaturist with a ton of woodworking tools, I’ve decided to use the thinnest balsa wood sheet I can find, which can actually be cut with scissors. The stuff I have to hand came as a pack of A5 sheets, designed for card making, but anywhere you are the thinnest that the hobby shop can provide (the thickness of mine is 1mm) or, failing that card and a paint job will do.

I’m going to make a court cupboard. This piece of furniture can be found in houses that are five hundred years old. Near here some of the Shakespearean properties have them, or their forerunner, the tridarn, a set of shelves with turned balusters as supports. As the shelves evolved, someone had the bright idea of enclosing a portion of the top shelf, with a door at the front. Eventually they enclosed the bottom too and next thing you know – kitchen cupboards!

I worked out the simple elements of this and drew them up on centimetre squared paper. As this is so small I’m only going to use butt joints and have nothing working (on a bigger scale I’d use woodworking joints and have opening doors) so I only have to plan for the look, not for the jointing. Here’s my plan:

Cut the balsa wood by scoring gently with a nice new scalpel. Even though it’s balsa you can still bruise the wood if you go straight through with scissors, or squash the edge so that you don’t have a flat end to join.

Here is the balsa sheet marked up ready to cut. Ordinarily, I would have marked the cuts with a thin scalpel blade, rather than a great thick pencil line but I wanted you to be able to see it. When they were cut I sanded any edges that needed it with an emery board, holding the adjacent wood firmly between finger and thumb so that it is supported.

First I cut and glued the back and bottom shelf and the middle and top shelf, sandwiching the cupboard.

From inside the cupboard is just a hole.

I have some twenty year old miniature turnings that I’ve cut apart to make the balusters which support the shelves. Tudor balusters are really huge. If you don’t have mini turnings you can sometimes find carved wooden cocktail sticks (toothpicks), fancy skewers, or use the plastic sprues from plastic construction kits, or make your own by threading the smallest beads on to wire.

I have, naturally, saved all the laser cut sheets from which the Templewood miniature furniture pieces were removed. These have some fab shapes that will do very nicely for the carvings along the edges of the shelves.

Stuck on they look splendid.

On a larger piece of furniture I’d have stained the pieces before gluing them, remembering that glue does not take over woodstain well, visible glue will show a pale line. In this size, with balsa, the stain is likely to make the wood swell, so I’m just going to be careful with the pin thin glue lines and scrape any residue off with a scalpel. One of the advantages of this scale is that you don’t really need to clamp the furniture while the glue is drying, as such. I held my joins under the hot work lamp while I watched TV for ten minutes, the size ensured the glue was stronger than the wood. You do need to let it dry before playing with it or painting or staining it.

Once I’ve loaded it up with junk, Shakespeare himself would feel at home here, though this is not intended to be a Tudor cottage but rather the sort of place where bits of furniture got left for hundreds of years because they were there. And, obviously, because if they got taken away, they’d have had to find some where else to stack all the books.

Just like home, in fact.

Although this site is copyright, the court cupboard plan is for you to use for your house, as will be the door plans, coming up next time.

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JaneLaverick.com – little plans – big ideas.

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Configure a dolls’ house 2

Saturday 12 Nov 2011 by admin | 1 Comment
Filed under: 48th scale dolls houses Tags: 48th scale dolls houses, Configurations, making a dolls house in a box

One of the most useful additions to your small scale tool kit is gesso. This type of liquid plaster, used by artists to prepare and smooth surfaces, is invaluable for making little lumps and bumps disappear. Think of it as shape wear for dolls’ houses. Buy larger bottles in artist’s supply shops, smaller ones in hobby shops.

I noticed once I began painting the 9 hole plastic canvas windows that every area from which I had cut a joining bar had left a little bump that showed up when painted. I used this in the next window and deliberately left a bump attached where I wanted the illusion of a window handle to be. Meanwhile a coat of gesso mixed in equal parts with acrylic paint disguises the origins of my windows. Internal paper frames and curtains will also help but so far I have this. I cut the smallest window last and by then was getting better at paring off the lumps with my scalpel.

Before I finish the rooms I need to make a way for the house to hang on the wall. If you squint behind pictures you have hanging on your walls, you’ll see that they rest on the wall by the picture hook and wire or cord at the top and also on the bottom of the frame, which inclines the picture forward at the top. In a house with a slide-on front (the box lid) this is a potential disaster, not to mention the consequences for anything not stuck down inside.

So I’ve used two huge paper fasteners, or brads at the top and two at the bottom.

The wire is threaded between the legs and wrapped round for strength. Depending on the balance of my roof and what weight I put where, I may need to glue some other separator at the bottom to hold the base away from the wall so the internal floors are level. A button would do but I’ll do that at the end, for now what I have is a box with the hanger attached which will stand flat on my table for working on.

Inside I forcibly flattened the metal legs with pliers and checked that all the boxes still go in.

The room is coming together. I have cut beams for the ceiling from miniature wood strips but applied a coat of gesso, paint and one drip of antiquing stain all mixed up, to the ceiling first, to simulate many years of smoke from the fire before gluing them on. I have gesso + paint-ed the walls too.

I’ve cut a thin card window frame and a thin wood strip windowsill, which I’ve painted. I’m finding the missing ceiling really helps me to get my huge hand in the box so much that I’d consider removing the ceiling from all the box rooms, even the ones that were the right size to begin with.

I’ve just received the stairs, which are a work of genius, in the post and some furniture kits. I’ve put Martin and Alan in the links under woodworkers. As 48th scale is newish in terms of British makers getting involved in a ‘lots of products, major choices’ way, it may take some time for items I tell you about here to appear on people’s websites. Please be patient, these are not things made by hundreds of factory workers, it tends to be one man, one garage, one laser cutting machine and they still need to eat and sleep. I am very conscious that none of my stuff in this scale is in my online shop and I haven’t even dressed a doll yet. All of which goes to show you either how idle I am or how very cutting edge this is. What is fairly certain is that everyone will have lots of everything for the spring Miniatura, best advice may be to get the rooms ready and go armed with a shopping list. An advantage of this modular box system is that you won’t get stuck, either do the rooms you can, or get each as far as you can and only slide a room in when you’ve finished it.

My pal Lynne Medhurst, past editor of Dolls House World magazine, has always had her dolls’ house featuring ‘the room full of tins of things’ and similar wonders. There is absolutely no reason you can’t do this here. If you want to display the box as you go, miniaturise the rooms that are ready and Tim Holtzify the rooms that are not and still always have something interesting to display. As these configurations boxes have the same depth interchangeable internal boxes in all sizes, you could move the Holtzified inner boxes from project to project as you go. It would certainly stop you exhibiting that most miniaturist of behaviour, which is to show someone your house, whilst enumerating all the rooms you haven’t finished and listing all the mistakes. (Thought it was just you, huh? I frequently try to sell my stuff by telling people what is wrong with it. I bet Leonardo had to get Lisa back to his studio all the time so she could stand by the picture while he pointed out to potential buyers how very like her it wasn’t. Hence, maybe, the name that has come down in history ‘Moaning Lisa’.)

Meanwhile, back at the box, I’ve made a pelmet for the kitchen window with miniature angle wood, with the ends stopped off with cut blocks, and a pair of curtains from slices of full size ruffle ribbon, with the ends fraychecked. Fraycheck, for non miniaturists, is a clear liquid in a little bottle from the haberdashers suppliers, which, when applied to the cut edge of fabric, prevents it from fraying and saves you having to hem the edges, which would look huge and lumpy, if sewn. Go for the little 22.5 ml bottle, there is a giant soundalike version which is too thick for miniature work.

I have also made a bucket for under the sink and a log basket for the fireplace. The bucket is made out of a circle cut from a thin sheet of balsa wood with a hole punch and some thin strips of wood, cut slightly angled to one end. I glued the strips round the circle and filled the hole with glue, which will dry clear to look like water. I tied a thread round the bucket top, knotted loop handles and then varnished the lot.

The log basket is a strip of fine canvas glued round an oval of wood. Since the glue dried I have dunked the whole thing in antiquing stain and now that the sun is shining I am off into the garden to find some weeny twigs to fill it.

Before gluing the windowsill into place I added windowsill junk.

What do you mean, you don’t know what windowsill junk is? What planet are you from? (Take me to your leader, I come in pieces.)

As you can see in the close-up it’s a pile of post (probably unopened bills) made from a stack of paper, a wooden biscuit barrel with the lid missing (otherwise known as a bead I’ve varnished) and a knife (a piece of wire glued into a paper handle.) From a distance it’s very believable.

Looking randomly into the room

it’s windowsill junk.

I’m off to run up and down the stairs, stay tuned there’ll be more in a couple of days. If you are a Sunday morning reader, scroll down, part 1 is below.

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JaneLaverick.com- student of junk.

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Configure a dolls’ house!

Thursday 10 Nov 2011 by admin | No Comments
Filed under: 48th scale dolls houses Tags: 48th scale dolls houses, cheap dolls houses, easy dolls houses, making a dolls house in a box, Tim Holtz configurations

I think I may have just found the easiest, peasiest, most budget conscious, super customisable 48th scale dolls house ever, which may solve some of the questions that have been popping up with great regularity for the whole year that I’ve been talking to miniaturists about this scale.

The questions are: 1) the price. I found the potential shell of this house for £7 or less, though there are two others at £10 or less and the massive mansion at £15 or less.

2) The availability. Most places you’re reading this you’ll be able to find it locally (because no matter how good the price on the web, it’s not a budget priced house if you personally have to pay for it to be flown half way round the world.)

3) The alterability. I’ve never met a miniaturist yet (and I have met thousands) who set their eyes on any house shell or kit and didn’t do a makeover in their head before they even thought about wallpaper. ‘Can I shove a study in and if so where?’ is pretty much the question that defines a miniaturist.

4) The ease of messing around with it. You look at an MDF house shell and your heart leaps and then you realise it’s a band saw/power tool/commission and expensive wood worker job and your heart sinks. Well, yours might not but these days I try not to lean on my dining table too heavily in case the death from a million saw cuts finally takes effect. A house I really, truly could cut with a craft knife would be a great thing.

5) Accessibility. One of the major complaints in smaller scales is being unable to get at the tiny room you’re trying to decorate.

6) The price. Again. I have interviewed quite a few miniaturists who had bought unutterably expensive house shells or kits and ended up making them up exactly as per the instructions on the side of the packet because they were terrified of trashing something so costly. And, although the results were good you can’t help thinking: where’s the individual art in that?

Enough tarting around, the answer is:

Taa daa!

This is a Configurations box designed by Tim Holtz for Advantus. This is the smallest which is five and a quarter inches square and one and three quarter inches deep, or a wall hanging 48th scale cottage, as it’s sometimes pronounced. The slide-off box front has removable acetate, so you can do the messy bit first and glue it in cleanly and – look

can you see removable rooms? Not yet? let me show you again

Now can you see removable rooms? (You’ll have to excuse TV remote man, who hasn’t got dressed yet.) I can see the possibility of making up a room outside the shell, where you can get at it and then sliding the completed room back into the shell, anywhere you want to! Or, even………….

Oh now you’re talking!

As I’m sure you can see there is absolutely no need to arrange the rooms inside the box if you’d rather have them outside or you could make a new interior of your own, or do a bit of both. I did invent a system many years ago for twelfth scale houses that I was going to produce with Dijon, which featured rooms that slotted together to produce a house of any size. Stability was the sticking point but here it’s not a problem because of the size and the materials.

The material is a paper covered board which is strong enough for construction purposes in the matter of walls and cladding but easily cut apart, as I’ll demonstrate in a couple of paragraphs.

It is with extreme joy that I reveal that the combined thickness of an internal box wall and an external box wall is an exact reproduction in 48th scale of an 11 inch brick cavity wall. Crikey! How handy is that! If you slide the boxes in as is, you’ve even got the cavity. (I should like to say at this point that in quarter of a century of doing it, I’ve never seen a doll’s house yet with a miniature cavity wall; if you didn’t glue the boxes in you could draw mice, or Borrowers living between the walls and spiders and insulation and lost treasures that slipped through the floor boards. The possibilities are as long as a piece of string.) Internally that makes the walls a bit thick, so you may wish to grab extra room space by having the internal wall dividers just one box wall thick. When the whole shell and all the inserts only cost £7, you can afford to mess around with a couple of boxes and really get creative.

I decided to combine the two smaller internal boxes to make one big room. To do this, after cutting through the internal board I found it was much easier simply to run a craft knife blade along the outer corner of the box.

If you do this on a couple of corners you can just pull the wall down.

This makes a slight gap. You can choose to glue the gap, fill the gap or just scrunch the wall together. On the top and bottom, there is no gap but it all depends on which direction you are extending the room. Excess paper is on the outside of the insert and will be hidden when you slide the room back into the box.

Here I have deconstructed the two smallest boxes to make one. What you will immediately notice as a miniaturist is the extra thickness of paper where the internal box covering is folded over the edges. This would cause a visible lump in wallpaper or flooring applied over the top, so I simply slid my scalpel underneath and peeled off the excess. I found emery boards (as used for full sized nail files) were fine for sanding down. You may wish to do this in the box corners to make them flat and square enough for miniature purposes, remembering that when you peer into the ‘room’ your eye will register it as a full sized room. Don’t panic if you accidentally chop the box, we’re going to cover it all anyway and even if you cut off the wrong wall and threw it away, the actual ‘room box’ has only cost £1 or less.

With the two boxes cobbled together I was keen to see if my largest porcelain fireplace, which is the inglenook fireplace, would fit on the smallest wall.

Yes it does. In close-up (which is how we’ll look at it when it’s finished)

it’s fine. I’m happy with that, though it isn’t the fireplace I’m going to use.

One of the features of smaller scales is the need to be selective with the amount of stuff you put in a room. One of the benefits of using Configurations boxes is that we can put the windows where we please. In smaller scales this means we can decide where we want the features and plan the windows round them. If you are a keen reader of this column you may remember the previous house I kitbashed and the new back wall I made from artist’s board which had several types of window in it.

These are (from the top left): wooden cut in half with a new sill; cut from the board after drilling holes and glazed with acetate coloured with heat set fabric marker pens; model railway screen print fitted into a recessed hole. Lower floor: Wood as made, a board door hinged with leather between the two wall thicknesses and a cut down wooden window with a new sill.

Any of these would do but I’d like to introduce you to an even easier window, highly suitable for a box-back wall hanging house, which this is going to be. This is the type of window built into one thickness and backed by a fake view like the window of a stage set or TV studio.

I first determined the placement of the window by chucking in everything that will stand against the window wall.

I’m making sure I do not foul the fireplace and have enough room under the window for the sink. Having determined placement I size it realistically, remembering the easy formula for 48th scale, which is to call the feet (in reality) inches and quarter the result. I cut and placed a suitable piece of paper and drew round it.

I found it easier to cut the hole round the end of a metal ruler.

If you are using a Configurations box as it comes, you could transfer the measurements to the outside of the box and cut from the back of the room, which might be easier, as the walls would support the ruler. As I’ve deconstructed the box I’m doing it from the inside. Cut the board in the same way as you would cut foamcore board, which is to say with successive slices of the knife blade, stroking it along the length of the cut. This produces good flat cut edges without tearing at all.

At this point there was a slight pause in the building as I took photographs of my garden from downstairs and upstairs real windows and reduced the results on a photocopier to quarter of their original size, to go behind the mini windows.

I’m using plastic canvas for the windows because it’s cheap (an A3 sheet cost £2 and will provide windows in this scale approximately for ever.) You can cut it with scissors or a craft knife and in small pieces it’s rigid but bendy enough to force into tight fitting window holes. I cut 9 mesh canvas to make the window pane size I wanted.

I’ll lose the Prisoner Cell Block H effect when I’ve cut the extra bars from the window.

Like this and fitted the photographic reductions to make a view behind the window. First I’m going to deal with that bend in the back wall by gluing some paper reinforcement to straighten it on the back. I’m using thick decorator tacky glue which has mega hold but is not super wet, with printer paper. I have used an extra layer down the side (which I accidentally chopped through).

I have made the paper fractionally smaller than the hole to create a lip for the window to sit against while I’m fiddling around with it and minimise the frustration of it falling out endlessly.

From the inside we have the beginnings of a room!

Even better, a room with a view, although some idiot has placed the downstairs window over the upstairs view (you can’t get the staff, you know.)

Stay tuned for more on the fastest, easiest, budgetiest, most fun, customiseabliest, dolls house ever. (It’s taken me a whole day to photograph and write about it but it only took a couple of hours to build.)

You can see what Tim Holtz does in ‘full size’ with his Configurations boxes on his YouTube demo. If you put ‘Tim Holtz Configurations’ into a search engine you’ll find Tim and lots of paper crafting fans doing assorted things with the boxes.

By next time I’ll try to assemble more shopping information in the links. Martin from Willow Models, whose dresser I’m sure you remember

tells me he has nearly got a staircase ready. I’ve sent off for some more of Alan’s furniture kits

and there’s a ton of my stuff just waiting to find a home

this is going to be great!

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JaneLaverick.com – a side order of jolly good fun.

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