Vintage Iron Bed

 

Do you remember my last post? I complained about my failure in making  a faux iron bed. I received so many comments on this: encouragements, lots of handy trics, good advice and honest opinions.

I want to thank you all  so much for it pushed me back in motion again. I even  started working on three  beds to be able to put all your advice in practice!

 

In this post I will show you the first bed I have  finished by now. I completed the paint job and  then dressed the bed.  Have a look back at my former post to see the difference. I am pleased with the way it looks now! Thanks again; your comments have been very valuable to me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do not try this at home!

Whenever I believe I know a technique that can be of use to you, I am glad to share it. But I am not afraid to share my failures as well. I wanted make a faux iron bed myself and this is what happend.

I decided to try and make a faux iron bed, using all sorts of materials; fabric, wood, paper, beads, pins, etc.
 It took me a days  of trial and error to figure out how to keep all these tiny particles together.




And this is what it looked like after endless spray-painting.
I guess I needed over 10  layers of spray paint to finally  cover the colour of the beads and lace.
I used  a primer first and next an expensive finish. I nearly suffocated in a cloud of spray paint.



As you can see clearly; the spray paint did not dry nicely, but sticks to the object like a kind of dust or powder.
No matter the distance I choose when spraying the paint.







I used paper to thicken the wooden sticks I had.
Despite the glue I used, the paper let loose again after a while.



Just look how ugly the tiny beads appear; all wobbly and irregular, instead of straight.

Last but not least, the tiny holes in the "spiral"  bottom of the bed filled with paint.

When I have regained my courage, I will try again. But in that case I will definitely use  an easy tutorial I found on Pinterest and make a very modest bed. Your tips and trics are very welcome!

Pelargonium from Anne

This picture is the first one you will see when you visit Anne's blog: http://ateljelillahjartat.blogspot.nl/
It is a favorite scene to me: beautiful in its calmness and simplicity. Nothing overdone or "just too much". And I really admire Anne's crochetwork....in the picture you can see she has used lovely colours to crochet some baskets.

Some time ago I won one of Anne's selfmade Pelargoniums. A very pretty pink one. (thank you so much, Anne!). But when I received her parcel I opened it and although she had wrapped it very carefully, the terracotta pot was broken! Fortunately her precious flower was undamaged.....

I decided to make a new pot myself, inspired on and dedicated to Anne's lovely crochetwork.....
However; to crochet a long string is as far as my own crochet-skills reach, so I had to satisfy myself with it.
In this post I will show you how I made a tiny basket myself using a crocheted thread.
Perhaps most of you will already know the technique I used. Those people can scroll directly down to the last picture :D

These are the materials I started out with.

I covered a tiny bottle with plastic foil and a piece of wet fabric on top ot it.

Pull the fabric tight with help of a piece of rubber.

Glue one end of the thread on top of the bottle. Let it dry.

Start glueing the rest of the thread.

Now the bottom of the basket is finished....

Here the basket is all done.

In this picture  I show a different basket ,
but the idea is the same: just remove the plastic foil.

After removing the plastic foil, cut away the excess fabric

Paint the pot inside. (I made a few of them, red and blue)

Add a string on top of the basket.

I wrapped the remains of the old pot using a cotton thread and Tacky Glue

I covered the outside in Tacky Glue and dipped it in a mix of dried coffee and tea.
In this way the Pelargonium can be "repotted"  whenever I like it!

So this is the Pelargonium in the blue basket....



...and in the red basket.

Faux stained glass window

The picture at te start of this post shows my faux stained glass window on the landing of the stairs. In the evenings, the light from the outside shines through the window inside my Miniature House. I love it, always!

Liduina's give away: and the winner is.....

 

I got far  more reactions on my Give Away than I initially had expected and some commenters even  wrote they liked all paintings and would have difficulty to choose one.

 It is hard for me knowing I can't give all of you a miniature painting. 

Therefore I decided to give away all paintings shown in the

Give Away post of April 4: that is 10 miniature paintings.

This is the list of names I made yesterday evening late. You can compare the sequence with the comments on the post of April 4.

I used the Random Generator to extract a list of 10 winners. This is the draw:

So the winners are:

1. Fabiola
2. Fiona
3. Fiber
4. Hannah
5. Giac
6. Monique
7. Maria Ireland
8. Emily Miller Talbott
9. Genevieve
10. Norma

The first winner ( Fabiola) will have first choice, the second winner (Fiona) next, etcetera. In the picture beneath I gave the winners a colour on the list, so you can check yourself.

Congratulations to you all! 

Concealing electrical wires

 

In her post of April the 8th Fiona (a Passion for Minatures) wrote about the wall plugs that appear to come with the coppertape system for creating electric light in a doll's house. I wrote a comment on this post about my coppertape system and how I agreed the rather ugly wall plugs had to be hidden behind tiny objects.

Wondering about this I remembered I initially had started out with a system of wires running under the floors in my Miniature house. But I did not like the bunch of threads hanging outside at the back of my house. 

So when I discovered the coppertape-system  I decided to use that instead, but later  I realised I really disliked the plugs.

Now I have ended up with a combination of both systems trying to have the best of both worlds for my Miniature House. I will show you in this post.

The advantage of the coppertape system is that you can hide it under the wallpaper and and with aid of a special Cir-Kit device, you  can plug lamps directly into the ceiling. Replacing the lamp is very easy in this way.

However  the drawback of the coppertape system is you need to make plugs in the walls. The electricity plugs are far too big and obvious. I try to hide them with some furniture or tiny accessories.

Sometimes, the Cirkit-device shown above can't be used for a ceiling lamp. This was the case with the lamp in my bathroom. I solved this problem by leading the wire up the room above, under the floor to the back of the attic where I had made a kind of fake corner.

The same trick I applied to the kitchen ceiling: the wires of the kitchen lamp end beneath the bath tub.  If you look well, you can still see the grooves I made initially for the wiresystem; in the back wall of my house are still tiny holes where I wanted to pull the wires through.  I can still do it if I choose to....

Then there was the problem of the hearths. I decided to hide the plugs behind them as you can see in the pictures below.  

I made the hearths out of paper, cardboard, wood and fabric, painting them afterwards.

Again the wire of the ceilinglamp in the livingroom runs under the floor of the room above and ends behind the hearth there.

At the attic I wanted to create a wall to put the red cupboard I made in front of it. This created the opportunity to hide the wire of the hanging lamp.

So far the secrets of the hidden electrical system in my Miniature House.