Tatiana's coffeegrinder

 

Last saturday I received Tatiana's coffeegrinder she gave away some time ago.( Check out her post: http://mylittlelittledream.blogspot.nl/2013/08/miniature-cofee-grinder.htm). Isn't it beautiful!!!

 

I immediately started moving the coffeegrinder around in the kitchen of my Miniature House.

Apart from the chimney there is still a lot of work to do to on my kitchen.

Inspired by Tatiana's gift I decided to continue working on it, focussing on the cooker beneath the chimney.

 

This is the black cooker the way I bought it....

Below you can see how the cooker looks now.

Tatiana's coffeegrinder is in the upper right of the picture;

 I think it looks very nice on the chimney like this.

Along with  the coffeegrinder, Tatiana also sent me a bouquet of lovely roses (she made it herself, I guess). Now it has a special place in the living room:

Dear Tatiana, thank you so much for your inspiration and your precious gifts!





Bathroom

A few years ago I made a bathroom in my Miniature House by creating a separated space in one of the bedrooms. Up till now it looked  rather empty with only a bath and a sink in it.

However, the past month I spent time on making miniatures to decorate my bathroom with. You can see the result below. Now the bathroom is the first room to be completed in my Miniature House!

Fresh towels  in a basket, some perfume bottles and a toothbrush....

 

 

 

In this picture you can see a soap holder made of  a tiny shell.

I had found this idea on Pinterest, it came from:

http://minieden.blogspot.nl/2011/06/tutorial-jaboneras.html

 

 

This cute little bag was a gift ( thank you so much, Anne!)
I made a bath-brush and sponge  to fill it with.

 

 I made this  towel holder with accessories using wooden sticks, beads,
 metal parts for making necklaces and miniature prints.

 

 

 

 

A faux metal sign to enhance the nostalgic atmoshpere :-)

 

Weaving Baskets

 

 

Inspired by the recent give-away on "Basketcase Miniatures" I began looking in my own collection of miniatures  for a round basket I had once made in a workshop,  given by  dutch miniaturist Will Werson.  ( www.willwersonminiaturen.com)

 

I then found a kit I had bought from her and decided to give it a try myself. Below is the result.

 

 

 

 

I felt encouraged to try and make a copy of my own "real life" laundry basket. After measuring my 1:1 basket  I made a mold out of paper and filled it with plaster.

Below you can see the pictures of the way I worked to create my mini-basket. Two tutorials helped me a lot in this  proces: http://jicolin.free.fr/techvannerie.htm  and http://1inchminisbykris.blogspot.nl/2011/07/weaving-basket-with-crochet-thread.html

 

 

I am quite pleased with the result and I hope to be able to show you my laundry basket as part of the bathroom in my Miniature House soon.....

Two more beds finished

 

I made two more beds and I enjoyed working on them a lot! I think I will choose the black one to furnish the attic of my "Miniature House".

 

If you want to know how to construct the black bed you can find a pin with a link to a tutorial on  my Pinterest Board "Miniature Tutorials (http://pinterest.com/Liduina88/miniaturetutorials).  The mattrasses are made with help of a tutorial by 1inchminisbykris.blogspot.com

The  accessories shown in this post are all made by myself except for the lovely knitwork on the black bed; it's a beautiful scarf knitted by Anne from http://ateljelillahjartat.blogspot.nl/.

 

 

 

 

 

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.