Lazier Weekend

In the interests of not leaving my vacation to the last month of the year and nearly losing my time I'm taking a vacation next week.

So this weekend I felt entirely justified in being a little lazy.  I went through one of my stashes of furniture getting a few ideas for my lanterns.

And I got a rolling cart with three trays attached for some of my tools so I have more space on my table to work.  That's going to come in handy I can already tell.

I'm debating doing a lantern or two for Halloween, if I can get any done in time.  I don't have a lot of Halloween décor though I could make more floating teasets and potion bottles. That could be lots of fun. I had a blast doing cauldrons and potion bottles for the WQRC.

Until I narrow down what I'd like to do I decided to get started on another Christmas lantern.

This one doesn't have a raised base to it, so I needed to come up with another way to hide the batteries for the lights.

I'm planning on making a little cupboard to hide the batteries. To that end I decided to remove a couple of the 'windows'.

I went with a herringbone floor, some of my flooring leftover from NOLA House, and some simple wainscot and blue wallpaper on the 'walls'.

The trick is that the flooring can't sit directly on the metal.  I'd have no where to run the wires.  I'll have to prop it up a bit with either cardboard so I can cut channels or wood lengths in the right width.

I'm going with 1:12 furniture in this lantern so I found a chair I could sand down and paint.

I got started on the tree since I'll need to have it done before I put the floor in.

It needs a star and some ornaments but the lights work.  Yay!

The chandelier is a bit more ornate in this lantern, since there's such a pretty cut out design on top.

Both the chandelier and the Christmas tree lights need a nine volt battery so I really need the little cabinet.

I'll take a look around for some pictures for the walls too. Since I have walls in this one.

My Very First Article!

I'm so excited I can't tell you!

And the coolest part is that Troy over at Tulsa Tiny Stuff is going to be in the same magazine!

Can't show you the whole thing obviously but they said I can post teasers.

They put the WQRC on the Cover!  Seriously, I think Anna on the other side of the world can probably hear me shrieking.  Sorry for waking you up out of a sound sleep Anna!

These poor people had to deal with my crazy brain and awful photography skills (or lack thereof).

Third Lantern...oh, and More Books

So I cheated and ordered some books and made a few more.  I started out here:

And by tonight I had this:

And in between book making I worked on my third lantern.  This one is more 1:12 size rather than 1:24 with the amount of square inches I had so I could put more detail in it.

Deborah sent me a link to a great site for fabrics so I ordered some really pretty plaids and they arrived in a couple days.

Very Christmas appropriate.

I had painted my furniture black so I'd have a dark base to it.  Then I mixed some of my green with black for a really dark green.

Then I started checking how my plaids would look with the chair color.

In the end I went with the last one. I liked the muted colors and how they contrasted with the dark green chair.

I wired up my Christmas lights so they worked and that was a good feeling when they came on.

I was excited to be able to use some of my Christmas cookies on the table.

I'd bought some pillows when Christmas supplies were on sale so I added one to my chair.

I experimented with some of the instant water and tints to make milk to go with my cookies.  And added a pitcher and glasses.

I spent an hour or so sewing curtains while watching RED on TV and added them to the windows.

I think it looks pretty good.  The glue is still drying so I'll have to go over everything and make sure my glue hasn't left spots.

I'm debating added curtains to the front of the lantern on the door.  I'm not sure.

Once everything is dried I'll re-evaluate and see how I like all of it with the lights on.

How are all of you doing?

Next Lantern

I started out making more books. So I'm getting closer to my goal.

I'd wanted to do a bit more on the white lantern loveseat.  I added some cushions to the back and then a bit of padding to the headrest and arms.

I think the added grey brings the piece together a bit more.

Then I wired the light to the battery and tested it out.

The table and loveseat aren't glued in yet, I'm waiting on my glasses since I need some milk on the table and I don't want to glue anything in until that's done.

The next lantern has a large enough footprint that I can use 1:12 furniture instead of half scale.  Which is nice because I'd already started to make a chair when I'd done the first lantern and it was too large for that one.

I'm going with a cherry wood trim in this one.  

I'm going to add some lace drapes with holly/seasonal ribbon on them to dress up the 'windows' once I finish the furniture.

Making a table was the first step.  I used woodsies and some spare miniature kit parts.

This was the only way I could keep the legs straight while the glue dried.  Since that was going to take a while I started on the Christmas Tree.

Glue is still drying on it too.   But it was safe to test out whether or not the table was level.

I've painted the chair and table black to start with.

I think I'll end up with a green or red cushion cover for the chair.  The final color of the furniture I'm not sure on yet.  Maybe a nice grey?  Something to look nice against the cherry wood of the trim but not blend in too much.

Last thing was to sew a tree skirt and add it to the tree.

Then I glued it into the lantern. I had to feed the wires through a hole in the bottom of the lantern and then add the glue...so that's drying now.

That was pretty much my weekend.  I was a little lazier than last week so I didn't get as much done but I'm feeling happy with everything.