Contrary to popular rumor...

No, I have not fallen off the planet or been abducted by aliens! Life just got in the way and I got lazy, so here’s a long overdue update on everything I’ve done since last summer. Above is my latest piece, a Hummingbird and nest. I love watching the birds in my yard and have wanted to make some birds for a while. There are more below.

Three little birdies. L to R - Robin, Bluebird, Quail. The Quail was the most popular and literally “flew” off the shelf. ;)

Two littleAmerican robins (which by the way are not robins at all but Thrushes and go by the rather unfortunate Latin name of Turdus migratorious. Who thought of that??!)

Here’s a little bunny that I made to use as a Needle felting tutorial. A few ladies have signed up to give it a try so we’ll see how it goes.

This is a wet felted scarf. I used hand dyed merino wool I bought on a Pine Needler trip to a yarn store and a quilt store. I managed to avoid buying fabric (just!) and fortunately had this little piece of silk fabric in my stash. It’s a short scarf and just having the wool at the ends means it’s not tickling my neck, but is still warm.

Wolf pair. I needed some wolves for my story (currently on the back burner, but bubbling away!)

Playing, or fighting - who can tell?

One of the benefits (or problems) of keeping things around your studio is that you often come up with ideas on improvements. This happened with my pegasus when I realized that they needed bigger wings. So I took off the originals and wet felted more fabric. Then I created new and improved wings for them both, complete with embroidery. They are so grateful! Lol!

These two are among my favorite creations.

I was commissioned to make a reindeer (center) so here it is in a size comparison with the original reindeer for my story, and my Pegasus.

This was a fun project - making a bear for my friend Sue. It’s based on a whimsical painting that she created of a blue bear.

Another friend needed Lemon earrings to go with a dress, so I made her these. In some ways they were harder to make than the bigger stuff as they were very fiddly to felt. Hmm, Fiddly Felting – could be a good trade name!

Finally, this is a wet felted flower bouquet that I made for my sister. Flowers are very easy and fun to make. Merino wool, bamboo top, wool nepps.

Finishing My Library Room

Now I have furniture for my library I set out to make the walls of my room. While vacationing in England I visited some fabulous old buildings which gave me a few ideas. I wanted some windows, and french doors onto the garden, and having seen a lot of stained glass windows in England, I had to try my hand at creating my own stained glass look.

I used thin plexiglass for the window panes - because it’s like glass, right? I traced a pattern with a black acrylic paint pen onto them, then colored the pattern with more acrylic pens. This worked very well.

I placed the windows in a foam board “wall” and built some window frames and sill out of strips of foam board.

I used the same procedure for the french doors. I cut a frame into the foam board for each door, making sure the paper on the back stayed intact along the inner edge so that I could hinge them open. For the stained glass effect this time I found a little bottle of “Gallery glass Leading” and tried that. It gives a more realistic effect than the acrylic pen as it’s three dimensional, but it’s tricky to get straight lines as you have to squeeze the bottle as you draw with it. Anyway, as the pattern was not complicated I persevered and put the resulting stained glass windows into the foam board doors.

For the windows next to the french doors I went back to my stash of overhead transparency film (remember that from my apothecary shoppe window) and tried making the windows with that. It actually worked really well. The bottle of glass leading was too tricky so I didn’t bother with that. The acrylic pens worked perfectly on the film, so I could have saved myself a lot of time and expense by using that for the other windows and doors. Oh well, live and learn….

I made some door handles with Paper brads and wire, the same as on my book case cupboards.

Ta da! Finished look - I want these in my house!

On one of my room walls I wanted a fireplace. I used a small box to make the back of the fireplace so that I could place my light up logs inside it. It doesn’t look very exciting at the moment, but wait…

I lined the box with some fancy matboard and then built a foam board wall to surround it.

On to that I added more of the matboard and some strips of foam board as a mantle. I also added some short pieces of doweling as decor either side of the fireplace which ties into the wood used in the book cupboards. I later painted that white.

At a place called Winterbourne Gardens in England the house had lovely floral wallpaper in some of the bedrooms and in the gift shop I picked up some fabulous tissue paper which has a Wm. Morris pattern on it. I knew I would find a use for that in my library room!

Above the mantle I defined a space with foam board and glued some of the tissue into it. Suddenly I was even more in love with the tissue paper!

Here I experimented with placing my furniture into my room to see how it would look. The footprint of the room is 25 1/2 inches x 27 inches. Walls are 20 inches high. I used some scrapbooking paper with a wood pattern for the floor. At first I liked the white plain walls, but thinking back to all the lovely rooms I had seen in England it needed a little something more.

I tried some options for wallpaper…

… But in the end decided I loved the tissue paper so much I wanted it on every wall. Fortunately there were 4 sheets of tissue paper, and knowing I had large expanses of window/doors on two walls I went ahead. The biggest problem was how to apply the tissue paper as it is obviously very delicate. I started out using white glue. But this was awful as the tissue paper stuck in places I didn’t want it, and it tore if I tried to move it. It also wrinkled in a very disappointing way. I tried double sided tape, which was okay, but I quickly ran out of that.

From the depths of my craft supplies I remembered this Scotch mounting adhesive which I had used waaay back in college. I had a huge roll of the stuff and was able to apply it to the back of the tissue paper and then glue that to the walls with greater ease. It was still a very fiddly process, and working around the window sills and doors was a nightmare, but eventually the “wallpaper” was hung on every wall!

Here’s a closeup showing the foam board window frames/ledges. I cut foam board for baseboards along the base of every wall. I had used white glue for the tissue paper on this section so you can see how wrinkled it got.

Here is a closeup of the foam board molding along the top of each wall. By layering different widths of foam board strips you can get a good effect. You can also put grooves etc into the foam board for decoration.

So here are some views of my completed library room. I’m still debating whether to paint the white molding, window frames, etc., cream/off white. But for now it’s done and I think it’s a cosy place to hang out, read, and of course, drink tea.

I think I need more books… back to mini book making!

And now I need a nice garden beyond those windows rather than my messy studio.

Furnishing My Library Room

I had to make a lot of books, and was feeling lazy, so I used pieces of foam board for the book interiors (top). They look functional on the shelf, but are not as impressive, or as fun to make, as the more “realistic” ones I created for Zahrah’s cabin which have actual pages in them. I may go back and make some more proper books when I have time, but for now these “fake” miniatures will have to do.

With all those books I now needed bookshelves to hold them. These I made from the same little wooden dollar store trays that I used for the Apothecary Shoppe shelves. I went through the identical process of putting a nice paper in the back of the trays, then cutting wooden shelves and gluing them in.

I faked some little cupboard doors on the lower part of the shelving and used paper brads and bits of wire for handles. I also added some pieces of thin wooden dowel to trim the cupboards. Next I repurposed the shelving unit from Zahrah’s cabin (left), changing the color from dark brown to cream. Those corner shaped metal pieces I tried to use on this shelving, but decided they were too clumsy looking. I love them and I will find a use for them one day!

I had a cute little gold colored box that had contained chocolates, and made yet another bookcase by adding some card shelves and little wooden legs to it. The legs look ok, but being narrow this little bookshelf likes to fall over at the drop of a hat and I have lost count of the time spent re-shelving those darn books! I should glue them all together really…

I came across two small candle holders on sale for a few dollars and immediately envisioned them as stone plant holders, like the garden ornaments grand mansions have out on their patios. I definitely wanted them for either inside or outside my library room. I was going to make some little leaves and flowers to go into them, but actually found a miniature garland of leaves in dollhouse supplies at Hobby Lobby, and then searched for some other tiny plant stuff to go along with it. These little pom pom type “trees” were perfect, and I found some tiny white plastic flowers that I could cut up and use too.

Here is a finished urn — I think it looks like something from a manor house!

My library will have wooden floors, so I thought it might be nice to have a little rug for Nieva to put her feet on while reading. I decided to try wet felting a rug. I’ve done a little wet felting to create my own fabric for dragon/pegasus wings etc, so here was another excuse to practice making felt.

To wet felt wool, you first start by laying out your dry wool in thin layers. Here I made a circular pattern. I recently discovered a type of wool called bamboo top which gives a nice shine to finished felt so I used that for the green and blue areas. The next stage is to cover the dry wool with mesh, and then wet the wool with soapy water gently pushing out the air with a wet sponge and making sure not to move the wool out of place. Once everything is wetted down you gently agitate the wool with your soapy hands to get the wool to felt together into a fabric. It takes a bit of time and patience.

After felting, rinsing and drying - here is the finished rug. It turned out not quite circular, but I actually like the random wobbly edges of hand felted wool. In some places the wool was a little thin - I obviously hadn’t done a good job of making the layers even. That aside, I was quite pleased with the rug, but I decided to have another attempt using a different color scheme.

Here’s my color selection for rug #2. I used Merino Top (fine Merino wool, very soft) in green, pale blue, black, and dark blue. Then the far right scarlet/beige wool is my bamboo top which will add a pop of color and sheen.

I started laying out the border of my circular rug by blending the black and dark blue. I filled in the middle with green and light blue.

On top of the base colors I added the bamboo top, which will create a shiny pattern. At this point it I realize it looks more like a wooly pizza than a rug, but I’m going with it!

After the wet felting process and drying here is the finished “felted fabric”. You can see the rich color I got in the border by blending the black and blue. I deliberately made the dark edge wide so that I could trim it if necessary. I haven’t figured out how to keep things perfectly circular and I actually like the uneven edges, but ultimately did trim them down.

Here’s a closer view showing the sheen of the bamboo top, and how “crinkly” it looks when it’s felted. I love the process of making my own fabric — albeit on a very small scale. The rug has a 10 inch diameter.

My two rugs side by side

While shopping at the dollar store I had found some cute little lights. These have tealights in them and a lovely oriental looking cutout front. I decided to use some of these for my library. I added a finial to the top to give it a more finished look, and then put it onto a small box (also from dollar store) which I decorated with wooden cutouts.

Next on the agenda was another sofa, something comfortable and less formal than the chaise. Using fabric from my stash, I made a little mattress type base for the sofa 10 inches long and 6 inches wide. Looks like something you could fall asleep on!

For the back and arms I sewed and stuffed a fabric “sausage” leaving space to bend the sausage to fit the sofa base. It looked ok, but I thought it was too low. But hey, amongst my many crafting supplies was a perfect sized gift box which I used as a base for the sofa. This raised it up to a good height.

Here’s Affie giving the new sofa the seal of approval. Yes, it’s very comfy!

Finally, here’s all the furniture I’ve made for my library so far. You can see how fun the light looks with the tea light lit up, and notice that I trimmed the rug to be more even on the edges. For my next blog I’ll build some walls to make the actual room, and give it some personality.

Twigge Towne Furnishings Special

It’s been a long while since I posted anything from my fictional fairy furniture company Twigge Towne Home Furnishings, but I am sooo pleased with my latest creation that I had to make an ad for it. I want one of these for my living room and I bet you will too!

What started this little adventure was seeing pictures on Pinterest of dollhouse furniture made by Kari Bloom https://minitonmini.wixsite.com/kari-bloom/whimsical-3 In particular she has a wonderful patchwork chaise lounge, and I had to have one for my next build — the library room at Lo’Kiresa (fictional community from my story “Nieva’s Journey”).

I looked at several ways to make 1/6 scale (Barbie size) chairs, and using cardboard and foam board seemed the best way to go. I worked out the rough size I wanted and drew some shapes for the arms and back. Then I cut some pieces of cardboard and curved them to make the arms.

Here I added some structure inside the arms to give them strength, and then cut thin pieces of card to seal the ends.

Here is the shape for the back of the chaise.

And here it is roughly in place — not glued together yet. That will happen once all the pieces are covered in fabric.

I used a combination of foam and felt for the main padding of the back and seat, then added  some wool to the seat for extra comfort. (no expense spared for my woolly characters!)

Now to raid my stash of fabulous fabrics for the covering of my chaise…

Once I chose the fabrics, I hand sewed strips together for cover the seat, back, and arms. Here I got to use the new felt ironing pad I was gifted for Mother’s Day. (Thank you Mark and Nina, it will get lots of use!)

Once the covers were stitched together I covered the various parts, trimming and fitting the fabric to the curves. I used tacky glue to stick them down. Then I cut out new card covers for the front of the arms and covered them with fabric. I added a braid piping to the edge to make it fancy.

Here’s the backside showing the trim I used for the piping.

I glued a piece of mat board to the bottom of the chaise to finish it off. Now I had to find some feet for the chaise. I had these small Finial Dowel Caps from “Woodpile” manufacturer and with a little bit of paint they look the part. I hot glued them on to the bottom of the chaise.

Ta Da! Chaise all glued together and complete. 11.5 inches long x 7.5 inches high. Now to test it out…

It got the seal of approval from Nieva and Rime. But it needed a little something next to it.

Here we go — a cute little table. Made from half a Brie container and some armature wire. I covered the top with some fancy paper from my stash and it’s ready to hold a cup of tea and a couple of books!

Don’t forget to order YOUR chaise from Twigge Towne before they are all gone. ;)

Bartering Hedgehogs

I sorted through my stash of beautiful fabrics for the cover of my book and came up with a couple of pieces that I love. I used two pieces of matching fabric for the front and inside back cover and two others for the back and inside front. This was more work that just using one piece for outside and one for inside, but I do like making work for myself and I think the result is attractive. Between the cover fabric I put some felt to give the cover substance so that I could incorporate some little pockets for scissors etc. For the inside “pages” I used some matching felt sheets.

I’m not a great embroiderer, but I had fun using some decorative stitches to sew small panels to the pages for the various pins/needles to be stored on. I also added some trim/lace and buttons for decoration. I’m pleased with my needle book. It is so much nicer than the ugly containers I had before and now my needles are easy to find.

Next I made one for a friend, and to go with her needle book I decided to make a hedgehog pin cushion from wool.The hedgehog shape is pretty easy to make, it just takes time to get felted to the right level of firmness such that the pins stick in and don’t fall out, or sink completely. It takes about 1 1/2 hours from beginning to end.

I begin by making a thick sausage of core wool which gets pretty well felted into a firm shape. I add more wool to one end to make the hedgehog body shape.

Here’s the shape when it’s firmly felted.

Next I add another loosely felted sausage for the nose. It looks kinda weird to begin with, but with a lot of poking, shaping, and compressing, the nose takes shape.

Looks a bit more nose-like!

Next I blended some brown and grey wool to make the color for the hedgehog body. This also gets well felted down and I test the pins in it every so often to see how much more felting it needs.

Finally, I add the details. Eyes, a dark tip to the nose, then little ears from some small dabs of wool felted into a semicircle.

The Pine Needlers declared my first hedgehog super cute, and I had two requests for more. So I made another couple and handed them out — that opened the floodgates for cries of “What do I have to do to get a hedgehog?!” And so the bartering began. I made several more and received various goodies in exchange, including microwave bowls and wool. The hedgehogs proved as popular as my bunnies. What a great system for sharing crafts and supplies. Happy sewing everyone!

Ewe herd it here first… I’m having lots of farmyard pun!

Lol! Spring has finally sprung sow I decided to go hog wild, hatching some ideas about making lil’ farm critters. Here’s eggsactly what I’ve been up to — no apologies whatsoever for the puns ;)

First I made some chickens. I always thought I would like to keep chickens when I retired, but I herd taking care of them is not all it’s cracked up to be, so here are my wooly substitutes. I started from scratch with a tiny wire armature to make the legs, and built up the chicken from there.

Half baked chicken - hard to tell what it is really.

I hatched a rooster too, not sure he’s anything to crow about, but he does have a big tail.

Those chicken feet got painted with acrylic - yum!

Pleased with the chickens, and with Easter coming up, I hoppily made some bunnies. They’re tiny, and quick to make, so I ended up with a whole fluffle of bunnies (yes, that’s a real expression according to the internet and one I intend to use a lot.)

The first chicken I hatched (rear right) had a chenille stem as a base, but that made the legs too thick and hairy, which could actually work for some breeds of chicken, but I didn’t want that. Henny way, I chopped those off and cluckily turned the legless chicken into a laying chicken. The bunnies proved very popular and became a good barter item that I could use for other fun things, including a ride to the Quilt Show! With all their cuteness it’s not surprising that my fluffle of bunnies quickly found forever homes as fast as I could make them.

Feeling sheepish about not having any bunnies left, I moved on to another farmyard favorite. I love the hilarious stop motion series “Shaun the Sheep,” (look it up on ewe tube if you haven’t seen it), —and I am working with wool for heaven sake — a sheep it had to be. As usual I began with the wire armature.

I used only my core wool for it’s body. The core wool is relatively ineggspensive (I’m counting how many times you groan reading this ;) because it’s natural, not dyed or bleached.

Here’s my Shaun the Sheep ;) It might be hard to believe, but that eye is made only of wool! Now on to the next pigment of my imagination…

Yup, you guessed it! Some people think pigs are dirty creatures - but that’s hogwash. They like to be clean, and only roll in mud to keep cool as they have no sweat glands. Pigs are very intelligent - as you will know if you watched the movie “Babe”. I made my pig a nice clean pink, and added a few oink spots. My son said this piggy is my most accurate animal anatomically so far — praise indeed.

Sheep are not as stupid as most people believe— they can form strong bonds with their fellow sheeple and are only slightly less intelligent than pigs. Here my pig and sheep get acquainted, and what do you know a little bunny popped up out of nowhere— as they do!

So I’ve got quite the farmyard happening, but then I was challenged to make the cutest of all sheep - the Valais Blacknose Sheep from Switzerland.

Looking sheepish - maybe

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more adorable…Valais are so shaggy and cute with their black noses and curly top knots. I used up a lot of my curly white sheep locks on this one.

Not sure what I’ll make next —there are sow many reasons to make piglets, or it might be amoosing to make a cow. It might just be whatever gets my goat. I’ve just been told “it’s pasture bedtime” so I’m off.  You can breathe a sigh of relief — no more puns. Alls wool that ends wool ;)

Build your own Wood Stove

I detailed previously the creation of the Shoppe Front, and all the shelves etc, but there are a couple of things which I did not show. The first is the stove and log basket. I ended up with a big space in the left hand side of the shop so I thought I would add a wood stove to keep Esmun warm when the weather is inclement.

If any of you are feeling chilly and have run out of propane - here’s how to build your own wood stove. All you need are these simple parts and a bit of imagination.

Disclaimer: stove will be very small and might not actually work… ;)

I had a devil of a job getting the label off the vitamin bottle, and I should really have primed it, but I was impatient. Sigh. Here I am gluing the various bottle tops together to make the stove body. I cut out two pieces of white card for the stove door, painted them black, and glued them together pinning the “hinge” in place.

For the hinge and door handle I used these bracelet findings which are perfect. I’ll never make a bracelet using these so it’s good to find other uses for them. I also used the round parts as Zahrah’s magnifying lens.

I painted the body of the stove with black acrylic paint and ultra matte medium. It took a couple of coats to stick (because I hadn’t primed the plastic!)

When I looked at olde stoves online they often had some fancy decoration so I found some beading supplies and made my own by squashing the bell shaped bead caps flat and gluing them on to the bottle.

After I glued on the trim, I used a silver pen to do some stripes and highlighting, then I glued on the door. The grill below is a piece of wood left over from a wooden 3D model I did years ago. After doing all this I decided I did not like the Matte look and went over it with gloss medium.

Trying the stove in situ. I made a stove pipe using the cardboard roll from my kitchen foil (which conveniently had just run out!) Now of course I needed a log basket.

I got out the jute string that came with all my little apothecary jars and started coiling it up. I used tacky glue to make it stay in place. Once it was a good size I started to build the sides up, just coiling and sticking. It was kinda messy, but worked really well.

Finally I plaited a little strip for the top edge and made some handles out of the remainder.

Completed Stove and Log Basket. Esmun is now ready for any cool weather.

Creating a sidewalk outside the Apothecary Shoppe.

Only someone as crazy as me could get excited about making a sidewalk! Fortunately I’m not the only person being crazy these days, so I found some inspiration online (where else) and used some dollar tree foam board. I stripped off the top layer of paper revealing the foam. I experimented with making marks in it and painting it to see if it worked. These are my tools for scoring. I used the foil for making indentations in the foam, which I did when I made my wall for the final scene of my book. The foil creates a stone like texture in the foam.

Having figured out what to do I made a whole street length of pavement markings, then started putting paint on it.

Here’s how it looked in front of the shoppe. For later photos I added some bits of moss and dirtied the stone up a bit.

Well, now the Shoppe is completed - on to other things…

Apothecary Shoppe Grand Reveal Photos

Hi All, and welcome to the grand reveal of my Apothecary Shoppe in all it’s glory. Let’s follow Esmun as he starts his day.

Esmun is particular about his shoppe - even the outside!

Done sweeping, he unlocks the shop ready for business.

It’s a bit chilly this morning, so he gets the stove started. Probably not a good thing to be doing in that nice white shirt, but at least he took off his expensive coat! (More on the making of the stove next time)

Esmun does some filing - like I said, he’s particular. ;)

Now Esmun has to make up some potions. I think his eyesight is going — good job I made those glasses for him!

Yep, that’s the right stuff.

And what, you might ask, is that monstrous looking thing on the top shelf? That, my friends, is a dragon skull (or my version of one anyway.) I made it in a fanciful moment with the idea that Esmun tells people he killed it himself - it’s a fiction of course, but it stops people messing with him!

This is Esmun’s view of the shoppe.

Birds eye view of the shop.

Esmun is using that nice set of scales I got him.

Esmun has a lot of interesting things in his shoppe with which to make his pills and potions. But wait… is that really a jar of Dragon Blood on the shelf? Shock Horror! Perhaps he did kill that dragon after all!

I need Esmun to come do my housekeeping because this place is neat as a pin…

We’ll leave Esmun to work on his Potions. I hope you enjoyed the pics.

In my next blog I’ll show how I made Esmun’s stove, and the pavement outside the shop. Yes, even pavement can be interesting to me!

Apothecary Shoppe Grand Reveal Videos

I’m trying something different this time - a couple of short videos. If you can’t see them, or they don’t download just move on to the next blog post which has just photos as usual. Thanks.

I apologize in advance for jerkiness in the videoing - my excuse is that it’s hard to do with your phone in a small space. Anyway here we go. The first is looking round the shop from the front, the second is the view from the back looking toward the shoppe window.

Meet Esmun - My Apothecary Guy

Here’s the beginning. My usual skeleton of wire covered with chenille stems so that the wool has something to stick to. He started out quite tall, but if I remember rightly I took some length off his legs— either that or he shrank with age as he is now only 11 inches tall in his finished form!

After wrapping with the white core wool, I covered him with “Latte” wool for his skin. This is the same color as Nieva, the heroine of my story. He looks a little strange and misshapen at this stage, but that improves with time and effort.

Here he is with his face mostly worked. I gave him a bald head — but plenty of hair at the back. Story of old age really — hair in all the wrong places! ;) He still looks a little strange as he as no eyebrows/eyelashes. I had to wrap him in a temporary cloak as he was embarrassed standing naked in the shop setting. At this point I also realized that his hands were absurdly small - poor guy.

He looks a little more characterful at this point. I gave him a mustache, beard, eyebrows, and eye definition.

Now my Apothecary needs some clothes. I started with a rough sketch of what I wanted to make. I’m obviously not a fashion designer, but I had looked at some olde fashions online and there is enough info in the sketch for me to decide what to make. I already had some fabric that I bought as a little packet in Hobby Lobby and I picked out a mustard color for his pants, white for his shirt, and a blue for his coat.

I made a pattern for the pants first. I use sheets of paper towel to wrap around the body and draw on, then cut out. Then cut out the fabric and start hand sewing the pieces together. I hand sew because it’s quicker and easier than setting up my sewing machine for such small pieces.

I used some elastic in the waist of the pants so they would be easy to get on. He still looks a little perturbed, and who wouldn’t - standing in a shop half naked is the stuff of bad dreams!

I finally understood what his problem was. He didn't feel quite complete — he wanted chest hair!

On to the Apothecary shirt (which annoyingly enough is going to cover up the magnificent chest hair. Humph!) Again I made a pattern. I laid it out on the blue coat fabric so that you can see it, rather than on the white fabric the shirt will be made from. Part way through making it I decided to add a collar, so I had to work out a shape for that too. I have to say that my clothes making is not very precise, I guestimate and adjust along the way. Each item I make is a learning curve, but it seems to work out in the end. To my satisfaction anyway.

I wanted the sleeves to be puffy at the shoulders and elasticated, with flared cuffs, so I had to experiment with the sleeve pattern a bit to make the fabric big enough. I also wanted some gathering in the front of the shirt so that was made pretty large too. I had to buy some especially narrow elastic to do the cuffs with. I folded them double and made a channel to put the elastic through. It was very fiddly, but worked out pretty well.

Here’s the shirt on.

Here’s the shirt back. I didn’t do any fastening at the back because it will be hidden by his coat and tucking it into his pants holds it in place.

At this point I decided to replace his pathetic little hands, so I took some scissors and cut off the wool, unwound his finger wires and started over. Not for the squeamish! He looks like a pirate now.

Ta Da! Edward Scissorhands! Oh dear, it’s quite gruesome, and you can see that I went from one extreme to the other. I struggle with the hands. It’s not easy to gauge how big they will turn out and they are the very devil to put wool onto. Sigh. I should probably spend a week just making finger templates and hands of various sizes for future reference. Anyway, now he has functional hands that can probably tear trees in half!

In this pic you can see that I worked on several things. First I gave him some leggings below his pants in a matching wool. I also added a bit of tiny lace to his shirt collar, which really gives it some finesse. The lace was left over from when I had cut up some wide lace to make skinny waves on the ocean for my merfolk cavern, all that long time ago. This little bit of trim was just perfect. You might also notice that he has glasses. In a mad moment I thought I haven’t really done enough super tiny work that will give me a headache and sore fingers so let’s try and make apothecary glasses out of 24 gauge jewelry wire. I don’t recommend it — but now he has them and he can read all those tiny labels on the apothecary jars.

Once I’d made the glasses I added some drops of Gloss gel to make the actual “glass”. This is quite effective and I’ve used this a couple of times for making magnifying glasses for my other character Zahrah. I taped the glasses down onto freezer paper as the dried gel will peel right off that, sticking only to the metal frame.

Here’s a picture of Zahrah with her hand held magnifier.

Back to the serious work of the apothecary coat. This is not a coat in traditional terms, but a “surcote” a long, sleeveless, outer garment, often worn by soldiers over their armor in medieval times. (Amazing what you can learn by making clothes for a doll.) This pattern was the simplest. I cut the back piece on the fold, and the front sides separately.

When last in Michaels I bought a trim bundle that I thought would surely come in handy for the Apothecary clothes. Here you can see the coat pieces stitched together and hemmed at the armholes. I didn’t worry too much about the look of that as I knew it would be covered by something or other. I picked through the trim to find something I liked.

Here you can see the fairly neat finishing I did on the inside of the coat (?!) I know, makes no sense — well, actually it does. Because of the nature of the coat it falls open and the inside can be seen. The fabric frays quite a lot so I took the time to turn the tiny excess seam fabric over and fell stitch it down. (One of my youtube favorites is Bernadette Banner and she does a lot of felling so I was quite thrilled to be able to do a little myself, although not up to her quality you understand.) This gold trim was what I picked out initially for the coat trim

I decided to make the Apothecary a cummerbund to hide the elasticated waist of his pantaloons and make him look a little wealthier. I chose a broad gold trim from my bundle. Then when I put his coat on and tried trim against the whole outfit I decided I liked the white and gold trim on the right.

So here is the coat finished. After applying the trim to the coat I thought his cummerbund was a little gaudy, so I found a slightly narrower ribbon in a gold that matched the coat trim and added that over the top of the original gold cummerbund. Esmun is fairly happy with his clothing so far. Now on to shoes and a hat…

When I envisaged the coat I wanted to make raised shoulder edges that were gold and blue. So I made this piece of wool trim by taking a section of each color wool and twisting it into a skinny sausage. Then I twisted the two colors together over a dowel. Unfortunately they were not easy to felt together and I ended up with two short sections that kept coming apart. They were unsuitable for the shoulders of the coat, but I thought they might make an interesting hat band.

Looks like a good start to a hat…

Having made the hat band the right size, I took some slate blue wool and felted it into a flat circle of fabric and secured it to the hat band. It looked a little plain so I added a couple of strips across the top and a bobble in the center.

Definitely looking the part now.

The shoes I started with a flat piece of felting, again in the slate blue. When I wrapped the bit of fabric around his feet they looked a lot like slippers, but I decided to go with that. I had a piece of trim from my Michaels bundle that had fancy shapes cut into it, and they looked a bit like buckles to me so I cut a couple and sewed them onto the front of the shoes for decoration. I think that elevated them from slippers to, well if not exactly shoes, then fancy slippers!

So here is Esmun - looking very pleased with himself! Just a note on the name - it’s a variation on Eshmun, Phoenician god of healing. Appropriate, I thought, for an Apothecary. I hope you enjoyed this journey of creation.

Constructing an Apothecary Shoppe Front

Having worked on the Apothecary Shop interior - now to making the shop front. For this I used a piece of foam board. I decided to go fancy and build out a bay window. This took a bit of measuring, gluing, and taping, and was a bit tricky for this mathematically challenged artist.

The door I created by cutting pieces of mat board into strips and rectangles. I made the mistake of using my mat cutter to get the nice angles on the panels - but I have paid for it dearly with a lot of pain in my hand ever since. I was a picture framer for many years and although I loved the job it was very hard on my hands. This was a reminder of why I gave up doing that.

When it came to creating the “glass” for the window, I discovered in my stash of art goodies an old packet of printable transparency sheets. If you can tell me why I have these you can win a wonderful prize - a packet of printable transparency sheets!;) Does anyone even remember what those were for - and who keeps this stuff for heaven’s sake? Lol! Not only have I never had an overhead projector, but I haven’t owned an inkjet printer for years either. Not a hoarder - honestly!!

Anyhoo - perfect glass - and easy to print Esmun’s logo onto!

I used some skinny pieces of painted basswood to make the window frame, gluing and taping them into place. I discovered that you can paint over masking tape very successfully and it doesn’t look too bad. (real dollhouse perfectionists would take issue with it, but as I’m making it to be photographed I can actually cheat and do some beautifying in Photoshop if necessary)

Now, what to do about the front wall of the shoppe? I didn’t want to have to make/paint bricks. I have had this pot of Garnet Gel among my paints for years and never had a use it for it. I tried it on a sample of foam core and et violà — stucco!

I spread the pinky garnet gel on the foam board with a palette knife. When it was dry I painted it with creamy beige acrylic paint.

Now it’s starting to look like something.

I also worked on the interior of the Shoppe frontage, creating the door on the inside and and framing out both the door and window. The door doesn’t open - it’s just for looks. The window ledge was covered in the same cork I used for the counter top. The wallpaper is a fancy pattern I found in 12 x 12 sheets at Hobby Lobby. The cute metal door handle is the same as the ones I used for the Apothecary chest of drawers. Having struggled with framing the door, I discovered we had some tiny saws and an old mitre cutter that I used for picture framing in a previous life, that meant I could cut the basswood in, somewhat, proper angles for the window. I think the Apothecary will be happy with it.

I had made a sign to just stick on the wall above the shop door, but then had the brilliant idea of making it a hanging sign. Off I went to my stash of metal and wood to create something….

I’ve tried bending jewelry wire into curves before - without much success,. This is not perfect, but I think it turned out ok. I used some fine 24g wire to hold the sections in place, stuck it to a piece of wood so that it would stand away from the wall, then painted it all black.

Hey presto - Shoppe sign hanging in the breeze! I added a few more bits of window frame to make it look more interesting. I should have put a ruler or something in there for scale, but it is 20 inches high and 24 inches wide. Now I have to figure out some pavement or something in front of the shoppe. The next blog post will be all about the making of my Apothecary guy, and a grand reveal of the splendid interior of the shop - watch this space!

Ye Olde Apothecary Shoppe

I’m having a fun time working on the apothecary and his shoppe and I now have a bunch of shelves, a counter, and part of a shoppe front.

There’s some apothecary magic going on with those jars suspended in mid air. ;)

The dollar tree was a great source of little empty wood trays that would make great shelving and all I needed was some bass wood for the actual shelves. I cut up lots of little pieces of shelving, painted everything in Burnt Umber acrylic, and tried different arrangements to see how many shelves I needed and how to space them.

I found a cute book of faded wallpaper designs (4.5 x 6.5 inches) just the perfect size, with just a little trimming, to fit inside the trays - and it turned out the papers were self adhesive so it seemed they were a match made in heaven!

Was that really $10.99? OMG! The patterns were so perfect I got swept up in a buying frenzy at Hobby Lobby and didn’t think about the cost until I looked at this photo. Oh well, I can make shelving for all eternity now!

Once I had the shelves arranged I glued them in place (mostly level - I hope). One of the actual trays seems a little off kilter - but I doubt anyone will notice once it is filled with apothecary goodies. The counter cabinets are made from two more trays. I glued some of the little wooden cubes I got from Dollar Tree on for feet and painted them with burnt umber acrylic. I used a gold acrylic pen to draw on the cupboards, and attached Esmun’s logo onto a spare piece of shelving and glued it on the front.

Here’s the backside of one of the counter cabinets. I put a shelf in either side for more goodies like wrapping paper, spare jars etc. Who know’s what the apothecary will put there.

Here are some little Apothecary accessories. Left to right: The clock and tiny scales were purchased from Etsy. I couldn’t resist them, especially the scales which are made from metal. All the minuscule weights in the base come out and the scales go up and down. It’s 1:12th scale, so normally would be too small for my dioramas (which are 1:6th scale) BUT my apothecary will be measuring out medicines, not potatoes, so it is actually perfect! The tiny gold spoons are straightened out clamshell bead covers from my beading stash. I saw the hack on the internet after I made those sculpey clay spoons on the right which didn’t come out so well. The egg timer is made from buttons and two plastic single use eye drop bottles glued together. It contains paprika and actually works (although I wouldn’t recommend it for timing eggs!) Lastly the pestle and mortar is made from sculpey clay. The counter top is sticky back cork from Dollar Tree on a strip of basswood.

Work continues on my apothecary guy, and also the shoppe front - more on those in my next posting.

Open Studio and Book Launch

I had an explanatory table showing how I begin my felted creatures and how I have progressed in the design and making of them. Here I’m holding the beginnings of my Apothecary guy.

Stars of my book - Nieva, Serac the reindeer and Rime, the little fox

Merfolk Sealia and Kai, in their magical cavern

Part of Zahrah’s cabin with Rowan building up the fire.

Momma and baby Pegasus hanging out on the fireplace.

Around 40+ people come by and quite a few of you ordered books and subscribed to my blog. A response beyond my wildest dreams! So welcome one and all, and a huge thanks to all those of you who ordered the books - they will be available soon.

My husband ran his model trains and wowed people with those. I think a lot of people were surprised to discover that we are a couple of big kids playing with little toys!

A quick shout out to particular friends who helped me out - my friend Sue, who not only suggested the format for my book, but found me the program to create it in, and then provided practical help and support (and appetizers) for this event. Words can’t express my gratitude. Also my friend Mona, who had the idea of the book launch, provided practical help and support, and took all these great photos. Thanks also to all of you dear readers, who have supported me over the last few years by following my blog and giving me encouraging comments along the way. It’s a pleasure sharing my art with you all and, I hope, inspiring some of you to let YOUR imaginations go wild!

Apothecary - bless you!

Its the time of year for coughs and colds, or maybe I watched too much Harry Potter over Christmas, anyway I developed a strange desire to make an Apothecary Shoppe (complete with felted Apothecary) for Nieva to visit.  Apothecary is an archaic term for a pharmacist, or herbalist, who makes and dispenses pills and potions. To begin the shop I ordered some lovely glass jars of various miniature sizes online and began filling them. It was enormous fun searching the house for miniature “herb - like” substances to put in the jars. Genuine herbs work pretty well, as do tea leaves. The many tiny seeds and flowers I harvested from my garden the other year came in handy too. Thinking in miniature has changed my view of the world - everything runs through the lens of “what can I make this into?"

All manner of Apothecary goodies in jars, and I have lots of ideas for other mysterious items to include in the shoppe.

These are some of my favorites. The jars on the left are filled with olive oil and Sage seeds, Rose petals, and a Sculpey clay snake. (Had forgotten that Sculpey is hard after it is baked so I was lucky that it just fitted through the neck of the jar!) There is also some real snakeskin gathered eons ago from a stone wall, and some random bones I found in the woods, also eons ago (don’t ask why I kept those awful things all these years!)

These tiny screw top jars were a great Dollar Tree find and I just hid the metal with some fabric and string. It was fun to make the little labels on my jars and inscribe them in a language known only to my apothecary! ;)

Now, with a large collection of goodies for sale I need to make Ye actual Shoppe. It is virtually impossible to find 1/6th scale (barbie size) dollhouse stuff that is not ultra modern, (and I couldn’t afford it anyway.) So, I went in search of something from which to make ye olde shelves/cupboards.  On a wonderful shopping expedition I discovered a Dollar Tree store and a Hobby Lobby next door to one another (died and gone to heaven. Lol!)

My stash from Dollar tree was epic - a whole bunch of faux wood flooring, potential shelving and cupboards, mini plant pots, cork sheets, and all manner of useful and fancy stuff.

Hobby Lobby is a good deal more expensive but has some marvelous things, like these wonderful tiny metal drawer handles, that I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Eager to get going, I began constructing my cupboards, creating two little drawers to go into each one. The wood is simple basswood - so easy to cut with a craft knife and glue together.

Now I added those nice little drawer handles. For the top drawer I divided it into three and used brass colored paper fasteners. With the drawers finished and working I then painted them with burnt umber acrylic.

I painted a coat of satin varnish over the acrylic, then glued the two sets of drawers together and fancied them up with a bit of gold paint and a cork surface on the top. I’m not a great carpenter - yet - but I was fairly pleased with how this turned out.

Next stop - creating some shelving for all those jars, oh, and of course an apothecary to make the potions and pills!

End of Year Roundup

Now that my book is done I have not just been resting on my laurels ;) I have been busy with pet portrait commissions, both in paint and felt, and lots of Christmas gifts.

The felted cutie above is Lua and she’s a Christmas gift for Lua’s owner.

“What the…??” Lua meets herself!

This is Lola, a commission I did as part of a fundraiser for the Rüdiger Foundation, a non-profit in Nevada City that provides K9 resources to local police. https://rufk9.org/who-we-are

Lola’s owner then wanted me to paint her daughter’s two dogs as a Christmas gift and here they are. I’ve been so busy with the book making that it’s been a long time since I painted anything other than backgrounds for my story. It was fun picking up a brush again!

I felted a couple of reindeer for some “dear” friends!

I felted a Raccoon as an addition to my “Woodland Carol Singers’ group. He’s not singing, he’s running off with the Figgy Pudding of course, so I used this image for my Christmas card!

Here he is with the carol singers.

Here’s a cute chipmunk I felted as a Christmas gift.

Here are some Caroling Birdies I felted as a Christmas gift for my daughter.

Everyone seems happy with their gifts!

A lot of felties got made, a couple of paintings got painted and now I’m enjoying a well earned break and will come back to it all with renewed enthusiasm in the New Year.

It's A Book!

Ta Da! My story has become a book!

It’s been quite the project to turn my story into a book and many new skills had to be learned along the way, but even harder was the very daunting prospect of waiting to see how it all looked when it was printed. I nervously uploaded my PDF files to Blurb.com and held my breath. Despite having checked and rechecked the files I had some nightmares thinking the photos wouldn’t print, or the text would be unreadable. But here it finally is and I’m actually very pleased with it. This is the culmination of two years of work (well mostly play really!) It’s an unusual little graphic novel, consisting as it does of photos rather than drawings, but I think it works pretty well considering when I started this project I had no idea where it would lead. I did not have a final product in mind, it was just lots of fun creating and leaning new skills.

From the feedback I’ve had I would consider it suitable for ages 10 and up (the young at heart like myself). Some lucky (?) folks will find one in their stocking this Christmas, but anyone else who is curious can get one from me for $25. It’s full color, 56 pages in all. I think I might have an open house in January to celebrate and to show off all the characters I made and some of the scenes I created. It will be exciting to share the fun.

The images and text came out great and I’m very pleased with the way Blurb printed it.

Although the book is a thing in itself, I don’t consider Nieva’s story over - in fact I’m busy working on some new writing and have lots of ideas of fun things to make to illustrate it. Watch this space…

What could be cuter than a Pegasus?

Well, if you thought my Pegasus was adorable - wait ‘til you see this cute little fellow I just made!

For some inexplicable reason I was compelled to make a baby Pegasus.

He turned out to be way easier to make than the big one - probably because I have looked at so many horse photos and videos by now. He started out with a wire armature in the same way as all my other needle felted critturs. I used some of the felt I made for his mom’s wings for his tiny little wings. Very quickly he took on his own character.

Not very impressive yet - but give him a chance.

Sculpting his face - now he looks a little crazy, but hang in there…

Once he was finished I had some fun photographing his first wobby steps under his mom’s watchful eye.

Up you get…

But how mommy…?

Legs are tricky things to work…

You did it!

Hey, life is fun!

From This ... A Fantasy Horse

Finally my fantasy Pegasus horse is finished and I’m rather pleased with her. Now all she needs is a grand adventure - already in the works, of course!

Here’s how I made the wings. Laying out thin layers of Merino wool to start wet felting some fabric. When you have the layers of wool ready they are wetted with soap and water and gently agitated until they form a sold fabric. It takes a little while.

I made two pieces of thin felt, one using grey and white wool, the other just with white. I had intended just to use the grey fabric, but on its own it was not substantial enough, so I put the grey underneath and the white on top.

I attached the felt to the armature, first with stitching, then some needle felting.

The wings looked pretty good - but I felt they needed something more.

While I thought about the “something more” for the wings I got to the really fun part of adding the mane and tail. I have some white ‘fur’ wool which I wrapped around a wooden skewer and wetted. When it was dry the wool comes off the stick wavy or curly. I used some of this for the tail and part of the mane. I used a lot of straight ‘fur’ for the mane too. Then added some cute curly kid mohair locks to tumble down the front of the head.

I eventually decided a little embroidery on the wings might make them more feather-like. I bought a selection of metallic threads and embroidery floss and after doing some samples I plumped for using the shiny white floss. The metallic threads were a bear to work with so I was very happy that the white floss worked so well. I’m not a great needlewoman and I haven’t done any embroidery for many, many, years so it took me a long time to do the embellishment. I think it was worth it though, as it improves the look of the wings.

Adding embroidery to the white upper wings.

Another embellishment was suggested to me by my daughter-in-law who wanted to know if I was giving the Pegasus eyelashes. I do love a challenge, so I figured that out…I want to say… in the blink of an eye! ;)  I used some of the curly ‘fur’ cut down to size and needle felted above the eyes.

I did end up removing the hooves that I first did as they were a little clumsy looking. I adjusted the feet and made smaller hooves. There was more needling to do to make the surface of the body and legs cohesive. I don’t finish my characters to a very hard surface because I want to be able to pose them, so I just needle them until the fluff doesn’t come off easily but they are still flexible. This project took me about four weeks from concept to finish - not working every day, but there were a lot of hours in there all the same!

Wire, wool, sculpture. Needle felting and wet felting. Nose to tail 16” Height at ears 13”

Almost A Flight of Fantasy...

You can’t keep a felter from her wool, and it has been far too long since I made anything. I had an idea I wanted to make a horse, then to make it a crazy idea I decided it would be a flying horse - a Pegasus! I found one or two people online making horses and attempted to see how they did it. I drew out a rough idea of the size of the armature and used my 14 gauge wire to make it. Sadly this turned out to be a flop in more ways than one. Firstly the proportions were wrong and the back came out too long. Then the wire was not strong enough for the legs. You learn more from your mistakes than success, sooo, I began again, this time using 12g wire for the armature which made the legs much stronger. See above.

Here I’ve wrapped the armature with chenille stems to give the wool something to grab on to.

Beginning to wrap the armature with wool, some core wool (white) and some of the colored wool I will use for the whole body. It looks a little weird without a head and of course the legs have no muscles yet…

Now the creature has more muscles - but still no head….scary!!

Finally the head starts to take shape - still a little scary looking though! It took many hours to get to this stage.

Ha! Now that’s a bit better. At this point I’m still looking at lots of horse photos from all angles and constantly working on the muscles and shape of the legs etches well as finessing the head.

Closeup of sculpting the head

Many pokey hours later the pegasus takes shape. There is still a lot to do. I spent lots of time looking at photos of horses to work out where the muscles should be and how to shape the legs and head. I was initially pleased with the hooves, but I am not happy with them now and will redo them. It’s a big project which will take a lot more hours before I can get to the fun part of mane, tail, and wings. I have yet to figure out how to do the wings. I think I will try some wet felting like I did for my dragon and see if that works. Watch this space for further updates. :)

Turn Your Photos into a Graphic Novel - whose crazy idea was that?!

It has been a long time since I posted an update on my blog. Not because I was lazing around doing nothing, but because I decided to turn my story photos into a graphic novel and it’s turning out to be a long and challenging project. It is far from done, but here are a few excerpts to show what it looks like currently.

The first challenge was to find out what a graphic novel looked like and how they work. Fortunately my library had some nice examples that gave me plenty of food for thought. The next challenge was to find a program in which I could create said graphic novel with the greatest ease and smallest learning curve. I’m familiar with Illustrator, and I have a very old version of InDesign, which would probably be better - however I never did get the hang of using it well and the thought of fighting with it meant my project would never get started. I have Pages on my MacBook, but that is a clumsy program at best, and although I tried, it proved too frustrating. I invested instead in a small inexpensive program called iStudioPublisher. This I have found easy to use and has some great tools that let you easily put photos into odd shapes and link or move them around. Of course the acid test is getting something printed, but that will have to wait a while.

All terribly boring, but necessary, were questions like - How do you publish a graphic novel? What size should it be? What printing parameters are there? All these had to be thought through in order to set the pages/margins etc before I even got into putting the novel together.

I’m not short of photos of Nieva’s story, but to make a graphic novel interesting you sometimes need different images than the all encompassing views I took originally. In some cases I was able to crop photos, or just use a closeup view, but for others I did not have the angle or background required and I had to reshoot. That’s what I did with the closeups of the Merfolk for the page above.

One of the biggest challenges is the use of words. I have a written story of some 26,000+ words, so how do you reduce that to a few choice sentences for each page of images? It becomes a very different animal indeed! Mostly it becomes dialog, with a few bits of brief explanation thrown in. I’m still learning a lot and the project continues…