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Tuesday 21 May 2013

Tobacco Adverts

Evening everyone, hope you are all keeping well? I am a member of a UK miniature swap group and they are running this year a 'choose your own theme' swap. Each person who has opted for this swap chooses what the items theme will be, to suit what they are working on. We each have a month and everyone sends an item suitable from our choice. This month it is for a Tobacconist's shop and I made the following metal signs for her.

I got the images (I think, because I can't find them now!) from this blog which is a brilliant source of free images. They have been stuck on metal and then distressed.

I hope she will like them :-)

 

Thursday 16 May 2013

What's cooking.....

I think I'm on a roll! (No pun intended!) If anyone ever asked me, I have always said I am not a creative person. I am coming to know that perhaps I am, but in a different way. I don't have the imagination to come up with a new idea, but I can see other people's creations and re-create to my ability, slightly changing them to how I want. One of my sisters looked at my work on Saturday and declared that she would not have the patience, and would not be able to do it, so maybe I am! My Nanny would have been pleased, she was an artist and although I can't paint, something must have been passed down :-)

In my last post I told you that I was making egg carton bricks and that I would show you what I was doing.. Well I was making a kitchen range. This is my inspiration photo

 

I must admit this was so realistic I thought it was real, but I've since discovered that it is miniature :-) the link to it is here.

And this is my interpretation of it:

 

My range is not as wide to suit the size of my kitchen , and I also decided not to have a fire visible. I started with making a front out of my cardboard stock.

 

If I did this again I would have made slightly longer bricks to wrap round the edges. This would give a more rounded edge and perhaps look better from the side view. For this one I think I have covered ok with paint.

 

 

One of my favourite blogs to read is Brae at Otterine and she has a brilliant tutorial on bricks with egg cartons. Please check out her blog, but I'll warn you, you'll want to read the whole thing, she is so brilliant!

My next task was to cut out the back and sides, I again used the cardboard and glued them with ordinary PVA glue, I didn't take a picture but I added little tabs of cardboard on the inside seams to give it more strength.

I made a mantel piece by layering 3 pieces of cardboard in slightly smaller sizes each layer, to give the effect of moulding. The rail is a kebab stick painted with copper metallic effect acrylic paint.

For the actual stove I used the cardboard again and built up the effect with more cardboard and a small piece of balsa wood for the shelf. The knobs for the handles are from one of those little packets you get in handbags to keep them from getting damp? I have opened a few packets and this particular one had all small balls, but each packet seems to be different! Here's a picture I took before painting with black acrylic paint ( I actually changed the position of the bottom drawer before painting).

The chimney is a piece of wood dowelling that I had from a sponge paint applicator that I bought in Florida last year, I think in Lowes? Who would think that you would buy such things while on holiday :-)

Anyway, I am really quite pleased with the result :-) what do you think?

 

If you've got this far, then thanks ever so much for reading :-)