A Start for Maison de Livre

What a start to the new year!! Crazy as usual. I hope it means it is all getting itself out of the way now and the rest of the year is quiet. My computer crashed twice, under my house flooded ( the Esky was the first floatation device to find its way out into the street), lost the Internet soooo many times, my roof leaked in my mini room so all furniture moved out and sooo many other things happened that I need a holiday to have a rest from the holidays!  And Blogger has all changed, argh. It doesn't like long posts it seems and wants page break. ??? Hellloooo says 2012!!
Deep breath in and out. I started this Parisian inspired townhouse with book shop on the bottom floor for my niece nearly a year ago. I've lost a year!!!! The main problem was as always I had too many ideas. I couldn't decide. Soooo many ways to do a Parisian townhouse with a book shop on the ground floor. Then life came in as it does and filled in the little areas of quiet bits I had left and Maison de Livre (book house) got pushed to the scary grey area and never seen again. Up against a wall behind Greenleaf kits that is. Then the wonderful Christine Lea Frisoni started up her blog and the wonderful ease in which she does her beautiful homes helped clear up my messy head. I knew I didn't have the room for stairs and was trying desperately to get my head around that. I knew I had to give the illusion of there being more to this tall house as it was a skinny bookcase in a former life. Not a whole lot of room, just a lot of rooms. With my inspiration freshly awakened from it's coma I got stuck into it. So after nearly 12 months of face pulling I did the kitchen in a week. Insane isn't it. I like to tell myself that I used that time to collect all the bits n pieces I needed for it. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I started with the entrance. A room 5cm x 12cm wasn't too much to take on and easy to rip out and start again if it was awful. I used heavy cardboard for just about everything. Bristol board is relatively unheard of in the Land Downunder. Gesso, my best friend, on everything. Use it as a spak when need to. Comes of my clothes very easily. The range is a cheaper one made over to look more Frenchified. I drilled a hole in the back and have put in a flame flicker globe. It comes with a flue but I didn't want to use that so I glued a finding over the hole so the fire light will flicker through. I painted over all of it with a matt black to give the look of cast iron and change the handle and knobs to ones more in scale. Everything else is made from balsa. I love balsa because it's soft and easy to work with. I hate balsa because it's soft and hard to work with.

The tiles I made myself. It is something I thought of quite some time ago and it was great to finally give it a go. They came out way better than I expected. I have some tiles coming and I will be doing some more to put in my Etsy shop. They are easy to put in and give a great look.There are also sooo many designs out there. I have found some wonderful Art Nouveau ones for the bathroom. Rebekah had a look at her kitchen over the weekend and I took the squeals of delight coming from my mini room as a good sign.

I still have to complete the drying board for the sink and to add taps. A shelf or plate rack for above. but it will have to wait for a bit. I'm back to making plates for my Etsy shop and filling out orders. I have more new designs and hope to have jugs and assortment of baking dishes available soon. Children are back at school so I hope to get all my new ideas out onto paper and porcelain! Then the Maison de Livre will have her salon. Hoo roo for now, Carrie.