Little More Livres.

It has been a while since I posted!! My Etsy shop has kept me very busy. But I do put my evenings aside to work on the Maison de Livres. I hope to have it finished for my nieces graduation!! I have added a couple of photos of my recent progress. There's still tape on the floor. The room needs ageing and I don't want the floor to get too yukky. A fake door in the back room. Next door to this room is a little room we are calling the Lavender Room. Lavender coming from old French for launder or washing. This room is only a door width wide!! The doors on the corner cupboard aren't actually hinged in. I am a huge hinge fail. So they just pop in and out making it easy to fill. Both rooms have yet to be filled with paraphernalia an stuff. The attic bedroom will be next!!

A Sink!

Just a quick pic. Sink is done, yay. All made out of cardboard and balsa, bit of cornice trim. Sorry for the terrible photo. Took it with my phone. I keep forgetting to buy new batteries for my camera! Cannisters are from MiniEden Tienda on Etsy. Love them. Will have to get some more I think.

Bye for now and be well!!!!

Salon Livre.

The book house has a lounge at last. Well mostly. For the time being anyway. I am always changing things. I only got two photos before my camera politely shut itself down and told me a need new batteries. Snap!! So here are the only two pics I got. The wallpaper was the perfect shade of green I wanted. It's scrap booking paper. The fireplace is lovely and from Art of mini. Everything is made from cardboard, foamboard and balsa. I had wanted to do more frenchified panelling in this room but not one single wall was square!! The back wall bowed out. So I had to do each wall independant of the ones next to it and add balsa strips to cover up gaps when the wall peices were glued in place. Even then it moved heaps!! Yay for thick gesso. Arrgh but more of a challenge that way. There is a fake door at the back in the fake hallway leading to fake stairs to get to the rooms above which won't be fake. Great way of doing stairs. Don't.  I haven't glued in the french doors. Thought it might be bit of a trick trying to change light globes in the hallway with the doors in place permanently. So they pop in very snuggly. There's a non working chandelier to go in again from Art of Mini and more timber beams in white on the ceiling. I ran out of balsa. To ceiling rose or not to ceiling rose is still the question. Froggified furniture to be shabbied. Lots of cushions. A gramophone with Edith Piaf records. We are huge Edith fans. Scruffy books, brocante finds and all sorts of other mini goodies an 18yr old in Paris would bring home to fill it up now. Fun.

Bicycle Makeover

I had bought this so long ago I had forgotten I even had it. I came across it looking for something else, got sidetracked painting up the bike that I now can't remember what it was I was looking for in the first place!!! But I thought the Maison de Livre would like a little old basketed bicycle leaning up against it's walls but there's way too much black! I just used a fine gesso on areas I would want to paint. Painted it in washes of lavender n soft blue. The leather looking seat it just made from heavy paper glued over and I squished it in around the edges like old leather would do. I glued two spiral like jewelry findings under the seat to be springs. I didn't get a photo of that. A basket on the front. Timber board on the back with a wicker case on it. All good to go. It was a lot of fun to do. Think I might have to get another one or two to do.

Warm Thatcham Nearing Completion.

This photo is showing the back removable wall in place. There is a roof panel as well that is held in  place with magnets.

Photos are a bit all over the place sorry. Blogger keeps changing and I haven't been blogging enough to keep up with the changes!! I'll add more external photos later. But now that both my boys are at school I have been revelling in all that time to myself!!! So I pulled my litte house out of the corner and got to work. The kitchen and upstairs area have remained mostly unchanged. The garden now has it's daffodils, bluebells and cyclamen. The lounge area more cluttered. Now if I could just shrink myself and all who wish to visit.

Water Everywhere!!!

I haven't had too much time for minis. My Etsy shop has kept me very busy and my youngest has been home from school for over a week now with a nasty cold. The weather here gets pretty crazy at this time of the year is well. As you can see by the photo below. It's not called the wet season for nothing. Torrential tropical rain!!! This is what happens when we get a downpour. Sometimes my street can flood up to four times a day! It was just a little one when I took this picture last week. That's my bin you can see lying down on the lawn. It was further up the street and it had  floated down. I have a very nice neighbour and he has brought my wandering bin back for me many times.

The picture below is looking outside my bedroom window. There is a street under all that water. The thing is it is still very very hot and humid. This was taken at 5am and it was already hot. So I stay inside all summer and do minis!!! It's the dry season we get out and play!!! That's Autumn,Winter and Spring. Eight months of beautiful weather!!!!

So back into my cool house to do more minis!!!! I'll pop my head out the door occasionally to see if the street has gone under again and check that my bin is still in it's moorings. Hoo roo!!!!

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.