Saturday 28 March 2015

Mini Paintings, Mini Flowers and Plants, and Mini Chrysnbon Cane-Seat Chair.

Hello everyone! Another long gap between posts I know. I have been working flat out on my novel. I've written over 78,000 words now. Go me! But as I have been putting so much effort into writing that, I haven't gotten around to blogging...
Anyway, now that my excuses are out of the way, I thought I'd update you on all the little projects I have been working on.

I've already shown you some of the mini paintings that I've made but have included them here too so everything is all neat and tidy.

Last week I was excited because I had a request (through my Etsy store) for a custom miniature painting from a lovely lady in Texas. Here is what I came up with and I was so happy because she loved it. For anyone who is interested in purchasing any of the miniature artwork below, I'll add the links above each one to make things easy for you.


So! Here are all the little mini things I've made over the last year. Not that many all together, but I love each and every one of them.

I adore this little pansy painting I painted last year. I think it would look lovely just about anywhere in a dollhouse, but my pick would be a bedroom.


And these rose ones are so sweet, it's hard to choose a favourite!


I think this little love painting would look cute in a nursery.


And maybe the strawberry one would be good for a kitchen.


This rose one is one of my favourites because I adore the colours and the little frame inside the frame is just lovely. 


This love one makes me think of a sunny spot near the kitchen bench.


And maybe blue bells in the bathroom would be nice!


I've also made some wooden bits of wall art using a combination of paints, scrapbooking papers and varnish.



















And have made some framed pictures with scrapbook paper inserts.


And that is all the mini paintings to date. As well as the life sized water colours I've painted, I also painted my surfboard using Posca paint pens.
I love the way it turned out.


I made some mini peonies from a kit I bought off Esty from The Miniature Garden. Actually all the flowers and plants below are from there so if you want to try making any of these yourself, I highly recommend her lovely kits.


I love the dainty way the peonies tuned out. They look so delicate.


You might have seen the miniature poppies I made because I used them as the subject for the photography tips blog post. But here they are again anyway because they are just so cute. 


I also made some Californian Poppies. I have never seen this type of poppies before in real life but I adore the happy colour of them. 


Aren't they cheerful!


And then there is the wisteria kit. It really is a project all on it's own. It takes simply ages to make the flowers but they are very lovely. It's going to be so satisfying seeing it go up on the house. But who knows when that will ever get to come out of storage!

This is all the bits you get in the kit.


Here are the centres of the flowers made up.


And painted purple.


And this is what they look like with the flower petals stuck on. When I have them all done, I might paint them (very carefully) to add a bit of something extra.


And finally I made this delightful little fern. The leaves are laser cut and they look so realistic. My dollhouse is going to look so great with all these lovely plants in it!



I ordered this Chrysnbon kit online. It's the first plastic furniture kit I have made. Well actually, the first furniture kit full stop!


All the pieces come like this. Opening it reminded me of when I was little and used to get toys at Christmas (or my birthday - which is only 3 days apart from Christmas!) and they would have bits in them that you had to twist off the plastic like this. Oh the joy of it! I LOVE assembling toys. When something says "Some assembly required" my eyes light up.


It actually took quite a few attempts to get the chair to actually stay together because at first I didn't have the right glue. All I had was tacky glue, which was difficult to use and then, once the glue was dry, the chair would fall apart with the lightest touch.
I only have a push bike in Fiji to get around, but I peddled off down to the local store and they had some super glue, which was only FJD$1.50. So I thought I'd give that a go and luckily it worked. So probably after the fifth attempt, the chair stayed together. Hooray!


I painted it to look nice and shabby instead of using the stain that came with the kit.



And this is the finished piece. It looks quite grey in this picture but it is more turquoise/teal in real life. I'll have to include it in another photo in a later post with better lighting.


I liked making the mini chair so much I decided to order some more kits all the way from Canada (the first one was sold second hand from New Zealand). They haven't arrived yet but I'm hoping they will come soon because it's been over 5 weeks since they were shipped. I ordered something from Canada last year too, to get shipped to a friend in New Zealand and that took ages as well though so perhaps the postage from Canada is just slower than form anywhere else in the world...

Anyway, so I haven't been totally neglecting miniature making! And I have even been working on something else a little special too. But you will have to wait for a later post to hear about that as it's not finished yet!

Love and good wishes to you all!

xo Amy