A very pinteresting Christmas.

As previously mentioned, it was a very handmade Christmas for my family. Not for any other reason than the fact that they mean more, and I've got the means. When you hand-craft a gift, for the entire time you plan/design it, shop supplies, and whip it up, you're thinking about the recipient. About as personal as personal gets. So why would I buy gift cards for my favorite people on the face of the earth?! (Except for teenage girls. They're aliens. And not impressed by anything, itunes cards for all!)

I spend a fair amount of time on Pinterest. It's what I do on my phone when I have a few minutes to waste. My usual strategy is to click the 'everything' button and see what thrills me. I started seeing things that reminded me of my people, and started a board for it. It's secret.

I figured I'd just show, for fun, some non-minis that I made along with the 'pinspiration'. (I hate when people say pinspiration. But it is an appropriate non-term. Damn.)

One big victory, was the bike clock for my brother (a nationally ranked cyclist, brag brag brag). I'd planned on making this for the previous Christmas, but encountered logistical and part-sourcing issues. I'd bought the movement, the extra-long hands, and picked up a junked wheel rim at his favorite bike shop.

There was one spoke missing so I decided that spot could be 12 o'clock, and I'd make a marker of sorts. And I wanted to hang it differently, wishfully out of bike chain, but actually out of brass chain.

The inspiration:

Recycled Bike Wheel Clock by Pixelthis on Etsy

TinyFixation:

 

Leather and brass.

It was a hit. I'm proud of it, it was worth the wait to do it up properly.


My sister has a toddler (boy), and a baby girl due any time now. I knew with her husband out to sea soon (Navy) she'd have her hands full. For the soon-to-be big brother, I made this toy/snack bandolier. That way he'd have everything he needs at his fingertips, and mom can maybe have her hands a little bit free-er. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but try anything once. Right?

The inspiration:

Snack Bandolier, by WhipStitchFabrics

TinyFixation:

I went with a heavy but soft meanswear fabric in grey. A go-with-everything accessory, for sure. Granola bars, cars, 7 loops and a gusseted pocket for all his nescessities. What a big boy.


 And for the wee babe, one of those door mufflers so mom can look in on sleeping baby without the door latch clicking and completely blowing her cover. I'm only assuming the baby will sleep behind closed doors since there's a tornado toddler and a terrorist australian shepherd sharing the same roof.

I combined two designs for what I thought was a better combination of form and function.

The Inspiration(s):

I liked the ease of the elastic over ties, I imagine it would be a nuisance to get it positioned tightly and keep the ties even. And I also liked the look of the leather. I asked my mom to find out a little about the nursery for me, and she mentioned fucsia. I have a beautiful piece of magenta leather. That'll do.

Door Muff by sweetdreamsbytami on etsy

  I liked the bows for a girls' room, so I added additional ribbon to cover the less attractive elastic after the strap was positioned. I also went with the leather to keep it a no-sew project.

 TinyFixation:

For my equestrian inclined sister who just got a new apartment, I decided on a set of six leather napkin rings. Unfortunately, I never got a photo of the finished product (if she can send me one, I'll update the post). Mine came out similarly, but instead of a rivet, I used snaps. That way she could choose the suede side or the smooth side. I recycled a nice belt in a rich caramel harness leather that I thrifted, with silver hardware. I got some pretty charcoal gray cloth napkins and put a ring on each for presentation.

The inspiration:

Napkin rings by Greenbelts on etsy

And for my princess of a niece (she's four), tea bags for regular luncheons with her "babies". Every little girl loves a tea party, So I got her a beautiful bone china cup and saucer, and made half dozen fabric tea bags that she can dunk in the water without destroying. They just dry out. Brilliant.

The inspiration:

http://lapouletteapois.canalblog.com

TinyFixation:

 I filled them with glass seed beads for weight, and realistic feel. The strings are baby rick-rack, and little pink felt hearts for tags. I also whipped up a cotton cinch wash-bag to keep them in case they should get soiled.


For my dad, it was food. What do you buy for a guy who has everything, and if he doesn't he'll buy it for himself before you can?! His favorite candies are pecan caramel turtles. I saw these pretzel things, and knew he had to try them. They were super quick to throw together, and mindblowingly addictive. We'll be making these again. On the regular.
Another one without a picture of my own, but you really can't make them look much different.

The inspiration:

Rolo Turtles on so wonderful, so marvelous blog.

And then, because I hate myself, I volunteered to make an "american girl" doll bed for a work friend. This was the one that nearly sent me over the edge, but I couldn't disappoint a 5 year old. The more we talked, the more involved the design got. She preferred something colonial style, and then it would be awesome to have a canopy, and then stained dark, rather than paint. Ummm, I guess I thought I had time at first. I delivered it to her at work on Christmas Eve with the Polyurethane still tacky after staying up until 4 am to complete it. I did the best I could, I felt bad though.

The bed that supposedly goes with the doll is outrageously priced, which is why I originally intervened.

The original:

American Girl Doll Store

The inspiration:

Tosalena Furniture

TinyFixation:

 Solid oak, with Minwax English Chestnut stain and a couple of coats of satin poly. High-quality cell phone shots under fluorescent light at work.



And then, since clearly I'm the sucker around here, I also volunteered to create a rather large display for our office Christmas luncheon. It took a lot of time but luckily, besides supply shopping, I did most of it on company time. Nice little arrangement. I made the conference room credenza look like a fireplace. Here it is, the marketing department came down and took a snap for the hospital website. Otherwise, there would be no picture. Again.

So that was ridiculous. I absolutely love making gifts for my family. I will likely continue to do so in future years when I find the right items for the right people. But new rules: politely and gracefully refuse other peoples' project requests within two months of Christmas. No exceptions. Here's to a more enjoyable Christmas, 2013. And to knowing my new workshop will be ready for the task!

A swift kick in my mail parts.

Just what I needed. A friendly shove in the right direction.

My friend Megan aka: MiniDork from modernminihouses sent me a swap gift!

I came home after a regular shitty Monday at my day job to a pair of generously sized boxes leaning against my garage door. I thought nothing of them at first. My husband orders lots of car parts and tools for his business, so I never let myself get a thrill from seeing a package. It's generally heavy, and cumbersome, and he's got two hands. He can lug it in. But no...

I inched closer and saw that one was a very distinct CB2 box.
So it's obviously not for my husband, who would likely guess that CB2 was a Star Wars character. My heart was aflutter with anticipation. I bolted out of the car and bee-lined for the labels. They were both for me. Fully knowing how broke I am and that I hadn't ordered anything, I looked for the name on the return address and smiled big. These were going to be really fun to open. Attempting not to be a total spaz, I maintained composure, changed into sweatpants, poured a jar of wine, and fed the dogs to get waggy tails distracted from what would surely be fragile stuffs.

I opened the big package first, it had been directly under my drippy (flow-rate: Niagara) roof. I'm sure it was merely coincidental, since I have an awning over my front door. Whatthefuck,postalservice?
I was really nervous that the water had seeped past the cardboard and damaged delicate things. Lucky for me, the contents were in another box, wrapped in plastic. Safe. But holy smokes:

That's her best "I'm impressed".

A new dollhouse!! You've got to be kidding me. Way to overdo it, Ms. One-Upper : )

You said it wasn't a contest... right there on that sticky note.

Well played.

But then, oh, then...
The box marked "fragile".

Luckily, this one wasn't waterlogged.

What treasures to behold! This box was packed with awesome minis. Many of which were hand designed/made and that makes them all the more special.

She specified that some of these items would require assembly, which means that this post is mostly a tease. I'll tell you what I got, but I won't really get to play with all of my toys until this weekend. I fully intend to, with a follow-up post with pictures of it all styled up.

Shouldn't be tough, since my new swag includes:
an incredible geometric deer head sculpture, two amazing bookcases, loads of original limited-edition pillows, books (and the ammo to make more!), vases, six chairs, two tables, and a countertop/workbench, and an outdoor fireplace (in some pretty amazing packaging), brass fixtures, accessories and miniature flora (the flowering cactus kills me). Plus, I had already received the entire "glam accessories collection" which will also be featured in this weekend's scenes. You may have seen a couple of the pieces already in my cubebot entry.

Not sure where I'll set them up yet. Might be another job for the roombox!

So, sorry again that I've been delinquent on posts. Mostly because I started playing my violin in a local college orchestra, a little treat for myself (and subsequently my mom, apparently love is blind and deaf). And I handmade most of my Christmas gifts for family this year (a la Pinterest) and they came out beautiful, but it was all a total timesuck. I'll have a post about those items coming (and how Santa treated me), and another on my plans for 2013 including a demolition derby and a new workshop, and another about how awesome the other submissions for the cubebot challenge were, another about my direction for the undersized urbanite challenge, and another about intermediate dollhouse wiring (eyelets: types, uses, and installation). And I'm dying to catch up on all of you guys! I know I've missed a lot. Promise to deliver soon.

I knew I had you at demolition derby.
You forgive me.
Suckers.

Happy New Year!

Cubebot Challenge

Ugh. I don't know if I made the deadline. I hope so, fingers crossed.

But since I slaved to finish the roombox in time for this, then spent all day installing this scene I'll show you some pictures of what I did with the micro cubebots from Call of the Small's Cubebot Challenge.

These things are versatile. Especially as furniture:

And the zoom out:

The art? Oh yeah. What would a home be without a cheesy family photo mural?

These guys had a session at Picture People. With the new little one. Awww...

(These aren't so easy to manipulate into human poses being as *ahem* boxy as they are)

 

Don't judge a bad hair day unless you've never had one.

I had fun, I hope I submitted on time and it gets counted. (The attachments took a million years to load, and I hit 'send' at exactly midnight. I know because that's when I turn into a pumpkin.) 

If not, it'll be another notch in my "I'm a Giant" belt.

Time to go clean up from the 'challenge cyclone'.

Roombox grand reveal!

Here's the moment I've been impatiently waiting for, she's done.

Well, mostly. I'll try and keep this short and sweet. The lighting for these pictures is the worst. It starts getting dark here around 4pm.
Shouldn't matter, since you'll be seeing plenty of the roombox in the coming months days. So, without further ado:

TA DA!

 The inside tall wall has 3 sconce outlets and 2 corded plug outlets.

Ditto for the short wall. Except the sconces are lower for sofa/bedside/office applications.

 The ceiling has 9 outlets.

 The utility wall. Electrical input connection, and removeable curtain rod.

The patio/porch has 3 sconce outlets, 3 ceiling/roof outlets, and 2 corded plug outlets.

 

 

 The back view.

Interesting features:

Leveling base.

Quick-cut templates. I made craft-paper templates of the walls and floors, so all I need to do is trace and trim desired wallcovering/flooring to match.

So far, I can't think of anything I would do differently. I got the outcome I desired, learned a few techniques along the way, and got semi-comfortable with some new materials. That's always my goal with a new project.

Venture out of your comfort zone, and you'll make way cooler stuff. Period.

I now have a completely custom, one of a kind, highly electrified, self-leveling, versatile, style-neutral, scratch-built structure. Happy girl.

Somehow, I miraculously found time to do some exterior work. I had a bottle of Greenleaf brand dollhouse stucco lying around for the past 15-20 years, so I figured I should go ahead and try it. I mixed it with some latex paint from the house (instructions said to use paint or water). It's a Martha Stewart color from Lowe's called 'soapstone'. It's my favorite pale gray/beige go-with-everything color. Once I painted a thick coat on and let it set a bit, I used a copper scrubber pad to texture it. I blotted until I had a consistent texture. I did two coats on each wall, which helped hide my electrical wires. (As seen in above photos)

I also finally decided on shingles. There were so many lovely options, some very detailed victorian styles.
I went with the square ones. I know. Boring. But I have my reasons.
The roof was never meant to be a focal point. It would just look stupid if I left it unfinished. I didn't want to have some crazy distracting pattern up there, though.

 
The other thing is, I knew I wanted to do real cedar shingles, but that I wanted them gray. Once I got the shingles on, I had a hard time wanting to paint them. I have an unusual obsession with the beauty of natural wood color/grain.

There was this one house from "I'm a Giant" that inspired me to paint them, and I knew I'd be happier if they looked like this:

Go Haus Go

I love how old hers look. I'm jealous of that texture. The rest of the 'house' is really beautiful, too. You should go check it out, then come back and finish the rest of this.

I'm pretty happy with the overall appearance/color pallette of the roombox. Especially since I was able to use paint colors I had on hand from our 1:1 house. The exterior walls are from our basement, the roof is from our front door, and the white gloss interior walls are from the Winnebago. The stucco powder mix, I had on hand. I bought the large bag of 1,000 cedar shingles for $23. I have enough left for the rest of my life. I decided to paint the roof and finish the trim before assembling all the pieces. Just to save me from cleaning sawdust out of the C-channel trim.
The only thing I'm unsure of is how blue my roof looks. It really accentuates how much blue pigment is in our gray paint. It's an oil based paint mixed with citrus solvent to make more of a stain than opaque coverage. It looks sort of slate-ish, so I don't hate it. I'll have to see how it looks in all types of light before I kneejerk-reaction-paint-it-black.

I also knew I wanted walnut fascia trim around the roof, so I finished it to match the interior walnut, then trimmed it in:

The stuff I needed to do to be able to use the roombox is done, and there are only a couple of items left on the list. These jobs can be completed while the structure is fully assembled:

-Organize utility wall

The taller exterior wall won't make it into official TinyFixation shop pictures if I can help it, so I'll be affixing a system to keep the transformer and lead-in wires tamed and contained when the structure is not in use.

-Decide if I want interior trim

Here's the thing. I love me some trim. In the dollhouse, I think that was one of the details that really helped make it look realistic. It almost kills me not to in the roombox, however the name of the game here is versatility. If I have trim in some places, it could prevent certain space plans. I think I'll be making a baseboard for each of the wooden walls (one pair in walnut, and one in white), but not glue them in. I'll paper the walls first, then use museum putty to attach the desired baseboard over the paper. These can be made on a scene-by-scene basis. There. Settled then. So glad we had this talk.


Now I gotta scramble to finish my Cubebot Challenge entry, due tomorrow... eek!