Knot That Easy

"What," you say, "are these pictures!?!?" Well, it's the bedspread for the master bedroom. I thought I'd share the project with you in stages. I'm hopeful the entire piece turns out well in the long run! Because the room is already quite colorful, I chose off-white for the bedspread so that it doesn't conflict with the other colors.

I'm not the most precise person with hand sewing; so, I used graph paper to guide my work in inserting French knots into the top of the bedspread. Then, I transferred this grid to a thin layer of wood. I drilled holes into the wood, and then laid a couple layers of felt under this cloth. By drawing the fabric down tight in between the holes through the wood, I was able to create the above quilted appearance. (Once I had completed the bedspread, the wood backing looked very similar to the graph paper in terms of seeing long stitches stretching between the tufts/French knots.)

Next step is to add lace to the sides and to glue things down so that the bedspread conforms to the mattress (a block of balsa wood). I already have the headboard and foot board assembled.

Making It Look Real

This is the attic of Pam's dollhouse. It was made out of Gatorfoam; so the wood beams you see in the attic were not part of the construction of the house. I added them to create a "real" look to the attic.

Most wood in attics isn't smooth and nicely finished. It was really rather fun to do this part, since I merely had to run some boards through my table saw, and then could glue them up immediately onto the ceiling of the attic. Once the boards were in place, then I added the beams. I waited until I had all of the wood in place before I painted.

I wanted to make this look like an artist's garret. It's a bit on the rough side - perhaps like the character who does his painting and thinking up there...

We purchased the stove in Frankemuth, MI and the fold-up cot from Norm's Dollhouse in the Denver, CO area. The rocking chair was a gift my folks picked up on a visit to China.

You may have noticed the door to the room is slightly ajar. It leads nowhere. That back wall sits against the wall, since this dollhouse is only one-room deep. I designed the house to sit on a shelf on the wall.

Adding a Ghost to Your House

She's there. Unfortunately, she looks like a blur in the right-hand window of Pam's dollhouse. She's a proper Victorian lady standing sideways by the window.

When children visit, it's fun to challenge them to see if they can see the ghost. They usually find her after a little looking.

Since you're reading this blog, you obviously have access to a computer. If you have a colored printer and some overhead film compatible with your type of printer, (available at your nearest office supply store) you can create your own ghost! Here's how:

1. Find a picture of a person that you like. It should be one that has a white background behind the individual and no added details. If you have software on your PC that allows you to crop out the background so that only your subject remains, use that to isolate your "ghost."
   
2. Next, crop the picture so that it's in the same dimensions (roughly) as what you'll need for your window. Then save your ghost's picture in a place you can find easily such as your desktop or your miniatures file.
   
3. Open a Microsoft Word document or a PowerPoint presentation - either works for this. Or if you have the fancy photo software I mentioned above, you probably can make this effect without having to use Word or PowerPoint.
   
4. In the MS Word or PPT, click on view and select toolbars and make sure the drawing toolbar is activated.
5. Draw a rectangle that's the same size of your window where you want to insert your ghost.
   
6. Next, right click on this rectangle and select "Format Auto Shape."
7. Select the tab marked "Colors and Lines."
8. You will see three sections in this dialogue box: Fill, Lines, Arrows. In the "Fill" area click on the down arrow for color. You'll see many different colors, and near the bottom of this drop-down box, you'll see text that says, "Fill effects..." Click on it.
9. You'll now see a new dialogue box with four tabs. Select the one marked "Picture."
10. Click on the box that says, "Select Picture."
11. Navigate to your ghost's picture and double click it. This should insert your picture into the box you have drawn. Then click OK in the dialogue box.
    
12. You will have returned to the original dialogue box and you should see your picture in the box where you would ordinarily see a color. It will be badly distorted at this point, but don't worry about that.
13. Underneath this box you'll see a slider bar and the word "Transparency." Simply slide the bar to the right until your picture becomes ghost-like.
    
14. Since you'll use up a transparency page whether you print one photo or many, I suggest you copy the boxed picture and paste it several times onto the page, and then adjust the level of transparency to several percentages (10%, 15%, 20% and 25%) would be a good start. Then print the transparency.
15. All you have to do is take your scissors, trim the ghost out of the transparency film and glue her to frame of the window (or just set her into the window). Voila! Your dollhouse is now a haunted mansion!
    

Tools I Use to Cut Miters for My Miniatures

There are a number of good ways to cut miters. I use three different tools to cut mine. Each has its advantages.

The first, and simplest way to cut them is to use a miter shear called the Miter Master available from Micro-Mark. This scissors-like shear is extremely sharp and cuts a very precise 45 degree angle in moldings.

Micro-Mark says this tool can cut wood up to 1/2 inch thick by 1-1/2 inches wide. I would never try to cut anything that thick with this shear, but cutting a flat piece of molding? It's awesome!

The next tool I have used extensively in dollhouse miniature making is a miter hand saw. I use the Dobson Miter-Rite from Micro-Mark. With its well-designed, two-screw locking system, you can secure the saw very precisely to the angle you need to cut your wood.

The 45 degree angle marked on the plastic arc on the top is "fairly" accurate, but if you're a perfectionist, don't trust it. You'll want to use a plastic 45 degree angle ruler to set the saw accurately. The stable sleeve that holds the saw blade ensures you will make a virtually straight vertical cut in whatever piece you're mitering.

Finally, my tool of choice for cutting thicker pieces (such as the dentil molding around the ceiling in yesterday's blog), is my modeler's table saw (also purchased from Micro-Mark). It can cut up to an inch thick piece of wood. Again, to get a precise 45 degree angle quickly, use a plastic triangle between the miter gauge and the saw blade to get your angle. (Be sure the saw is turned off before doing this, however!)

Since my workshop is so small, I have my dollhouse on display in my living room, but my workshop is downstairs. So, I frequently get a workout running up and down the stairs to cut wood on my table saw. That's why I've become more comfortable using the Miter Master shear - it's so easy to measure, cut and glue molding - especially window trim. If we had small children in our house, though, I would be very careful in where I left this tool. I shudder to think about how badly a child could get cut on it. (Of course, they could get hurt with my table saw, too, but I can lock my workshop when I'm not in it.)

My thanks to Micro-Mark for permission to use their photographs in today's blog.

Finishing a Ceiling

I thought I'd share briefly about finishing ceilings. This is the dining room of my latest house. I used a combination of things to do it. The ceiling itself is acid-free matte board. (I use acid free materials whenever I can in my work, since I want my grandchildren and maybe even great grandchildren to be able to enjoy my miniatures long after I'm gone.)

With wooden dollhouses, I think matte board is really the easiest way to finish off ceilings. A small piece of molding around the edge helps to hide any imperfections as well as to help hold the matte board in place.

Even though I thought my walls were perfectly straight and all corners were 90 degrees, I checked to make sure using a right angle square. If any corner was not precisely 90 degrees, I would have had to adjust the angle of my miter cuts for that corner. In cases where my ceiling has a cut-out or extends into a smaller nook area, I create a paper model of the ceiling before I ever cut out the matte board. (Saves making mistakes in cutting.) Be SURE you mark which side is up so that when you place the model onto your matte board to draw lines, you have the proper side selected!

I purchased the sconce above the chandelier as well as the ogee and dentil moldings around the edges of the ceiling. (I've tried making my own dentil molding. It's a pain.) However, I did make the octagonal molding that floats around the chandelier sconce. To do that, I cut out straight pieces of wood approximately 1/4" wide and then I used a compass to draw quarter inch wide arcs on the same kind of wood as the straight pieces were cut from. I then cut out the arcs with my table jigsaw.

Next, I used my Dremel tool and one of the Dremel router bits to create the indented and rounded effects of this piece. I routed both edges of each piece. I then used an emery board to smooth out the top of the rounded "bead" to remove any imperfections.

Next, I set my table saw miter gauge at 22.5 degrees. I cut the straight pieces in appropriate lengths so that I had two sets of equal length straight pieces. Then I cut out an arc that filled in the remaining portion of the inner curve of the routed pieces and created a right angle. Holding the curved piece against the arc, I was then able to cut the 22.5 degree angles into the curved sections. The last step of creating this molding was to carefully measure where I wanted the molding to go on the ceiling.

I should mention that I worked on the ceiling outside of the dollhouse. I cut the matte board slightly narrower (about 1/16th inch) than the length and width of the room, so it would go in easily. I then centered the sconce in the middle and glued it into place. With the ceiling flat on the workbench in front of me it was fairly easy to measure and piece together the molding pieces described above. Next I glued the matte board into place. I used a few pieces of thin wood that were about 1/16" taller than the floor to matte board ceiling. I bent these and set them in various spots around the room to help hold the matte board in place while the glue set and dried. (I used at least six boards to hold up the ceiling.) Once the ceiling was firmly in place, I glued in the ogee/dentil moldings.

By the way, I use a capenter's ruler to get precise inside dimensions for the molding. I find it a very helpful tool. Most any hardware that sells tools also sells these rulers. They are eight inches long when folded up. The segments can be twisted 180 degrees to extend out, making the full length of the ruler six feet long when fully extended. Inset into the last piece of the ruler is a sliding brass rule that can be extended. You can insert the folded up ruler into a room, push out the brass extension and get a precise reading of how wide your room is.

It's crucial to get precise measures of the room so that you can cut your molding exactly. If your measurements are too wide, the molding won't fit in the room. If it's too narrow, you'll have ugly gaps in the corner(s) or molding that doesn't go all the way to the wall.

Thank You, Friends!

I have received three blog awards from you, my friendly readers. Thanks to De at De~lightful Minis (twice!) and to MiniMaker at Creating Dollhouse Miniatures for both of you thinking enough of my blog to recognize it.

I'd love to pass along the award, but I'm so green in the blogging arena, I haven't spent enough time snooping around to find a lot of blogs.

I must say, most of the sites I have found have been delightful, and I'm fascinated with what I find. As with all things, though, time is our greatest enemy. I have a full time job and enjoy a full time hobby; if I spend much time on the computer, I'm actually cheating myself on workshop time, and there's still so much to do! I'm working on a fancy, dressed Victorian bed right now, which I'll share with you one of these days soon.

So, to my fellow bloggers and new-found friends, thank you again!

Hand Laid Floors Add Beauty to a Room

These photos illustrate two floors I hand laid for my latest dollhouse. For the floor on the left, I used my table saw to cut three different kinds of wood into small pieces. I used stops on the table top so that each piece would be exactly the same length.


I then took a piece of acid free drawing paper and drew out a grid pattern on it. The lines helped me keep everything in alignment. I dabbed some Weldbond Glue on the bottom of each piece of wood and when I set it down on the paper, I slid it around in a circle in the general area where it would go to even out the glue underneath the piece of wood. Then I pushed it into place and held it momentarily until the glue began to set. I found that I got a more precise pattern if I pushed fairly hard to hold the piece in place. If any extra glue emerged around the sides onto the paper, I immediately scraped it off with a wooden toothpick. If it oozed out from between the pieces of wood, I used a damp tissue to wipe away the excess.


By the way, if you know someone who is diabetic and uses syringes, I've found they are terrific for applying glue - especially if the needles are cut down in length. (If you have small children anywhere around, though, I don't recommend this method.) You can remove the plunger, squeeze a modest amount of glue into the syringe and reinsert the plunger. Don't plan on reusing the syringe. I normally can't reload and do multiple loads of glue in a syringe. The syringe allowed me to squeeze much more precise amounts of glue onto each piece of flooring so that I had far less excess glue to clean up.


Although I had to pay some attention to what I was doing, the process was one that I could do while watching TV. It took me about a week to complete each of these floors. Once they were all glued up, I then took my orbital sander and smoothed them down using some of the finer grades of paper. I finished them using clear stain to bring out the natural colors of the wood, and then I coated them with several coats of Deft varnish. I rubbed the varnish out with some 0000 steel wool and then coated the floors with wood wax. I then buffed down the waxed floor.


By the way, before I began each flooring project, I made a precise model of the room that I intended to floor. I trimmed about 1/16" of wood away from each edge, since I knew I would be adding wooden wainscoting and trim with miniature quarter-round, which would hide all edges of the floor. By cutting it a little shy of full width, it was easier to set the floor down into the room. You can use glue to hold the floor in place or if you think you might have to someday remove the floor to fix some wiring, you can always use double-sided carpet tape to hold it in place. I recommend gluing it down, though; especially if you live in a humid climate.