To Build a Fire

This week I tackled the challenge of getting a simulated fire in the fireplace I have for Evangeline.  The mantel of the fireplace is gorgeous, highly-detailed, resin and wood, but the inside of the fireplace is a simple black hole with nuthin' goin' on.  I've had this one in the back of my mind for months now, trying to figure out what I would use for a fireplace grate, andirons, and what I would do to simulate a fire.  I was walking through Walmart the other day and my eye caught these:

That was my "Ah-ha!" moment and the project was under way!  Three simple coat hooks at $3 each would solve my problem.  I immediately went home and cut a piece of wood  to use as the base.  I spray painted the wood with a bronze spray paint to match the hooks and here's what I ended up with:

On it's own in the fireplace it looked like this:

Already it looked better than just a gaping black hole but then I had the idea of using:

I have a ton of these in with my Halloween decorations.  They will start selling them again soon in places like Michael's and AC Moore, or you can order them year-round online, just google "flicker bulb" and you'll find plenty of sources.  These bulbs have a chandelier tip on them so for sockets I used:

These are sold by Department 56 and used to light the miniature buildings for their Christmas villages. They are the perfect size for this project.  I used garden sheers to snip off the metal tabs at the base of the socket that hold it in place in the buildings but I would recommend using tin snips if you have them.  I also did not want them to be white so I left the bulb that came with it in place to protect the inside of the socket and spray painted the outside of the socket and first 8 inches of the cord with black Krylon Fusion spray paint, which bonds to plastic.  The bulb is then forfeit but that's okay because I wanted to replace it with a flicker bulb.  Then I used a combination of a power drill and a jig saw to cut a hole in the back of the fireplace just large enough for the socket to go through:

I hot glued the sockets to the homemade grate, then hot glued the grate to the base of the fireplace.  I then got some scrap pieces of wood (you could also use real twigs) and I roughly chopped them up and misted them with a little matte black spray paint (I would not use gloss on this) to simulate burned wood, and I hot glued them in one log at a time to create my fireplace.

Here's a shot of it in my parlor diorama:

Mortimer and Evangeline have afternoon tea.  In the background you can see the golf ball display case that I bought, removed the door,  and turned it into a book case for the library at Barkley Manor.  Okay, well right now it has Evangeline's shoes on it but eventually it will be all miniature books.

So you might think "well good for you, you have a perfect scale fireplace to begin with but what do I do if I don't have one?"  Well, I encourage you to start looking for things in the shape of a fireplace that fit Evageline's scale.  I found a miniature dresser on Ebay (search words: salesman sample dresser*) that all I could see when I looked at it was a fireplace mantel.  I removed the drawers and carefully disassembled the interior structure.  Then I used a jig saw to cut off the back 8 inches.  I re-assmebled it and used the leftover wood from the top of the dresser to form a base and now it looks like a fireplace:

The andirons are just some old curtain rod finials that I found in my attic.  I still need to attach the back and make another grate and go through the process above to get  a simulated fire going but my point is...if you don't have it,  MAKE IT!  That's half the fun.

(* in the Victorian-era it was very common for traveling salesman to have high-quality miniatures of whatever it was they were selling.  These miniatures are highly collectable today and can range in price from a few dollars to thousands of dollars depending on what they are.  Often they are too big (or expensive) for dolls but sometimes you can score a real one-of-a-kind treasure in the right scale.  This dresser, by the way, I bought hoping it would be a dresser for EGs attic but it was too large and as soon as I put her next to it I knew it had to be a fireplace.  So check out salesman samples on ebay.  I scored a miniature working stove from the 1920's for $20 that is perfect scale for Evangeline, not that she would ever cook, but... It will be the subject of a blog entry at some point)

So here's a video of the flickering fire in the library at Barkley Manor:

Making Accessories For Your Doll's Vanity

With the attic structure finished I am now free to do what I really love doing which is crafting miniatures out of every day items.  I've been doing crafts of all kinds for years so I have quite a stash of "stuff."  My stash is made up of odds and ends of all kinds, some picked up on sale at craft stores, some picked up at yard sales, some bought in "lots" on Ebay, and my favorite stuff is usually the stuff that I salvage from household items being thrown away.  Old jewelry, old hardware, game pieces, metal findings from one of my favorite websites (http://www.bsueboutiques.com/), you name it and it's in here)  Here's what I am starting with:

The first project was to make a sewing basket for Evangeline.  You could use any thread you want but I started with some vintage silk thread that belonged to my great-grandmother.  It's been in a cigar tin since about 1920 and although I would never use it for actual sewing projects, I think using a little of it for EG is a perfect way for me to enjoy seeing it every day.  In this pic you can see the small spools that I bought in the wood section at Michael's ($3.99 for the bag), and the thread I am using:

After I wound the thread on the spools I rubbed a dab of Aileen's clear tacky glue on the end of the thread to seal it up.  I put some material scraps, the pin cushion from Tonner's Anne Harper, and the spools of thread into the picnic basket that came with Tonner's Miss Gulch and voila the sewing basket:

Then I decided her vanity was looking a little bare so it was time to make some dresser top jars and bottles.  To make these I started with mini bottles found in the scrapbook section of Michaels:

I didn't want all of the bottles to be corked so to give some of them a more elegant appearance I used wire clippers to remove the shanks off the back of some vintage buttons and then glued the buttons to the top of the bottles after I had filled them with miniature white pom-poms (to resemble cotton balls) and baking soda (to resemble talcum powder or both salts).  You can see the finished jars in the photo at the end.

To make a water carafe I used a small crystal door knob or drawer pull (I believe these are from the Tim Holtz scrapbooking line, found at Michael's.)  I unscrewed the base, flipped it over, and glued a faceted blue rhinestone into the opening using Aileen's clear tacky glue.  Here is a before and after, the drawer pull on the left, the water carafe on the right:

I also made a sherry decanter using the same technique but a different faceted rhinestone.  Here is a pic of my sherry decanter, next to Evangeline's sherry decanter:

To make perfume bottles I inserted a small lightbulb into the hole of an octagonal bead.  This pic shows only the "before", you will see the finished bottle a few pics down:

Next I wanted to make some other things you might find on a vanity table.  These vintage game pieces were transformed..

into...

from left to right: a perfume bottle, a tooth powder tin (In the early 19th century toothpaste was bought as a powder, not as a finished paste), a talcum powder/body powder container, and a powder puff.  I spray painted the game pieces either gold or white for a base and glued vintage buttons (with the shanks cut off) to the top of the two on the right.  I used the following Dover clip art books to make authentic vintage labels for the tooth powder tin and the talcum powder:

These CD roms with clip art are very easy to use.  You save the images as high-res jpgs to your desk top.  I insert them into powerpoint where I am able to manipulate them down to the correct size without any distortion of the image.  You can't see it in my pic but in person you can actually see the writing and the pictures on the labels.

Then I figured Evangeline needed a hand mirror.  I had a recycled drawer pull to use as the handle (it was a dangling drawer pull), a small metal frame from B'sues Boutique (see link above) and a small mirror from a bag of mirrors bought at Michael's.  I used The Ultimate glue because it works well on metal to metal bonding.  You do need to let it dry overnight before touching and it takes a few days to set completely but it sure beats welding!

Here is a look at the finished vanity top, and by the way, I made the picture of Mortimer by dropping a jpg of him from the WI site into powerpoint and shrinking it down:

That's all for now.  I'm still trying to decide if my next diorama will be the drawing room of Dreary of Dreary Manor or the drawing room a Barkley Manor.