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a quick little project

  • Posted on September 17, 2018 at 7:50 am

i decided to add shelves along the back wall. not terribly practical for a moving vehicle, but i thought they would look cuter than cupboards.

a quick project- shelves
first i cut three shelves from craft sticks, in various/lengths widths. 6 balsa wood rectangles will form the support brackets.

a quick project- shelves
here they are glued together

a quick project- shelves
and painted. i need more yellow in my caravan, so yellow paint it is

a quick project- shelves
once again i over estimated. i had cut the shelves before i put the bed in. once it was in, there was only room for one shelf. i used the middle one.

and the bedding

  • Posted on September 16, 2018 at 12:46 pm

time to get to work on bedding for the bed

first a mattress,
mattress
i wanted it to be fairly thin, so it didn’t take up too much space. i cut out two pieces of warm and natural time to start on bedding
cut two pieces of warm and natural, the exact size of the bed, then used it as a pattern to stitch the mattress

mattress 2
turned, stuffed and stitched closed. the lighting is off, the colors are a bit brighter and it has metallic gold accents. much closer to the picture below

mattress
and in place.

next the bedding
quilt take 1
i had this lovely soft rayon, which i bought just for this project. it had a printed pattern on it that kept changing, and i loved that particular rectangle. it had the right colors, and looked like striped piecework without having to sew seams. the fewer the seams, the better it drapes. to get the little piece i wanted, i had to buy .4m. luckily it was on sale and really cheap.

to keep the quilt/blanket drapey i made an unstuffed quilt. it looked like it would work nicely, but unfortunately once i put it on the bed, it was still too stiff. i still like how it drapes, so am sure i can use it somewhere else.

luckily there were three identical rectangles across, so i could try again.
quilt take 2
the good news was, that i got to try a technique that i’ve been wanting to try for ages. this time i stuffed the quilt with a single layer of warm and natural and one of tinfoil, folded over three times for sturdiness. i used spray adhesive to hold them together on the underside of the quilt, but left the top loose, except for the two rows of quilting. it worked perfectly! i can scrunch and bend the quilt to achieve whatever level of messiness my ‘pukis have left ๐Ÿ™‚

lastly pillows!
pillows!
i pulled a bunch of fabics and cut little rectangles for pillows. since they take so little fabric i went a bit crazy….
they are stuffed with tiny glass beads to let them “plop” realistically. it is also possible to poke little “head dents” in them which will stay till i shake them out or move them.

pillows, the chosen ones
of course once i put them on the bed i realized i had way too many! so i selected just five. the rest will go in my box of spare props to be used in another project or sold.

bedding
and all the bedding in place. the purple blanket is a rectangle of silk velvet (much softer and a bit thinner than regular) i left it with unfinished edges and no lining to keep it soft.

making the bed

  • Posted on September 15, 2018 at 12:32 pm

i wanted to make a bed with storage underneath.
making a bed
i’m starting with this table with faux drawers from the dollar store. i would have preferred real drawers, but this is what i had, and checking out new tables with working drawers showed that they were all too wide, so faux it is. besides this is still about decluttering so as much as possible, i am using what i already have on hand.

making a bed
first i chopped off the legs

making a bed
then trimmed off side edges. it will be the perfect width without them, but too wide if i don’t. i’m used a hand saw, cutting as close as i can

making a bed
here it is with all the bits cut off and a light sanding to try and get the overly shine varnish off, but leave most of the color.

making a bed
next the knobs pried off and replaced with silver bead “handles”

making a bed
lastly dry fit to check for any needed adjustments. i filled in the back with a small piece of foam, carefully trimmed to fit the curve of the back wall. once i finish checking the fit , i will glue both place with fast-tak glue.

next step bedding…

a new wall

  • Posted on September 12, 2018 at 7:10 am

so i decided that while having that big opening let in a lot of light, it also severely limited what i could do on the inside. so today is operation wall close.
inside wall
first i had to create a pattern for the inside wall. i cut and added, taped and refit, till the pattern was perfect. this will be recut from printed cardstock

outside wall
the other side was easier, i just flipped it over and traced. then used this to cut a piece of foam core board. that will add stability and thickness to the wall. i will also use the same pattern to cut the outer wall.

inside wall dry fit foam core
and here you can see the foamcore stuck in. it’s not perfect, but close enough, since it will get completely covered anyway.

inside wall (2)
my printed wall fits pretty much perfectly.

outside wall
this was a bit of a miss. i altered the color on a jpg of wood i had, trying to look like the window is boarded up. i trimmed carefully to get a perfect fit. but didn’t realize till i added the bottom layer that leveling the wood from top to bottom makes it right at the top, but wonky at the bottom, sigh. i’m still deciding whether to leave it because it will usually be in out of sight, or try and do something to fix it? but what?

please ignore the mess in the background. the downstairs kitchen is on my list of places to clean/tidy, but i probably won’t get to it for a long time as it is far down the list, since very few people see it.

front
front side
alternate views of the bottom half. i like the way they look…. and aren’t jam jars useful?

wheels painted

  • Posted on September 10, 2018 at 6:34 am

i’m not a terribly neat painter, so these took a surprisingly long time to paint. i had to do one color at a time, then keep touching up where i over painted. but they are done, and i’m happy. i was originally planning bright red wheels, with yellow centers, but realized they would get lost against the red body of the caravan, so i reversed the colors. it’s hard to tell in the picture, but the very center is lime green. the outer ring is metallic gold, and the outer edge is sponged lightly with brown and antique copper, supposedly to look like they are dirty from driving along dusty roads, but i’m not sure that was quite successful. regardless i think they work.
wheels

i absolutely adore these wheels (photo by francesca sorbello.)
carretto

if i was a better painter i would try adding embellishment, but alas i’m not…

i got wheels!

  • Posted on September 7, 2018 at 9:02 am

not a lot happening, since i have had multiple appointments the past couple of days but my wheels arrived ๐Ÿ™‚
i got wheels!
they are very nice detailed, and just need painting

i thought you were cleaning?

  • Posted on September 6, 2018 at 7:38 am

the purge is actually going well. i got 4+ large boxes of stuff for the charities. i’m taking a load over tomorrow for the local one and my parents are taking the others to the one out of town. now my only problem is i am running out of boxes!

but in the midst of purging, i found several of projects that i needed to decide if i would finish them or give them away. some of them are fairly involved so they went off into the do later pile, but a couple of them looked like they could be finished up relatively quickly.. or at least a good portion of the project. so i decide to get started and see if my vision was even reasonable.

the first was this birdhouse. i bought it a while back, ’cause it was on end of season clearance, and i thought it had good potential to become a caravan for my realpukis
i thought  you said you were cleaning?
the goal is a gypsy/bohemian look so i went through my file of saved tiles and printed off this one for the floor. i sealed it with a spray coat of clear matte varnish to keep it from running or rubbing off too easily
i thought  you said you were cleaning?
the wheels were the next to go. i thought the original ones were dorky looking and now that i have decided to finish this, i ordered spoked wooden ones instead. they should be here in a couple of weeks. the inside got painted with a coat of bright yellow. once that dried i rethought my plan and printed a yellow and blue tile instead to go between the wood beams, then painted over the yellow with a mix of blue, olive green metallic and teal metallic mixed together loosely. ie, i stirred them till they were partly, but not completely blended, then brushed them on trying not to overbrush so the color was partly streaky. i only did one coat so the yellow shows through in spots as well.
i thought  you said you were cleaning?
here you can see the wall and ceiling beams and tile
i thought  you said you were cleaning?

of course in keeping with my plan, the great craft room cleanup continued between coats of paint ๐Ÿ™‚

hue shift done

  • Posted on September 4, 2018 at 8:26 pm

it’s been a long time since i’ve had time to write here on the blog. life, and particularly my kids, seem constantly conspiring to keep me away. i’m hoping to have more time to blog and work with my dolls this fall, but we will see how it all plays out.

in the meantime i realized i never posted a picture of my finished blanket
hue shift done
it actually is square, the picture is just cockeyed…

the red and black one has all the squares done, but i haven’t quite decided what to do with the border, so it is on hold for now.

eatsleepknit yarnathon

  • Posted on February 7, 2018 at 5:25 pm

every year i say i’m not going to do it, and every year i do anyway….. join in the eatsleepknit yarnathon that is. erin and her team of knitting kitties keep coming up with such fun new challenges that i can’t resist. though true to my quest to keep as much as my crafting as possible bjd related, i try to adapt the challenges to doll sized whenever possible.

this years year long challenge (or kal if you prefer) is to knit a hue shift blanket. my girls really don’t need any more blankets, but i couldn’t resist this pattern – with all its possibilities. done in laceweight on 1.5mm

i played with the color picker and came up with two different blankets to try. one is a 3 color shift, and each block of 9 squares will rotate to give it a more abstract feel.
red shift 2 9x9
i’ve done about 2/3rds of the squares but because i am doing all of the same squares at once, only one block is completely finished
red shift block 1

the second is more like the original and reminds me of a tropical sunset with the bright pink/orange/yellow hues fading into the green/blue/purples of the water
carribean sunrise
carribean sunrise progress

the pink row isn’t attached since i am adding an orange row in between the yellow and pink to make it flow better. it was really hard to find the right orange as the laceweight yarns weren’t quite the right hue and the one that was perfect only came in heavier weight. unfortunately it turned out to be a yarn that was impossible to separate into single plies, without the yarn calling apart :sigh so i am doing it with an orange yarn that is just ok (especially since i’m not a fan of orange to begin with) but i think it works well enough, and the progression really needed an orange to smooth out the gradation between yellow and the peachy pink

it’s a very addicting knit, since the squares go fairly quickly and it’s it keeps changing so there is always something new to see.

monet’s garden dress

  • Posted on June 23, 2017 at 9:01 am

you got a glimpse of megs new dress in my last post , but here it is in all it’s glory

monets garden dress

this is one of the dresses i made for the esk persian dreams kal. i took quick pics done just to verify i had finished the hexes dresses for my kal, but meg couldnโ€™t resist trying this one on. this is one of those hate to love colors. it was pretty in the skein, muddled when wound and then started looking like clown barf when i started my โ€œhexโ€. luckily i persevered because now it reminds me more of a monet garden painting.

now i really need to make her some proper leggings to wear under it before we go to the wedding next week