I'm so happy that I finally have some finished work to show off. It's been a while, I think.
As mentioned, I've been working on a gift for someone. That someone was my adorable baby niece. She's an infant, there's not much I could make that wouldn't be a choking hazard. So I opted to just make something cute and functional.
Originally a beat up stepping stool, I fixed it and then drew/painted my own rendition of the nursery rhyme, "Hey Diddle Diddle", on it.
The rhyme includes a little dog, but they have two little dogs in their home. So I made sure to include both of them. I think it turned out pretty well.
The photos were taken in two different rooms-I was trying to wrap up my present while photographing it (I don't recommend doing that, btw).
Yes, those are glow in the dark stars on the ceiling.
The hardwood floor is made from Popsicle sticks, several coats of polyurethane, and lots of patient sanding. Just about every person that has seen this floor in real life let me know how impressed they were by the craftsmanship. Dollhouse hardwood floors-apparently my calling in life.
I'm going through the furniture I have and working on decorating the inside now. Last I saw it, the interior was a mess, but it's fun to keep rearranging things. I'll post pics of that once I decide on the layout. Then I get to make more stuff. Yay!
...Oh hey look, I've got followers. Hi everybody! :)
I'm concerned that I go too long between blog posts. Actually I know I do. Mostly I blame time, and my inability to find some so I can finish all of my side projects-and then blog about them.
Soooo, we'll call this a progress report.
1. A month or two ago I decided to make a gift for someone, and that's been eating up most of my spare time lately-it's more involved then I thought it would be. I can't really show or talk about it much as I'm not sure if the recipient(s) read this, but I'm hoping to finish said gift on time and get some decent photos before I give it to them. Kind of stressing at the moment though because I'm still sketching at a time that I should be finishing the final painting. (Ah!)
2. I was hoping to have photos of my finished dollhouse, but it still needs some touch ups. If I photograph it now I'll end up not bothering to finish it, which I will regret later. So this is my motivation. What I can do is tell you that it's a Snow Country Chalet by Real Good Toys , which I named Billy so that I'd remember to actually build it (sounds stupid, but it worked). So if I'm talking about "Billy" it's the Snow Country Chalet. Ok? Ok, moving on...It's actually more of a summer home than a ski lodge they way I'm using it, but I live a couple of hours north of a ski resort that switches to a golf course in the summer, so I'm thinking that it really isn't all that weird of a thing to do. Anyways I promise that the next post will be photos of the finished house.
I decided to bite the bullet and just tear the shingles off of the Van Buren. Billy's roof took forever, so I didn't want to have to start over on this one. Really Did Not want too.
Before
After
Lots of shingles were broken, missing, falling off, painted on, or just
not right and I felt like this was the best solution. Plus the front of
the roof curves, but the shingles didn't, so that was covered up until
now. I also noticed that the chimneys needed to be fixed and popped
those off too. Glad I did because it turns out that this neat little
lamp was trapped inside one of them.
~ I kept hearing something rolling around when ever I moved the house-it all makes sense now.
I'm going to have to sand all the glue and stray bits of wood off the roof, and then figure out what to do with it-I don't want to deal with wood shingles again. I want to use egg carton bricks for siding, so Paperclay maybe? That's going to be a lot of Paperclay...
3. I was working on getting into a local community market, so I could spend the summer selling more of my prints and craft work, but that fell through, *sigh*, again. It's ok though, more for the Etsy shop (and fall craft shows). I'm alternating between being away from my computer and out of town for the next few weeks, but after that I plan to post tons of new items, so keep an eye out for them.
Well I think I've been talking enough, and I really do need to finish that gift...So that's it for now.
I'd love to dive right into redecorating the Van Buren, but I would also love it if it stops falling in on itself. So here's how I (hopefully) fixed the foundation.
First, the before shot;
^^^^^ Check out the flaky, broken piece.
Glued the main floor back into the walls. This wall is a little warped and flaking apart, so the tape held it until the glue dried.
Put in some slabs of balsa wood to replace the missing pieces. And that should keep the floor from falling out again.
After the walls dried I sanded all the old foundation pieces, and then added more balsa wood for extra support.
Some of the pieces were still pretty weak looking and flaking apart, so I decided to re-enforce them with paperclay.
So here's the finished foundation, which appears to be working out. All it needs is some paint, that might have stopped this from happening in the first place, and maybe some craft foam so it doesn't scratch up the table it's on.
And as for the old basement smell I've been having issues with...I think I found a solution for that too. Not to drop a plug for any specific brand, but a lemon scented All-purpose cleaner seems to be doing the trick. Scrubbed down the foundation area before and after working on it a couple times-days later and the smell hasn't come back. I think I'll repeat the process with each part of the house as I work on it, and hopefully that's the end of the smell for good. Yay!
I was completely obsessed with them since I was 4, and that only stopped in high school because I was playing the Sims(technically also dollhouses). On the one hand it's kind of a dork hobby, but meh. We're all dorks.
Sophomore year of college I decided that I had to find something creative to do in between stressing over my design courses, and ended up getting into sculpting mini fruit/food out of clay. A member of my family noticed, and gave me a dollhouse kit for Christmas. Didn't have time to build it, but over the course of 4 years-I made time.
It's so close to being finished I won't post photos yet, but here's one of it's future (also unfinished) inhabitants chilling on the balcony before I install the railings.
More on that later. (If you've visited the mini section of my Etsy shop, you already got a preview of the interior)
Right now I'd like to show you my next project, which I've just started and will keep you updated on as I go.
This beat up beauty is the Van Buren by Greenleaf. It sat in my basement for a year before I managed to dig up that info. It's a discontinued kit(they re-released it in half-scale though), so I was having some trouble tracking it down. Ended up finding a stock photo on Deviatart that looked just like it, and messaged the photographer to ask if he knew anything about it. Many thanks to Rodney Smith for helping me out. Nice guy, he didn't know much about the house in his photo, but he did know that it was around 30 years old and purchased at a store in the state, which narrowed my search enough to find out what model it was.
So how did I get the Van Buren? Someone was throwing it out and my brother picked it from the side of the road. He restores old furniture, but dollhouses weren't really worth his time. So he was going to resell it as is. After being lectured, by most of my family, that I wasn't allowed to buy it from him ("There's no room for it"), I got it as a Christmas present. (my family's weird/cool like that).
I've been dying to fix it up for almost two years now, but some stuff got in my way. Like time, money, and the fact that I had to scrub a layer of crud off of it first.
Here's the interior;
Here's the interior again after I lathered, scrubbed, rinsed, and then practically hosed it down;
I know the basics of restoring a dollhouse-Don't destroy what's already there. It couldn't be helped though. Between the dirt, hair(disturbing amount of that, btw), and pre-existing water damage there really wasn't anything to save-it was already destroyed. And it's got this old damp basement smell that I'm still working on getting rid of. I just had to get it clean. My philosophy regarding this house; It was practically land fill anyways, so everything I do is an improvement.
I was also given a box of things that were found in/with the house(Neat!, but also in need of cleaning);
The Good news-The bones of the house are pretty much ok. The house was sagging when I got it, but I took a good look at it-turns out it's got a crumbling foundation. <-Sounds bad, but balsa wood and some glue and she'll be good as new, if not better.
All of the acetate in the windows needs replacing(already tore some out), and the frames have some cracks/broken pieces, but it's all fixable.
Biggest problems are the missing balcony and upstairs exterior door. I have the door's mate, which I should be able to copy, and I've got the supports for the balcony-that's the tricky part. ...The roof is going to be a big mess, I'll probably just pull off the shingles and start over(if they don't fall off first).
So right now I'm broke and have no budget for this project, but between stuff I've collected and leftovers from building the last kit I'm hoping that I can make this an awesome dollhouse, and since it's already put together I'm hoping it won't take 4 years.
I am really good at this blog thing. Yes, that's sarcasm. How long has it been? 5 months? *counts* Yep 5 months.
Will I fill you in on what's been going on? Some of it, yes.
I watched a lot of TV this winter. So much so that I got bored with the three channels I usually focus on and decided to figure out how the digital box thing actually worked. Ended up watching, "Face Off" on Syfy. Kind of a neat show. Even if you're not into movie monsters you get to watch people being competitively creative, and learn a little bit about their thought/creative processes along the way. Out of what I ended up viewing the, "Night Terrors", episode was my favorite. Here's a recap from Fearnet, in case you have no idea what I'm talking about; Recap
The phobia I stuck to was, "Ommetaphobia-Fear of Eyes", because my personal work tends to be...'eye-centric', and I was a little disappointed with the end result on the show. Not to say that the Egyptian goddess thing was a bad creation, it does look cool, but the creator (Tara, I think) didn't seem to put enough focus on the subject-eyes. So I thought about it, and while I don't have the skill set/experience to even begin to compare myself to the people on Face-Off, I am a designer and I decided to come up with my own concept piece for, "Ommetaphobia".
Cute, isn't it? ...Yeah, it gives me the creeps too.
And with that, I move on...
After much delay, The Etsy store is open! YAY! *dances*
I'm still thinking over a few things. Speaking of which, if you were hoping to purchase a print, feel free to shoot me an email, but otherwise they're no longer available online. Might post some listings on Etsy for them later, but for now I'm just selling them at craft shows.
So what AM I posting on Etsy right now? Minis and jewelry-check it out;
I'm in more of a, "It's time to do stuff", mood instead of a blogging mood.
Not surprised here, I'd rather draw a picture than write a story, BUT this is a blog so blog I shall.
Or at least fill you in a little on what's happened since last post;
1. Check out Emily Hendersen's, "I'm a Giant Challenge", http://www.stylebyemilyhenderson.com/blog/tag/im-a-giant-dollhouse-challenge
I don't typically follow the stars of HGTV, but I do love dollhouses & design. Plus reading blogs about someone's dollhouse building meltdown w/ pretty dollhouse photos included-always entertaining. And there are tons of blogged entries to read through, which took me a few hours. Would have loved to join, but didn't tumble upon it until way to close to the deadline (which they added another month to, but still-no time to do it here)
Talked to a local store owner in Lockport about selling my prints on commission at her establishment. She recommended I give her upcoming, "Christmas Show", a shot and then go from there.
I was thinking about doing a few art shows next summer (which means I'd need to take care of the legal stuff anyway) and the entry fee was pretty low, so I thought a one day craft show might be a good place to start.
Selling prints at a craft show is a dumb idea, btw. People don't go to craft shows looking for art-they might buy it, but functional stuff is more likely to sell. I knew this already, I've been to craft shows and seen the booths that only sell prints- they're usually pretty dead.
I do, "make stuff", as a hobby though. And I was also looking for an excuse to start selling some things.
So I did the craft show and then for a week or so afterwards various people would ask, "So, how did it go?", but of course what they meant was, "Did you make any money?"
The short response is No.
The slightly longer, but still short response is:
No, but I was expecting a loss to begin with so it went pretty well*.
*Read on for the long response(or if you want some perspective on selling stuff at a craft show).
Reasons why I shouldn't have made money at the show;
I only had a month to advertise that I would be there-not ideal.
I'm a craft show newbie-Craft show people didn't know I existed until they stumbled upon my booth.
I had no idea what the Lockport market was like in terms of people who would be interested in my work-though it's something I'd like to learn.
I had no idea what kind of vendors would be there-also something to learn from.
I've never done a craft show,
and would probably mess something up-look at all the learning.
I had to create an entire booth worth of inventory at once-that's a big expense.
I had overhead(display material/tablecloth/promo materials)
and an entry fee to factor in-more expenses.
Yeah, with some luck I could turn a profit, but like I stated earlier, I was expecting a financial loss.
So why would I spend my time and money on something when I might not immediatly turn a profit?
The local exposure alone is well worth the money spent. The number of people who now own a quality example of my work or, at the very least, a promo card with my Deviantart page, Facebook page, email, and other contact info, the amount of self-promotion I got within a 5 hour time span is well worth what I spent to get it. And it's not like nobody was interested in what I had, I did make some sales(lots of small purchases), so the 'loss' is really only on paper.
Here's how it actually went;
The ornaments were a bust this time around-I was inbetween a booth selling them cheaper and a booth giving them away with each purchase. The main purpose of having them was so that my booth fit in with the Christmas theme, so that's not the end of the world.
My minis sold the best, mostly thanks to the dollhouse and Barbie owning little girls who stoppd by. Although little boys thought they were cool too, or at least, they thought it was cool that I could make something so small and detailed. I had some fairly long convos with both groups.
I sold 1 illustration, at half size, unframed, and that took some talking. This would be discouraging were it not for the legitimate feedback I'd gotten throughout the day.
Interactions with customers(that did not result in sales) typically played out like this;
Person walks up to my booth, looks at my work, asks a question, looks through the mini portfolio I had on the table, asks if I'm online, I give them a card, and then they'd move on-they didn't buy anything that day, but I've gotten into their heads for the next time.
Or;
Person walks up to my booth, looks at my work, asks a question, looks through the mini portfolio I had on the table, asks if I'll be around tomorrow, I explain that it's a one day show and try to give them a card, but they don't want it because-they don't have the internet. This usually led to a conversation about what shows I might do in the future(One woman made sure she wrote down my name/what I sell before she left).
This all looks very promising.
And I think I may have uncovered a no-internet Craft Show going sub-culture. Anthropologists, feel free to look into it, but I'd better be credited in your next book.
And all the kids that were looking through my portfolio. I've been looking into doing children's books("You should do children's books", is the most common comment I get about my illustrations, which I agree with comepletely), but up until this show the only feedback I've gotten was from adults. Granted, adults are the ones who pay for such things, but seeing a young child looking at your illustrations, clearly amazed by what they're looking at-that's pretty encouraging.
So....
Was this show worth it?
Short response: Yes.
The slightly longer, but still short response:
This craft show, cost me about as much as seeing a movie, opening week, while enjoying some popcorn and a drink. After factoring in sales, the 'loss' was less than half of what I spent.
Losses happen, but the way I see it...
If you're willing to invest more money in the entertainment industry then you are in your own work-quit now. You are probably just blocking the way for someone who may actually be successful.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~Side note, I'm still working on the blog design. I can't find a Sans Serif type I like, but that's probably a boring rant to read so I won't get into it-Be sure to introduce yourself to all of the fish before you leave.
~~Another side note, since I promised entertainment in my last post, Please enjoy this bizzare Christmas animation I made with my little brother back in high school-using nothing but MS Paint, Windows Movie Maker, a microphone, and some bells(Turn your volume DOWN). Ah, memories...
