A little more progress on the manor house

I have visitors at the moment - my brother has come to stay so fitting minis in is a little tricky but I have made some progress this week. The second floor of the manor is coming together quite nicely. I stained and laid the wood floors in the sitting room and dining room, built the stair case, wallpapered the three rooms, fitted the fireplaces and hung pictures on the hall wall. Actually that sounds like quite a lot! Here are some photos of what I did.

Here is one of the floors stained ...

 ... and varnished. I just used very thin balsa wood 3" wide which I scored into floor boards and then glued onto thin card which I then stuck down onto the floors with double sided tape so I can still access the wiring if I need to.

Here is the staircase ready to glue in place.

The fireplaces ready to go into the dining room and sitting room. They are cheap resin fireplaces which I painted and then embellished with gold. I painted a piece of card with black acrylic paint for the firebacks.

 This photo shows the sitting room floor now laid, the fireplace in position along with the 'marble' hearth (a printed marble design stuck onto card) and the beautiful wallpaper in place.

 I hung portraits of the family on the stairs - there are more on the opposite wall too which I don't seem to have taken a photo of.

And this is the dining room. I need to use filler on the sides of the fireplace and the corners of the skirting board yet and the doors still need their handles but it is coming along.

Back to work on the Georgian manor house

I've managed to resurrect all my enthusiasm for my 24th scale Georgian manor house - thank goodness! It's been sitting on my workbench for quite a few months now and it really is time that I made progress. So this week I've started work on the first floor, making doors and painting door frames and skirting boards. No pictures of this as it's all pretty dull work really - has to be done and looks fine once it's finished but it's not much to see whilst in progress.

What is slightly more interesting though is that I made some kitchen units and I thought I'd show you again the ground floor rooms ... just to refresh your memory.

Now the wall units are in place I see that actually there's lots more space on that back wall than I'd anticipated but I think I'll just put a shelf up over the sink to hold cleaning products and the like. I've decided that although it is a Georgian manor house, the family now living in it are of a later (as yet unspecified) era. This gives me the freedom to put slightly more modern items in here if I wish rather than slavishly sticking to a specific date period (although I know the Georgian era did cover almost a hundred years and so itself includes many different styles).

This is the butler's pantry. I'm going to put a couple of chairs in here where the servants would have warmed themselves by the fire in an evening once all the work was finished.

And this is the ground floor hallway. Those on the upper two floors will look very similar to this. On the top floor, which is actually in the roof space, the stairs come up into one of the two rooms so there is no hallway as such. Lots of decisions to be made before I reach that point though.

Miniature club display

Every year there is a flower, vegetable and handicrafts show in our local park and the miniatures group that I attend is always invited to put on a display of their work. I thought that you might like to see the work of some of our very talented members.

 There was a group of harbour scenes ...

... a wonderful mouse house ...

... and Red Riding Hood's grandmother's house.

 

As well as individual pieces on show the group undertakes two projects each year - one year it was market stalls ...

and one year it was a street full of shops. Each person was given a room box and then we go away and do our own thing so they are all very individual as you can see from the examples here.

 There was a craft shop,

  a take away,

 and a pet shop, but also a shoe shop, toy shop, dress shop, charity shop ... you name it, they thought of it!

 
This year's project was an allotment - very appropriate for a flower and vegetable show!

 One lady only works in very small scales so her board holds 9 separate allotments in 1:48 scale.

The Florist shop is finished!

I finally managed to finish the flower shop. It took me a little longer than I'd hoped - largely because I'd underestimated the length of time it would take me to finish the beautiful orchids that I bought from Georgie (http://theminiaturegarden.blogspot.com/). I got the begonia plants on the shelf unit from her too. Aren't they gorgeous? I'm sure that she could have made them much better than I did as the pieces are very tiny but I'm very pleased with them. Anyhow ... you can see for yourself and make up your own mind about the shop ...

This is the view through the front door - with the orchids in pride of place.

 

This little shelf is on the wall behind the shop counter.

And this is the door into the garden which I showed you the other day.

 These are the shelves outside the windows

I had to stick the ivy leaves on individually as the wire kept pulling the whole thing away from the wall. There is a pot which stands in front of the wall so it does look as though the ivy is growing out of the ground and, now I've seen the photos I think I'll paint in some stems with a fine paintbrush and some brown paint.

And finally, this is the view through the door from the garden.

The garden is finished!

At last! I have no doubt I'll tinker with it again later, as I usually do, but for now I'm counting this as finished. I'm determined to finish the florist shop too this weekend as next weekend is our miniatures group show and I still have things to do for that. So ... would you like a guided tour?

The paths are lined with lavender

The flowers are a mixture of haberdashery finds, kits, flower soft sprinkles and fimo and some of the leaves are aquarium plants, some are model railway scenic materials and others are cut from paper.

 I couldn't resist putting a bird in the bird bath...

 

 and another one perched on the end of the railing hoping for some crumbs left behind now the customers have finished their cup of tea.

A weekend learning how to make needlelace

I've just got back from the regional Embroiderer's Guild Summer School and I have to say I've had a wonderful time! We stayed in Bishop Burton College just outside Beverley in student accommodation - but at least the rooms were ensuite even though the beds left a lot to be desired. There is a walled garden, which they opened for us on the Saturday afternoon and it is absolutely beautiful.

There are some pretty interesting carvings in there too ...

There were three workshops available - goldwork, sketch books or needle lace, which is what I chose to do. I've never done this kind of stitching before and I'm now completely hooked! We were taught by Pat Gibson and her work is beautiful. My own efforts are somewhat less so but I'm still very pleased with what I produced in two days of stitching as my first attempt.

There are four different stitches in there, including some 'bud holes' and some beads, which don't really show up too well on the photograph. The edge stitching is called a cordonnette and I put some little twisted loops down two of the ribs. Now I can't wait to do more!