An Etsy Store?

Greetings, mini friends!  Not much to report this time.  I have been seriously considering an Etsy store, so have been playing around with ideas on stocking it. 

Jeweled handbags.  I have made several more in 1:24 and want to make a couple more in 1:12.

  

Dressed Mannequins.  I have painted a new umbrella to go with the walking suit.  This one is brown and gold instead of black and silver.  (Not sure what the odd white spots are, as they don't show up in real life.)

And I made accessories for the mid-century couture *cough*Chanel*cough* suit that I made a while ago.

I love how the little brooch turned out.  It is (you guessed it) fingernail art.   Ditto with the belt buckle below.  If women ever stop sticking pictures, jewels and other little items onto their fingernails, my stash will suffer greatly.

This is a little 50's outfit with poodle skirt.  I need to make some saddle shoes to go with it, and maybe stick a little pink bow on the poodle.  I'd also like to make a cardigan for it, and I have a lovely black jersey swatch from Mood, but I don't know if I'll be able to pull it off.  Can you tell I've been in a clothes making mood lately?  I have a couple more ideas for outfits I'd like to make.  We'll see how they go.

Gift baskets.  Now that I've figured out how to make 1:24 scale mugs, I've made one into a "I ♥ San Francisco" mug to round out my half-scale San Francisco gift basket.  Hmmm.  The basket itself seems kind of plain next to my Christmas baskets.  I'll have to come up with a way to add a little pizzazz.  Suggestions welcome.

I am also nearly done making a new 1:24 green Christmas basket to replace the one Shannon won, so I will have all four types available.

I'm a little nervous about getting started, and there is a lot to do to get set up, so it may take a while.  Stay tuned. 

Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a Happy Halloween and a wonderful weekend!

Christmas Ornament Tutorial

I'm recently back from a week at Mom's in Arizona.  I took along a cross-stitch rug for the Art Deco house and did exactly nothing on it.  I did, however, have a wonderful time with Mom.  Since I didn't get much mini-ing done, I thought I could do a post showing how I made the Christmas ornaments I am using in my gift baskets. 

I started with some wooden beads I had in my stash.  I believe they came from Joann.  Can't remember why I bought these, but I'm sure it was because I knew they'd be good for something someday.  😊    

There were various sizes in the set, so I picked out 7mm beads for my 1:12 scale ornaments and 5 mm beads for 1:24 scale.

(As an aside, I also used one of the small oval beads for a 1:24 hat stand, so—multiple uses!  See, I knew they'd be good for something.  😊)

Since these beads were varnished, I did have to spend some time sanding them lightly to remove the varnish.  If you could find plain wood beads, you wouldn't have to do this step.

I then filled the centers with wood putty.

After letting them dry overnight, I sanded the top and bottom to get them as smooth as possible.  It's best to give the putty plenty of time to dry, because you're pushing it inside the bead, where air doesn't reach it.  When I tried to rush the process, I regretted it.  When I tried to drill my holes in the next step, I ended up pushing out the entire putty plug.  🙄

Next, I used my pin vise and its smallest bit to drill holes in the top of each bead.  These will be used for the hanging wire, but I also inserted straight pins into the holes temporarily for easier painting.

I painted the beads with Apple Barrel Cardinal Crimson acrylic paint.  (Any flat craft paint will do.  I wouldn't advise using gloss or satin, because I don't think the nail art will stick as well.)  Because red tends not to cover well, it took a good two coats (sometimes three) to get them looking the way I wanted.  During drying time, I inserted the pins into the foam block I use for making flowers.

When they were dry, I used some snowflake fingernail stickers (note:  not water slide decals) to decorate them.  Obviously, the nail stickers are flat and the beads are round, but the nice thing about snowflakes is that it's easy to snip between the "arms" to allow for better shaping of the sticker around the bead.

Once I had the snowflakes stuck down, I used one of my ball shaping tools to really burnish them down well.  

I then applied two coats of clear nail polish, to give them a nice shine and really hold down the stickers.

I took some fine brass wire and shaped it into hooks—larger hooks for the 1:12 ornaments and smaller hooks for the 1:24 ornaments.  

I glued gold tone beads (size 8 for 1:12, size 15 for 1:24) over the holes I had drilled, centering the hole of the bead over the hole for the wire, and glued them down with Locktite Precision Superglue Gel.  I then put a dab of the superglue gel on my hooks and inserted them in the holes.

And—ornaments!  

These can hang nicely on standard bottle brush trees.

Hope you enjoyed this little tutorial, and hope you all have a wonderful weekend with lots of time for your minis!

And the Winner Is. . . .

Shannon, who selected the 1:24 green basket.  I placed all the names on folded strips of paper in a bowl, scrambled them up, and then just picked one out, so it was totally random. 

Congratulations, Shannon!  And thank you to all who participated.  Shannon, please use the "contact me" section on the right-hand side to give me your mailing address so that I can send your basket out. 😊  I hope you like it!

A Christmas Giveaway!

To show my appreciation for all the folks who have been reading and following my blog, I'm doing a Christmas giveaway!  (O.K.  I know it's October, but Joann is already stocking Christmas items.😊)  You've seen the Christmas gift baskets I've been working on.  I'm offering one of them to a randomly-selected reader who posts in the comments that s/he would like to participate, including which basket s/he is interested in.  More info below.

As a reminder of what each contains (and a new addition, thanks to a suggestion from Samantha):

Chocolates (one box per basket):

The chocolates are not removable from their boxes, although the lids are removable.

Gingerbread men (1 box/4 gingerbread men per basket):

The gingerbread men are removable.

Wine or brandy (1 bottle per basket, brandy in the half-scale green basket only):

Coffee (one bag per basket):

Gourmet Hot Cocoa Mix (1 jar per basket):

Christmas Mug (1 mug per basket):

Candy cane (one per basket):

Ornament (one per basket):

For the red basket, A Christmas Carol:

These are not accordion-printed pages; they are printed double-sided. Both books contain the same complete synopsis of the story.  The dimensions of the 1:12 scale book are ¾" x ½" x 5/32" (20mm x 14mm x 4.5mm); the dimensions of the 1:24 scale book are 3/8" x ¼" x 1/8" (10mm x 7mm x 3mm). 

For the green basket, The Night Before Christmas:

Again, these are printed double-sided. Both books contain the full text of the poem.  The dimensions of the 1:12 scale book are 15/16" x 7/8" x 1/8" (24mm x 22mm x 3mm); the dimensions of the 1:24 scale book are 1/2" x 7/16" x 1/8" (13mm x 11mm x 3mm).

To enter, just post a comment and tell me which size (1:12 or 1:24) you would like, and whether you would like the red basket with A Christmas Carol or the green basket with The Night Before Christmas.  Your choice will not affect your chances in the drawing.  I will be picking a winner on October 15, 2019, at noon Pacific Daylight Time, so please get your entries in by 10:00 a.m. PDT on October 15.   

Good luck!               .