Mini Games to Play Online

Not much new to report.  I am still contemplating the stripe color on the exterior of the house.  I have made a new top for the enamel-top table and am working on the stairs now but haven’t made much progress.  My home office shares space with my craft room, and at the end of a long day of working from home, I don’t want to spend any more time inside those four walls! *sigh*  We've been binge-watching a lot.  We zoomed through all the episodes of "The Repair Shop" on Netflix (I can't recommend this show highly enough), and yesterday watched all eight episodes of "The Stranger."

I know many of us are sheltering in place these days, as we try to stop the spread of the Corona virus.  For those of you going a little crazy shut inside and who want to take a break from making minis (wait—who would want to take a break from making minis??), here are a couple of fun online suggestions.

The first is an old one, but may be new to some of you:  The Game of Thornes on the Chicago Art Institute Web site, https://archive.artic.edu/thorne-game/, which uses several rooms from the Thorne Rooms display.  It plays like one of those old quest games (“You are standing in a room, with a door on the right hand side”), only instead of typing in “go left” or “go right,” you click on areas in the pictures to move around or examine things.  You have to make it through the maze of rooms and collect letters for the password in order to escape.  Although it’s part of the archive, it still works, and I was able to escape.  😉

For those who like scavenger hunts, there is https://www.terraclues.com/?view=home.  Each hunt has a series of clues, the answer for which is always a geographic location.  Type your solution into the Google Maps box and, as needed, zoom in to find it on the map.  If your answer is correct, you’ll be taken to the next clue.  There are around 290 hunts available, and it does help greatly to do the tutorial first.  You don’t have to be signed in to do a hunt.  You can also make your own hunts, so I made one for my mini friends:  https://www.terraclues.com/PlayHunt?HuntID=11673  I think most of you will find it pretty easy, but maybe you’ll also find it a little amusing.  When you make a hunt, you can choose to add information and links on your answers, and I tried to go for sites that had interesting content and good eye candy.  If something doesn’t work correctly, please let me know.

Hope you are all staying safe and healthy, and enjoying plenty of time to work on your minis!

A Long Overdue Post

It's been a long time since I posted, for a couple of reasons.  One is that I was working on another swap.  This one is an anonymous swap.  We all filled out questionnaires, and then we were assigned one person to make for/send to.  We of course got the questionnaire of our swap-ee, and I was so inspired by what my person liked and wanted that I had to start working on it.  Unfortunately, everything remains a secret until the recipient receives the swap, so stay tuned.  😊

The other reason is that I was having some difficulty with the deco house.  I got the texture I wanted with my spackle and put on a nice coat of Wicker White.  I carefully marked off the stripes with painters tape, including some special 1/8" painters tape I had to buy from Amazon, as I could not find it locally.  The blue I choose required a lot of coats to cover, and I ended up letting it dry longer between coats than I should have, I guess.  When I removed the tape, large chunks of the blue came with it.

  

I was pretty horrified.  So horrified, in fact, that I went back to working on my swap (which was going much, much better) for another week.  It is now finished.  Last weekend, I peeled off the loose edges, sanded, reapplied the tape and repainted, removing the tape as soon as my last brush stroke was on.  Because I had already aligned all the stripes, I could do one section at a time, which also prevented things from getting too dry before it was time to pull off the tape.  It still needed some touch up, and I'm not super happy with the result, but it's certainly better than it was.  (The roof and second story are still the foam core versions.)

And now I'm wondering if it will be OK to have those blue stripes with the mauve interior.  I don't usually worry about the exterior vs. the interior, but on most builds, you don't really see the exterior right next to the interior.  What do you think?

At the same time I was having problems with my stripes, I was inspired by a photograph I found online to build a little utility table/cabinet for the kitchen.  I needed a work table anyway, and I liked the additional storage, as space is tight in my tiny kitchen.

My first try was an unmitigated disaster.   My plans called for me to cut a lot of the wood to shape, and I don't do well cutting wood by hand.  So that got put on the back burner, too, until this weekend, when I redrew my plans to rely mostly on standard widths and thicknesses of strip wood.  I don't know why I didn't do that from the start.  This is how it turned out.

Not absolutely identical, but pretty close.  The top is currently not glued down but stuck on with double-sided tape.  (You may notice that the side edges are lifting a little.)  I'm trying to decide if I like it or want to try again.  I put a deco design on the "enamel" top, which is made from matboard and cardstock.  Because I did that, I couldn't paint the top; for now, I used clear nail polish to give it a bit of gloss.  (I have to get some of that Krylon Triple-Thick that Jodi uses!) However, because it hadn't been given a base coat of paint, the black paint around the edges seemed to bleed a lot, and I'm not crazy about that. 

I am happy that the door and drawers work!

I used a vintage linoleum pattern I found online as my drawer liner and to line the bottom shelf.  I turned the left-hand drawer into a silverware drawer and the right-hand drawer into a catch-all drawer.  

Almost all the items are from an etched metal set.  The silverware is a little plain (and the spoons don't really have bowls), but I figure they're going inside a drawer, so they're fine.  The catch-all drawer needs a bit more in it.  So far it has a couple of spatulas, a wooden spoon, scissors, can opener, and meat fork.  What else should I include?

Here is the table against the wallpaper I am testing in the kitchen.  This is not the wall it will be on, but was the easiest wall to photograph.

To leave you all on a happy note, I had a new arrival from the Netherlands.  (Yes, I know you can't take a train across the pond, but let's pretend.)

The tiny little bear on the left is my newest addition from AlexandrasBears, whose bears are positively addicting.

He is absolutely adorable and every bit as detailed as his larger brother.  😊  For the time being, he is sitting on the bed for the deco house.

I started working from home last Friday, and, as of tonight, my city is on lockdown.  Don't know how long this will last.  Hoping we are able to nip this outbreak in the bud, and that our lives can go back to normal soon.  Please stay safe and healthy!