Green! Green is Better Than White... Right?
Let me just say one thing before I begin this ramble. Using an Xacto knife as a planer is effing dangerous. I am amazed all my skin is still attached to my fingertips.
While I didn't take pictures of this particular step, I figured I should still document it, because it taught me what I anticipate will be a very important lesson when it comes to dollhousing. "Do it right the first time. If it's not right, learn to accept it, because making it right the second time will be ten times worse than making it in the first place."
So what I did last night was carefully, meticulously use my knife to gently pry the plastic window panes off the frames, then I tried to "plane" the tacky glue off, then sanded off as much as I could without busting the frames. Just doing the four glued ones took me every bit of an hour. After the plastic was removed mostly unscathed I came to realize that sanding off the white gloss wasn't going to be an option. Instead I took a wire plant stand I have with all these little bendy wires and bent them all inside, set the entire thing in a cardboard box, then hand dipped the frames and let them hang on the wires to drip. I know the acrylic will accumulate on the bottoms and dry with drip marks, but at least you don't see the white background. The tiny dormer windows I've decided to leave white, the large dormer window and the bay window will be left with the green streaking over the white gloss. Overall I'm happy with how they look for now. We'll see how the dipped windows came out when I get home tonight.
I have a pretty good idea now of what I want the interior walls and floors to look like. I plan to do river birch sheeting for the walls or floors upstairs, or a sort of paper that looks similar. The downstairs will be rough wooden flooring or orange clay bricks with gray mortar. I plan to do an aged plaster over brick wall treatment and aged ceilings. In the end I want it to have Tuscan, Central American and English Cottage influences.
Materials are proving to be difficult for me to find though. I could make a regular dollhouse and go buy modern furniture and all that crap, but that's not what this is. I looked on ebay and have a short list of things I need to make this happen. While I would love to just walk out into the woods and find things to use, here in NC I don't see that being very fruitful, unless I want pine needles, long leaf pine cones, or seashells. While those would be good for certain things, I can't find birch bark here, or those pine cones that look like roses. I may be purchasing more things than I had initially intended. I'm going to yard sale-ing this weekend to hunt for supplies. I'd like leather scrap, moss, tiny baubles, dried flowers, fabric remnants, sewing notions, art supplies, you name it.
So that's where I am today. Moving right along and feeling better about the minutiae!
While I didn't take pictures of this particular step, I figured I should still document it, because it taught me what I anticipate will be a very important lesson when it comes to dollhousing. "Do it right the first time. If it's not right, learn to accept it, because making it right the second time will be ten times worse than making it in the first place."
So what I did last night was carefully, meticulously use my knife to gently pry the plastic window panes off the frames, then I tried to "plane" the tacky glue off, then sanded off as much as I could without busting the frames. Just doing the four glued ones took me every bit of an hour. After the plastic was removed mostly unscathed I came to realize that sanding off the white gloss wasn't going to be an option. Instead I took a wire plant stand I have with all these little bendy wires and bent them all inside, set the entire thing in a cardboard box, then hand dipped the frames and let them hang on the wires to drip. I know the acrylic will accumulate on the bottoms and dry with drip marks, but at least you don't see the white background. The tiny dormer windows I've decided to leave white, the large dormer window and the bay window will be left with the green streaking over the white gloss. Overall I'm happy with how they look for now. We'll see how the dipped windows came out when I get home tonight.
I have a pretty good idea now of what I want the interior walls and floors to look like. I plan to do river birch sheeting for the walls or floors upstairs, or a sort of paper that looks similar. The downstairs will be rough wooden flooring or orange clay bricks with gray mortar. I plan to do an aged plaster over brick wall treatment and aged ceilings. In the end I want it to have Tuscan, Central American and English Cottage influences.
Materials are proving to be difficult for me to find though. I could make a regular dollhouse and go buy modern furniture and all that crap, but that's not what this is. I looked on ebay and have a short list of things I need to make this happen. While I would love to just walk out into the woods and find things to use, here in NC I don't see that being very fruitful, unless I want pine needles, long leaf pine cones, or seashells. While those would be good for certain things, I can't find birch bark here, or those pine cones that look like roses. I may be purchasing more things than I had initially intended. I'm going to yard sale-ing this weekend to hunt for supplies. I'd like leather scrap, moss, tiny baubles, dried flowers, fabric remnants, sewing notions, art supplies, you name it.
So that's where I am today. Moving right along and feeling better about the minutiae!