In the days since Mom’s death, I’ve found pockets of time to work on the dollhouse. Having a creative release has helped a great deal. On Wednesday, some items that I ordered from Carrie Lavender’s Etsy shop arrived. I also tweaked a couple of the items that Karen sent, as well as some things I had on hand.
Would you like to see them?
This will be a picture heavy post. I had a lot of things saved up to show you.
Do you remember this dress form? It was one of the treasures Karen sent me.
It is made out of plastic and was missing the spindle/pole that extended from the base to the form itself. It needed some tweaking.
Here it is now:
I thought the wire frame was too long, so I checked some photos of vintage dress forms that I found online. Sure enough, it was. So I cut off the bottom part of the frame. Then I used some silver Rub n’ Buff on the frame and base. After many attempts to make some sort of pole, I found that the wooden part of a Q-tip worked rather nicely. Then I found some linen fabric upstairs in my stash and fashioned the bodice of the form. That took some fiddling!
And there it is in the studio/office, right next to the cutting table. Do you see that miniature tape measure on the table? From Carrie Lavender’s Etsy shop – A LavenderDilly Miniatures. Eeek! It’s so cute!
One of the tweaks I performed on Saturday was that shutter you see on the left.
It’s the perfect place for the owner to stash notes she has received, post cards from vacations, or any sort of reminder.
Once I did that, I came up with another idea.
I had this piece left over from a Michael’s hutch that I took apart. (The other piece that is just like this one is on the mantle.) The vintage wallpaper that I backed it with is a scrap that Elyse sent me. It will be a pinboard for the lady of the house. She’ll find it valuable as she works from this table.
Added to the kitchen: the graniteware pots and pans came from Karen, the cutting boards came from Carrie Lavender, the enamel pans and cookie sheets also came from Carrie Lavender and the cake is from Karen. I mentioned it in an earlier post, but the tea towel is from Norma.
An Aubusson rug for the living room – from Carrie Lavender.
The flatware with cream colored handles – from Carrie Lavender.
Another Aubusson rug for the bathroom – from Carrie Lavender. (Can you tell I am in love with her shop?)
A close-up of the enamel baking pans and sheets. Incredible.
There was some silverware in the box from Karen, so I made some dividers for one of the drawers.
I added some posters to the walls of the potting shed – a butterfly chart and a botanical drawing that I found online and printed:
I also made those seed packets.
A new Greengate tea towel from Carrie Lavender:
And finally, I tweaked the unfinished wardrobe that you see in the very first photo (from Karen.) I’m still not entirely happy with it and I’ll be working on it some more.
I want some of the furniture to be shabby, aged and slightly funky. And just like in my real house, I avoid matchy-matchy. I want the furniture to look like it’s been found a piece at a time.
I wallpapered the inside.
And then I had to rearrange the bedroom of course.
The mirror is also from Karen.
Whew! Truthfully, my friends, this kind of work kept me grounded during the past five days. It gave me a very much needed outlet, enabling me to lose myself in the creative process. In a sorrowful time, working on the dollhouse gave me joy. Thank goodness.
There are still problems with the email delivery of my posts, but I’ve found out it really isn’t due to Feedburner, but to a change that has been made by Yahoo and AOL and that most likely will be made by others in the future. To make a long story short, the emails never get to you because they are bounced right back by Yahoo and AOL – as if they were spam. There is a fix that I’m working on. I just haven’t had the time yet. But hang in there. Hopefully, it will work.
I’ll be back with another Evolution of the Dollhouse post tomorrow.
Happy Monday.
