The scumblings of an obsessive artist: dollhouse

Showing posts with label dollhouse. Show all posts

Tuesday, 20 August 2019

Making miniature dollhouse wedding cake from polymer clay

Making dollhouse miniatures

Now when I say that painting is definitely my passion, it doesn't mean that other things don't tickle my fancy too. I have, ever since being a little girl, loved dollhouses and miniatures. I collected Barbie as an adult and only recently stopped (super expensive hobby lol).

Anyway I am attempting to have two YouTube channels, one for my painting and one for my dollhouse things (girlish squeal). So without further adieu here are the glam shots of my dollhouse wedding cake!

She certainly is a wedding cake for a rich doll lol. I have a YouTube tutorial on how to make this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV7Fhiorhoc

If you just want some quick instructions without a video then read on.

Firstly you need to make the three different sized bases from scrap clay, I wouldn't waste important clay for this part unless you are going to have a piece cut out.

Once you have these nice and rounded and the size you want, carefully (and when I say carefully I mean cleanly, oh so cleanly) roll out some white clay, which will become the fondant and cover all three of the cakes. I made my middle tier a marbled pink and white fondant. I just added a small amount of pink clay to the white and then mixed it a little and rolled it out.

Once it is flat cover the cakes with it, like you see them do on tv when they're making cakes. Start from the top and smooth it down.

Once you are happy, bake according to your clays instructions.

Now roll out a snake of white clay and flatten it to look like this.

Make about fifteen of these shapes in the white clay, and if you made a marbled clay, roll some out in that too.

Then beginning from the top of the cake, add some bake and bond, and place the rolled out snake pieces above around the clay.

Once you have covered them all, bake them again. This is how you want them to look.

Now for the roses, it is probably easier to watch the video I made, but I shall give the explanation a go. Take a small piece of clay and flatten it to make a smallish roundish shape.

Wrap i t around the dotting tool to begin the small rose. Then just keep making small squashed circles and adding it to the rose in different spots. They should look like this. Make some roses in red clay, white clay and the marbled pink clay. Make about 15 roses.

Put the roses on some polyester fluff that you stuff pillows with, and bake. Putting them on the fluff stops the roses from getting squashed on one side.

Next make some leaves: grab the green clay and make a small circle, the squash it to make a leaf shape and bake these as well. Roll out three small snakes of brown clay and use bake and bond to attach these to the three wedding cake tiers as below. Bake the cakes and the brown sticks.

Now it is time to attach the roses and the leaves to the brown sticks and the cake bases. Use bake and bond, and as you are adding the roses make sure the cakes still fit together. Put some leaves in between the roses to break up the colour and then bake these again.

Next and final bake is to glue the cake bases together, so use bake and bond and glue them all together and bake.

Once it is dry use gloss varnish to paint over the roses.

I am making some macarons this weeks, miniature of course, so I can't wait to show you them.

Please follow me on facebook........... KristinaObrienart

I am also on Instagram.......... https://www.instagram.com/kristina_obrien_art/

Aaaand Pinterest....... https://www.pinterest.com.au/krystalrose316/pins/

And now Youtube.......https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpgFuUdFo0dyREOhcSgXBrw
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH3A1kucfLNDkO84CesdNIw?view_as=subscriber

I also have an Art with an Aussie Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/Art-with-an-Aussie-YouTube-Tutorials-2835141183194204/

Have a great week everyone.

Love

Me! Kristina

Saturday, 6 October 2018

Renovating my dollhouse bakery, starting with tiling the floors and also making a resin floor

Renovating My Bakery Room Box!!!

Yep, pretty awful designing originally on my behalf. In my defense I didn't have much brain power due to my severe Anorexia, but I did try. It needs to go though, it reminds me of such bad times that I need to change it or throw it away. So change it I shall.

Removing the tiles on the one side was easy. Came off like smooth butter. The other side, with the skinny black and white glass tiles from Bunnings, OMFG. I honestly ended up with a hammer smashing the absolute s*%t out of them, because they were shattering but not coming off. Grrrr. Then in my temper I realised I smashed through the floor board of the bakery. Fine, new floor was cut out and glued on. So much easier than continuing my tantrum, as fun as it was smashing things with a hammer lol.

I got a chisel and peeled off the wallpaper, It came off quite easily. I had to rub off the glue that stuck the wall paper down, and then I sanded it and also put a few layers of gesso on it.

This is the glue I had to peel off.

Since I had inadvertently broken the base of the bakery, I had to pull the walls off. This actually made it easier to scrape and put gesso on.

After prepping everything, and cutting a new floor, I had to glue the walls back onto the base. Now it took me two days to see the mistake I made, and by then the walls were glued down, quite firmly. See if you can see the mistake, lol.

Yep, walls went on upside down. That's no problem except for this one door insert here. I have a plan to fix that though, it's no big problem (I hope)! I used Helmar Super Strength Wood Glue to stick it down, it wasn't going to come off easy so I decided to leave it.

Now for the exciting bit. I decided to make a resin floor on the larger Bakery side. Yay I was excited. I love resin and I haven't used it in a while because of my allergy. Now was the time to bring out the fun!!

I used painters tape to go all the way around the edge of the outside walls of the room I was going to resin. This should stop any resin leaking into my storage room. It actually worked quite well. I was happy with it.

Link to my Youtube video which shows the making of the resin floor here.

It begins at approximately 12 minutes 30 seconds in the video.

I used white resin dye on one side, black resin dye on the other side. I left a gap in the middle for the blue and silver I wanted to blow into it. For the blue I actually used Pearl Ex to colour the resin, I love the effect the Pearl Ex has on resin, it makes it all shimmery. For the Silver resin I used just cheap acrylic silver paint and lots of glitter. If you watch the video you will understand how I made the pattern.

I absolutely love the way it has turned out. It is so glossy and shiny and glittery. I love resin and I love miniatures. Perfect combination 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜.

On the Storage side of the bakery I decided to use my own tiles that I made from resin, black dye and silver glitter. These are available on My Etsy Shop, Link here. I have many colours and styles available.

I began by gluing the resin tiles down with Helmar's wood glue again. It worked superbly for the body of the bakery so I thought I would stick with it. It honestly did not take too long to glue all of the tiles down.

When I finished, I used grout tiling powder to fill in the gaps and cement the tiles to the ground, the powder is available in the craft section from Bunnings. I am yet to polish the tiles as I have so much going on at the moment.

I have already begun the painting and the decorations on the walls. I don't want to ruin the surprise so I shall wait until my next dollhouse update.

My current Projects I am working on........

An acrylic paint pour onto a vase.

A resin ocean pour on canvas.

Finally put the legs on to my river Resin miniature table.

A miniature polymer clay ming vase.

And I finally finished the black Pug in oil paints that I started a while ago. IT was hard.

Here is the link for my Youtube Channel.......MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL!!

Please like, comment and subscribe!

Please follow me on facebook........... KristinaObrienart
I am also on Instagram.......... https://www.instagram.com/kristina_obrien_art/
Aaaand Pinterest....... https://www.pinterest.com.au/krystalrose316/pins/
And now on Etsy......... https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/KrystalRoseCreations?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
And now Youtube.......https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpgFuUdFo0dyREOhcSgXBrw

Until next time.........

Monday, 27 August 2018

Resin Dollhouse Geode table, working in miniature with resin and Polymer Clay.

Making Miniature Resin Geode Tables

Ok I'll be honest, I absolutely love miniatures. To sit down all day and make everything in mini would be freaking awesome!! I was feeling sorry for myself the other week, resin allergy, no one interested in my art, when something popped into my head and filled me with excitement. Miniature resin Geode table for a dollhouse. OMG yes. I had to do it.

Polymer Clay popped into my mind for the base of the table, and that moment I went searching in the garage for all of my clay tools. With Mr 4 by my side we began playing with scrap clay. My scrap clay is a mixture of all the brands, Kato, Sculpey and Fimo.

Here are my four basic geode shapes. I just rolled some clay out, and cut out random shapes. They went into my mini oven for an hour and then they were ready to play with!!

I made up a very small amount of resin. The great thing about miniatures is, it uses less of everything! I placed the bases on upturned cups and began my experiment. A very small amount goes a long way, so I did have trouble getting the distinct lines I can get on my large geodes.

Obviously glitter played an important part, shiny pretty glitter. What could take the place of the rocks, glass and gems that I use on the large geodes?
Beads of course. I have a plethora of beads, finally time to use them!! I mainly used microbeads, which are teeny tiny, obviously.

I also used some glitter gravel that I bought from a cheap shop. It actually looks nice in geodes.

After the first resin layer was dry, I added another, this one I put in more glitter and tried to define the colours a little more. It basically took a lot of patience and a steady hand, moving the resin where I wanted it to go, then using the heat gun sparingly to blend the colours. I also added some gold leaf on the third layer.

After the fourth or fifth layer was completely dry I brought out the posca pens and drew some more defined lines around the geodes. This made them start to look like something worthwhile. I was a little worried to begin with. (Apologies for the dog barking in the video).

I wrapped the edges of the mini geodes with painters tape, leaving about a 3mm edge above the geode. I did this so when I poured the next couple of layers of clear resin they would build up and completely cover all the beads and make the table flat. It worked!!

To remove the resin that had dripped onto the bottom of the geodes I used the heat gun and a small chisel to carefully get them off. The resin actually came off quite easily, which was awesome. Time for the edges of the geodes. I used Mont Marte Leafing Size glue, and gold leaf and prettied those edges up. I was actually really surprised at how easy the glue made putting the gold leaf on. That one is a definite win, and I will use it again.

Mont Marte Leafing Size link.

The saga of sanding and using my dremel to cut some wood for the legs, ugh, wood and cutting just not my favourite thing. I am actually in love with the way they turned out, I love the thickness, and I can see all the layers of resin and glitter and beads that lovingly did. Let's not forget the swollen eye from my allergy to resin, the rash that spread like chicken pox, and the misery I was in from the pills and the itching. To sum it up, it was worth it. I will do it again, and again and again.

GLAM SHOTS!!

I'm happy with the experiment. My doll house, everyone's dollhouse deserves some glam geode tables I think. I absolutely love them :)

I have also made some experimental resin tiles for a dollhouse. I have embedded microbeads in some tiles, glitter in others and of course I have made a glow in the dark sample. All different styles and colours. I will be doing a project with them in it sometime in September. I will post my progress of that too.