Shutters

Haven't had much time this week to work on the Fairfield but I did get the shutters made for the front of the house.  These are made out of card. I decided not to make the shutters that the Miss LP house has on either side of the bay window as I didn't like them, so I've only made shutters for the two front Gothic windows.

I traced around the outside of my spare window onto thin card, and used a quilting ruler to draw a 1/8" inside border.  I first cut out the inside shapes.

Then I glued the thin card onto some thicker card (mat board), using a solvent-based cement.



Once the glue dried, I completed cutting out the shutters by cutting around the outside line, through both card layers.

I sealed the shutters by painting both sides with Multi-surface Sealer.  Then I started painting coats of Anita's Dusty Green acrylic paint.



I glued the shutters onto the front of the house with more solvent-based cement, lining up the bottom of the shutter with the bottom of the window sill.

They just need a bit of touching up with paint, and then that is the end of the exterior construcion.

I received my replacement Flutterby Chair kit and the Flutterby bed from Judith of In Some Small Way in the post this week, so I will be able to finish the furniture for the little girl's room.

I visited the Studley Grange Dollshouse Workshop outside of Swindon today, as DS had an all-day commitment in Swindon and we had to hang around waiting for him to finish.  However, they stocked almost exclusively 1/12th so I wasn't able to get anything for the Fairfield.  They had a lot of Dollshouse Emporium stuff, and some Reutters, Heidi Ott,  and similar.  The shop is part of a garden centre / craft village complex that aims heavily at the mums-and-children market, with a play area and children's workshops like painting pots.  There is also a very dilapidated Butterfly World next to the dollshouse shop.  It was a bit depressing, lots of dead or dying plants, debris, dirt etc. but the butterflies were amazing.  When the sun came out, they started flying around quite freely, all sorts of amazing colours and sizes.  There was also a meerkat enclosure outside with the most adorable baby meerkats, so we felt like we got our money's worth just from watching them.