Accessorising

This week I have been making some accessories for the girl's room, and painting some garden furniture including a table kit that I put together.

Metal accessorires

I had some metal miniatures that I think I bought from Tee-Pee Crafts:  a gothic frame, a figurine of a girl holding a hat, a baby crib and high chair, a four poster bed and a pair of shoes.  The furniture is the over-size so-called 144th scale, but I thought it would make good toys in 1/24th scale. The casting is quite crude, so after I gave them a scrub in some warm water with a drop of dish detergent to remove any grease or mold release agent, I scraped away some of the flash and mold lines with files and a sharp knife.

Then I undercoated them with some Citadel Foundation paint in a beige colour.  The undercoat gives a good base for the subsequent colour paint coats.

For the picture frame, I gave it two more coats of Games Workshop Bleached Bone, which is the colour I have used on a lot of the furniture in the house.  Then I washed over it with Games Workshop Brown Ink, which gave it a 'wood'-like appearance.

I added some mirror card, and hung it in the hallway where the homeowner can check their appearance before heading out the front door.

I painted the crib and highchair in pink and white, painted the fourposter bed with brown posts, and blue covers with a white ruffle, painted the crude figurine to make it look as human as possible (not easy) and gave it a coat of nail varnish to make it shiny, and painted the shoes white with pink trim and grey laces.

I decided to bite the bullet and fill some of the shelves in the little girl's room.  I needed some 'books' for the bookcase, and found this clipart from a Christmas card catalogue.

I found a piece of wood that was about the same height as the books (originally I thought I was making two shelves but later decided to go with just one) and painted the wood black.

Then I carefully cut out around one row of books, and glued it to the black piece of wood, and glued the whole thing onto the shelf.

I had also bought some nursery-themed packaging at Miniatura back in the autumn, and used that to help fill up some shelves.

Still haven't decided how I want to arrange this room, which made it hard to decide in which direction to angle the packaging.








Garden Furniture

I had another of the very reasonably priced kits from Model Village Miniatures, this one for a table.  I already had two bare wood garden chairs, so decided to make up the table to create a garden set.

As you can see, you get a colour picture, clear instructions, and well labelled pieces which are cleanly and accurately cut to size.  Not bad for £2.50!

First I glued together two end constructions, using a glue jig to keep them square.

The two side pieces go together with the stretchers to create the table's under-structure.

Then I glued on the table top.  So here is my garden set.

I decided that I wanted a weathered appearance, not quite shabby chic but looking like they had been around for a while.  So I started by painting them all grey.

Then I dry-brushed, fairly heavily, with white.  In this picture, I have dry-brushed the lefthand chair but the table and right hand chair are still grey.












And here is the finished set.  Perhaps I should make some cushions to make the chairs more comfortable.