Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Hi everyone, I believe I am finished with my Tudor House. I decided to do a Christmas Theme inside the house this time.  I hope you like the little mini Christmas Tree and Christmas Wreaths I worked on making this weekend.  I had a blast this weekend finishing the interior of the home.  Im running a little low on energy so I will finish adding more stuff later on to the mini bathroom area and the two attic areas.  I hope you like and see something that is inspiring to you to create your own version.  I usually start decorating the inside of my own home at the first of November, but this year Im taking a break and wont start it till after Thanksgiving like most normal people do, people who dont love Christmas as much as I do.  I will be leaving on a Caribbean Cruise to Nassau in the Bahamas, St. Thomas, San Juan, Puerto Rico and the Grand Turk in two weeks, so I figured I will take a break this year from doing an Early Christmas and Decorating the Tudor house in a Christmas Theme seemed to satisfy me for now.  The only sad part is I wont start a new House until after my Vacation, If I start it before vacation it will drive me crazy while being on vacation knowing I cant work on the new project.  Have a Great Halloween and ThanksGiving Everyone! 

I had alot of fun teaching myself how to make the mini garland around the fireplace. 

I over decorated the mini Christmas Tree I made, but it looks pretty good.  Here you can see the wreath in the window and the flowers on the tabel and the large flower on the grond on the right that I made by finding fake plastic flowers at the Hobby store and then cut them off and hot glued them into place. It was the smallest flowers I could find that would be the truest to scale. 


I love this room alot, I call it the down stairs entry way.  The coat rack on the left I built this weekend from a model kit, and painted it, and scratched it to look old and worn. You can see more fake flowers that I made this weekend on the floor on the left and on the table on the right and the wreath in the window.


I searched Hi and Low and could not find any Miniature Christmas Trees that Looked real, so I decided to make my Own by plucking and glueing plastic branches together. I think this is something I might also start making in quantity to sell at next years convention.  To find the right size of plastic leaves took me a couple hours of shopping at different stores.  It cost me about $18.00 to buy 3 plastic bundles to cut apart and only about an hour to make this tree, but about 1 1/2 hours to decorate.  See decorated  picutures of completed tree. 

About the size of a dollar bill.


Me making my own lights from reqular bulbs, since the miniature Christmas lights are so exspensive. 

Christmas Tree Completed.  Yes I over did the ornaments, I was watching a movie while working on the Tree and got carried away. 

This was so much fun teaching myself how to make these wreaths.  I first found wire garland that had Ive Looking Leaves, and then a Green wire garland that was furry/spiky and intertwined both strands of wire to make a fuller wreath, and then I plucked the flowers I needed that I previously found at hobby store that were fairly true to scale. Then I hot glued the flowers on.  Pretty Easy with some Imagination and time to sit and watch movies as you go. 

Here you can see a better veiw of the Wired Ive that I used, and the Greenery that I added to give the wreath a different variety of green. 





The Kitchen I wanted to make it look more like a 100 year old kitchen with no stove, in which they cook by using the fire place.  My favorite thing in the kitchen is the rolls on the edge of the table and the mini sizzors on the box. 

I didnt get a great picute of the sink cabinet that I built, It has a black water pump that goes into a porcellan bowl.  You can bearly see the brass glass holder on the wall on the left above the sink.


In certain light I truly love the look of my plaster walls with the light weight plaster I used and the brown paint I rubbed on them and washed off them to make them look really old. 

I really love the Deer Head in the bedroom, It was the only place it fit best in the home.  I didnt like the price of $30.00 but the lady gave it to me for $20.00 since it has a tiny peice broken off a horn. 

This bed I bought at this years convention in which the lady hand made it, If i remember correctly it had a price on it of $225.00,  but lets just say that I was very nice and friendly like I always try to be with everyone I meat, and I also bought a few other things from her and and the price was lowered for me! :)




I also had fun making this mini tree for the office attic area.  I still need to add more Items into this room such as papers on the desk, and some more personnal touches. 

This is the attic bedroom area which I still need to add a few personnel touches to make it looked more lived in.

This is a really bad picture of the bathroom area I decided to create at the last minute, It is the jet out on the side of the house which was going to be a closet for the main bedroom with the deer head on the wall.  But I am trying to turn it in to a very old first bathroom of the 1800's.  This room is still not completed but in person I sort of like the rusticness of it. Plus it needs a few more personnal touches.






The water stuff I used finally dried after 1 month.  In person it does look like a little river running under the house.

I really like the paper bricks on this part of the house and the real grout i used. 



Monday, October 8, 2012


I made lots of progress this weekend.  I was so addicted to building stuff that I couldn't stop. But I finished my paper tree this weekend, and many more things on the Tudor House.  I finished the interior floors and base boards, adding the railing around the balcony's.  Please see below some of the pictures of me making the tree.  It ended up costing me about $32.00 for paper clay and $28.00 for the plastic greenery I found at Michael's Hobby Store, plus a couple dollars for glue sticks and moss to glue on the tree, so around $65.00 total to make the tree.  I forgot to download pictures of the finished tunnels, I will hopefully remember to post them soon.  I lost count of how many hours I have put into this house over the past two months, I think I am close to 200 hours at this time, and way over budget, but I am falling in love with this house and dont know if I can sell it without some heartache. 
I hope you like the pictures of the finished trees and flooring. Now the fun part is completing the interiors and making some furniture.  Have a Wonderful Week Everyone!  Thanks for all the Wonderful Comments you have posted.  They truly inspire me,  I get so busy I forget to say thanks to each of you for the wonderful comments, So Thank You Very Much!

I really love the look of the tree growing in between the houses, like it has been growing there 100 years. 


While building the tree I keep putting the tree in between the house to assure it would fit as I added paper around the wood.  At the Tip of the tree ends is where I hot glued on the plastic greenery, that I broke apart from a bundle of greenery.  I spent about an hour looking at different stores to try and find greenery that had the smallest leaves possible to try and stay true to scale.


I started with brushing on some deluted brown, paint which I didn't particularly like, Then I brushed on some deluted grey paint to make the tree look older and then wiped it off. 



Once I had glue ed all the plastic greenery on the tree, I went around to all the limbs and the areas the hot glued showed and painted on Elmer's Glue and then covered it with green moss sprinkles, this helped hide any ugly spots and hot glue.





Because the tree weighs 4 or 5 pounds I hot glued it to the base and also hot glued some leaves and branches that were touching the house so it was well supported. 


I am really starting to love my little stain glass windows.  Making a mistake and getting stain on the windows and me covering them up with my fake stain glass turned out to be a Good Thing!




The flooring drying in the kitchen.  I started out with making a card stock paper floor pattern and then cut out the wood flooring to match the pattern.  The large middle floor in the picture goes in the top left attic, it completely fell apart in this process, It was the only floor I had to glue to card stock and the darn stain ate through the glue again, but i ended up spending more time fixing this floor. 

I precut wood strips and stained them, these will become the base boards around the room once the flooring is laid. 

There were so many intricate cuts to make because of all the beams that ran down the wall to hide the electrical wires, it took me a couple hours to make the 7 room patterns to make the floors from.



I think the finished floors look pretty darn good for my first time also staining floors.  I really like the aged look on the plaster walls with the flooring.  In this picture I still have to age the inside of the fire place with soot.  This is the left side of the main living area.

This will become the main living area.

This is the attic spare bedroom.

This will be the master bedroom that has a closet to the left. 

This will be a sitting room or something by the first floor exit.

Sitting room.

This will become the kitchen on the first floor.