At the Spring Miniatura on 17th March 2012 at the NEC, Birmingham, I had the great pleasure of meeting one of my customers in person.   It was lovely finally to put a face to a name and a voice, and to have a long chat about our common passion of miniatures and dollshouses.  My customer had very kindly brought along four of her 1/12th (1″) scale dolls for whom I’ve knitted sweaters and cardigans/bed jackets from patterns designed by Buttercup Miniatures.   So here are a few pictures of my customer’s (now dressed) little people, having a day out at the Miniatura.

Here is a “gansey” sweater that I have just finished knitting as a commission.   This type of sweater comes from Scotland and would traditionally have been knitted in black, the colour favoured by the Scottish fishing fleet.   The gansey has plain sleeves, but is intricately patterned front and back (using a combination of simple plain and purl stitches).   This gansey has been knitted in 1 ply, 100% Shetland wool using size 19 needles.

This pattern was designed by Buttercup Miniatures and was knitted for sale with their kind permission.   To see their complete range of miniature knitting and crochet patterns (not to mention all related accessories) their website address is www.buttercupminiatures.com.

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Some of the gardens/allotments were created with some ideas of the individual owners in mind.   You will have seen the garden belonging to the neighbours from hell.   As this particular garden is totally enclosed, it is difficult to tell how the rusted half-car ended up wedged against a dead tree.  Given that the railway track is supposed to run just behind it, I can only assume that it fell off the back of a train.

I have an allotment belonging to an old man.  He used to keep it perfectly, like the one next door (with runner beans, cauliflowers, runner beans, rhubarb etc), but isn’t able to manage it properly.   It’s therefore a little rough, but it’s nevertheless his pride and joy with his sunflowers.  His shed has gone rusty, but he likes nothing better than sitting outside it on an old conservatory chair.  His wife sometimes comes with him, but they frequently fall out, so she moves her chair and sits out of his way.

The milliput “stone” walls once coloured immediately made me think of country cottage gardens with roses,   and so I now have various shades of pink roses going up two of the walls which I made from fimo/polymer clay.    

With the way the houses were laid down I found myself with a very awkward, accute angle two gardens away from the rose garden.  Rather than hide it, I decided to make a feature of it, which gave me an opportunity to play with Deluxe Materials’ “Making Waves” and “Solid Water” (two different types of resin).  Combined with “Scenic Fibres” and “Scenic Water White Dye”, the result was a small waterfall sweeping down into a pond.

So this is me finished for now, until I can come up with an appropriate playground and chicken solution.   These can come later.   As I write, the scenery is still on it’s rather tatty wooden base.  It was never stuck down on this, but it was useful for carrying the scenery around on, not to mention as an occasional paint pallette.  (This temporary baseboard is what you can see in the “Overall” views.) 

The next step is for my partner to install this secton of scenery down onto his layout and stick it down.  It has already been placed there as a test - which involved running the fattest locomotive round the track to see whether it stuck anywhere on the edge of the scenery (which it did - in two places).  One bottle of Superglue Debonder and one new fence later, that particular problem has been fixed

After that?   I guess my partner will put on his electrician’s hat and it will be all stations go as he disappears somewhere under spaghetti junction that is the current muddle of wiring underneath the baseboard.   Hopefully the next time I see my scenery, it will be properly luminated with some beautifully placed street lamps.  At this point, the camera will come out again and there might then be ”N Gauge Model Railway Scenery - Part 3″.   Keep a lookout!

My partner’s plan has been to build his railway layout in modular format with multiple separate areas that can be worked on away from the rest of the layout.  In practice, that has meant shapes cut out in sheets of plastics with buildings and any other fixtures carefully drawn round.   The spaces that are left have been mine to what I want with (well almost what I want to do - wooden decking is prohibited, apparently).   From my partner’s point of view, this method has one distinct advantage: all the mess, the glue, the paint and the inevitable spillages end up in my house rather than his.   And how right he is…

So here are some photographs of the preparations we (but mostly me) went through for th:is particular wavy piece of scenery which is 2′ 3″ (69 cm) long and 9″ (23 cm) wide at its widest point.   My partner decided on the shape, cut it out, placed the buildings and the card pavement.  My job was to construct the gardens behind the buildings, bearing in mind that the tracks would be running just over the other side.  Privately, I had a plan to incorporate an allotment and a children’s playground. They were ambitious plans, I know, but I quite honestly hadn’t realised what I’d let myself in for.  For someone used to working in 1/12th (1″) scale, the area to fill looked remarkably small so I didn’t think it would take too much effort.   Wrong. 

At this point, my partner cleared off to America for a few weeks, leaving me to it. 

The first thing I did was butcher a car.   An Oxford diecast Morris Minor to be precise.   I took a pair of pliers to it, somehow managed to tear it in two (I only wante half of it), ripped off the wheels, stipped off the paint and rusted the half I wanted.  (I recommend the “Scenic Rust” kit from Deluxe Materials.)   This was for my “neighbours from hell” garden and the rusted car-half ended up wedged up against a dead tree along with a load of rubbish and “tall” grass.  (Ok, so it was an excuse to play with my static grass machine.  You need one to make “tall” grass.)

And my partner’s response when he came home?   Two responses really.  “What is it?” followed quickly by “Yuk.  Don’t like it”.   You have to smile.

As for the rest, I made great use of Milliput.  This is a two-part putty that once mixed will start slowly to set.  This is a chemical reaction, which means once mixed, you can paint over it and it will still dry as it is not relying on air for the drying process.   However, it stays soft long enough for you to be able to poke things - like tree stumps - into it, and was therefore a wonderful base for flowers, bushes, trees and just basic textured earth, especially in the series of allotments.   I also used Milliput to make the base of the pond/water feature and the “stone” walls.

I used a lot of the scenic materials readily available on the model railway market.   However I combined this with my own hand crafted vegetables, sunflowers and roses, made from fimo/polymer clay (See Part 2).   Initially, it’s quite daunting to attempt to sculpt something that small, but I remember a teacher of mine years ago saying that at that scale you can’t be accurate to the last detail.   What is important is to create an impression of something so that even with the lack of detail, it is instantly recognisable, and that is what I was anxious to achieve.

Dave Tayler is a precision toolmaker with 50 years of machining experience and has retired to the relative quiet of his own “scaled down” workshop to combine his craft and technical skills with his love of miniatures.

Dave himself is from a very “snappy” family, an ancestor having founded “Tayler Brothers”, a photography firm, in 1868.    The shop moved to Primrose Hill in Coventry in 1912 and ”Tayler Brothers” carried on their business there until the 1960s. It is very likely therfore that many of the old black and white family photos to be found buried in the cupboards and drawers of Warwickshire folks were the work of this family.

Dave has based his own 1/12th scale version of a photography shop on these very premises.   If you look carefully in the photos, you will see some of his own camera creations.

So - keep watching, and smile for the camera!

This commission came from David Mitchell who was actually searching the web looking for a railway “N” gauge gas tower when some tortuous route brought him to my website and a picture of the railway garden I’ve already done for my partner.   I don’t know whether he ever found what he was really looking for, but on the way he asked if I could make a garden for him on the same scale.  (N gauge = 2 mm/12″).

Through the post duly arrived a complete house (beautifully detailed in resin and about 5 cm/2″ high) and a template cut from mountboard.   To start the garden, I used the template to cut out a thin sheet of plastic that was to be the base.  There are two main advantages of using thin plastic when constructing a “portable” garden:

1)   The plastic will “take” a vast quantity of paint, glue (or anything else you care to throw at it, within reason) with only minimal - if any - warping or shrinkage.   I’ve tried using an aluminium sheet in the past, and the unspeakable result was only suitable for the nearest dustbin.

2)   The thinness of the material means that it can easily be slotted into an existing layout with no apparent variation in height.   A few dabs of glue in the right places, and the scene can appear as though it was constructed in situ as an integral part of the layout.

There were very few restrictions other than some bushes and trees/fence “would be nice” along the long side as this edge would be going straight up against the backdrop of his layout .   I also needed to be aware that the two sides opposite the long side would be where the train would run.   Apart from that,  I could:

1)  Put the house where I wanted.

2)  Put anything else in the garden I wanted.

As I’ve been making fruit and vegetables for many years in 1/12th scale, my immediate thought was to do a vegetable patch.  I remember many years ago being told by Sue Heaser (an world-renowned expert in polymer clay modelling) that when you are working in a very tiny scale, you cannot hope to recreate every last piece; rather you have to do just enough to give an impression.   The imagination and perception of the viewer will then “draw in” the rest.   Hence cabbages with just a miniscule knot of clay and a maximum of four surrounding slithers and the same for the cauliflowers and lettuces.   Railway materials (such as the scatter materials and grasses) did a lot of the rest.   For earth at this mad scale, I can heartily recommend textured paint - different shades mixed together for realism.

The apple tree was made from fine copper wire (stipped out from an old power cable) then covered with a thin layer of texturing material.   Yes, I did roll individual apples from clay, but if you look closely, you’ll see there aren’t any stalks.  You will need to imagine those.

For the bushes, I used a lot of “sea moss”, which is a natural material that first needs to be softened in water, but can then be sprayed with scatter glue before dipping in various different scatter materials to simulate leaves.   Small flowers are literally just specks of different colours of scatter materials and Flower Soft.

As for the house, it had already come ready painted, but I added greenery to make it look like it had stood in situ for years, not to mention “dirtying” it up with railway modellng powders to resemble soot(particularly on the side facing the railway).   A bit of a confession though - I had to make a new chimney pot for on the chimneys as it got “lost” somehow.  So sorry David - hope you didn’t notice!  (But I do know now how to mix a clay colour in clay….. if you get what I mean….)

The completed garden was duly popped into a box, put in the post, and is going to be slotted into a layout that David is working on called “Kidmore Yard” which is scheduled for an exhibition in April 2011.  To see more of David’s work, visit:

kidmorengauge.weebly.com

This was a particularly delightful commission from a lovely lady in America.  The brief was quite specific in terms of colouring - two vases of flowers to complement a particular wallpaper.  She described the wallpaper in her email with the all important name/make of it - and so bingo!   I found the exact wallpaper in my local dollshouse shop (the last piece they had) and I couldn’t resist buying it.   There is nothing like having the real thing in front of you when it comes to colour matching.  You only have to look at a paint chart to know that there is actually no, definitive, one colour called “white”, never mind pinks, lemons, blues and creams.

This vase of ranunculus and jug of tulips and hyacinth are destined for a tea shop.   It is still under construction but apparently has already been described by someone as something resembling a runaway train.  I have been promised photographs!

I did not put my hardware shop together with the intention of its being an artisan piece.  As a miniaturist, my own speciality is making food and flowers, so a hardware shop wasn’t something I’d normally contemplate in the course of what I do.    Rather it was something deeply personal, a less than faithful representation from a memory of a visit to the reconstructed hardware shop that I saw at the Black Country Museum in Dudley,  England.   This particular real shop is set in the 1930s but I wouldn’t claim that my version is the same.   Truthfully, I haven’t kept to any precise era.   You can most accurately describe my hardware shop as being “old fashioned”, sort of Victorian, sort of Edwardian probably with later elements thrown in.   To me it doesn’t matter.  I was aiming to capture an atmosphere and a feeling of generic age.  Were I to burn a paraffin lamp close to it, I could probably even capture the smell of the place as well.

Apart from that, why did I choose to put a hardware shop together in the first place?  I suppose I was attracted to the clutter of practicality.  The hardware shop used to be the modern day equivalent of a department store for homewares.   You could get the majority of goods for your home from a hardware shop in days gone by, and my first impression of the hardware shop in the museum was that of clutter.   Tins, packets, bowls, baskets, brushes and anything else you care to mention were everywhere; particularly hanging from the ceiling, not to mention outside the shop.  In miniature terms, that translates as “anything goes”.  The occupational hazard for most dollshouse collectors is accumulating piles of odds and ends that have taken our eye for no particular reason, that thn end up in drawers waiting for a home.  A hardware shop could be that home.

The building itself is the Sid Cooke corner shop.  Ok I cheated.  It was already built and ready-wired when I bought it.   I like constructed shells ready for me to move into.  I don’t like woodwork and I’m no good with copper tape, screws and electrics.   The nearest I got to woodwork was making the tongue and grooving for the walls.   I could have bought proper, sophisticated miniature tongue and grooving, but for some reason I can’t fathom, I chose to paint individual pieces of wood and stick them one by one on the walls.   Looking back, I think it would have been better to have chamfered the sides first since they look rather stark, but they’re stuck solid now, so they’re staying.   And I don’t think anyone would notice, unless I told them.

Oh yes, the flooring is wooden as well, but I had the sense to buy that in a sheet and lay it in one piece.   The beauty of doing a hardware shop is that the floor can be as rough, shabby and grubby as you like.   In reality, that meant a lot of staining, sanding, more staining, more sanding, a bit of boot polish, loads of expletives and probably a lot more boot polish.   You can actually throw anything you like on a floor like that while you try to get the right effect.  If it doesn’t work, just take yet another sheet of sand paper to it.  If that doesn’t scrape away a mistake, you can always blame it on the miniature public stomping through the shop in their hobnail boots, bringing in the dirt and generally making a mess.

The nearest faithful, authentic representation of anything in the museum is the counter.   The counter particularly grabbed me with its quality mahogany top and black body (with some strains of mahogany peeping through cracks in the black paint).   My counter started off as a plain wood cheap import and I first stained it mahogany all over.   Leaving the top mahogany, I painted the rest in several coats of matt acrylic black paint, then sanded off a few areas to reveal the mahogany beneath. .Similarly with the shelving, I just bought some plain wood units and roughly stained them mahogany.

The advertising inside the shop was fun.   A few pieces I bought complete as they are, others I cut from pamplets (or dare I say it, even books).   There is a wealth of material out there, often from curious places.  For example, the notice for soap flakes (above the mangle and tub containing soap flakes) was cut out from some rather original wrapping paper. 

I made the Sunlight bars of soap from small slivers of wood.   I actually bought one real bar of Sunlight soap years ago from the old fashioned style Apothecary shop to be found in Howath, Yorkshire, England.  (This is the real shop where the brother of the Bronte sisters bought his drugs in the nineteenth century – I digress, I know – but it was very interesting.)  Back to the bar of soap – I simply scanned the wrapper into the computer, shrank it down then printed several copies to wrap round the slivers of wood.  I did the same for the blocks of Reckitts Blue having found a real one.  The rest of the tins and packets were bought ready made.  There is a great variety available on the market that to choose from if you find you can’t make them yourself

(If you are wondering why the soap flakes in the tub with the mangle look so realistic, it’s because they are real soap flakes bought from the same wonderful Apothecary shop.  Add real water and you’ll get real froth.)

The rest of the contents of the shop were the results of years of collecting and hoarding, just like the rest of us.  Looked at objectively, I don’t think my hardware shop is full enough, but that doesn’t matter. Like I said at the beginning, it was never intended to be an artisan piece.   It is a piece of my own history, a piece of one memorable visit to a memorable museum that is organic, like a real hardware shop and I will continue to add to add to it as I go along.  It is a moment in no particular time that will grow with me for the rest of my miniature days.  

Many of you will be familiar with my sister’s miniature work through her much loved website (www.miniaturechurch.co.uk - St Hilary’s Miniature Church) that she set up in memory of our late mother in 2003/2004.  At the moment, no decision has been taken about the future of this website,although I am sure it will continue as it currently stands for a while yet.

I am sure that those of you who regularly visit this, my own website, will have noticed that no new items have been added for some time now.   As you can appreciate, my priorities have necessarily been directed elsewhere, but I fully intend to start working again on making miniature food and flowers very soon.