Bits And Pieces....

 

 Step By Step....

Sometimes, Dear Readers, It feels like we are Wandering in the Wilderness with no guides to speak of, and every step matters because it takes us along a path to Somewhere... that great aimless "forward" that Time insist on, but doesn't always yield the expected results. We have Dreams, dangling out there in the distance, the carrot on the stick so to say.... tempting us onward... "if I could only get this done..." we think... "it will make such a difference....!" ..... but then the next beacon is pulling us onward... Do we simply Stop and Ponder, as Buddha did... until we have it all figured out.... or do we just keep on taking the next step....? The Castle.... that Great Enticing Behemoth in my Room.... makes me think these thoughts. It is like a confounding Maze, there is always another twist or turn to try! You can see above the next small steps for the Adam and Eve painting. It would seem such a simple thing.... just paint the background.... then complete the smaller details... the paintings are only about one and a half inches square... what could possibly take so long? As you know, I had previously painted the background a rich earthy ocher only to decide it was too rich a color for the Fallen World of Adam and Eve. Better to stick with the blue sky we all know so well. But to get there I had to once again paint the background the bare bones white which you can see on the left hand panel. This is necessary for the over painted color to appear as itself.... as un-muddied by what has come before as is possible. 

 

And here you can see both panels have been given

 their brilliant azure background.... 

but already I am uncertain if it is the right tone.. 

it is perhaps too dark a blue. 

I was aiming for the blue I used on the 

backgrounds for the Creation scenes.... 

(when the ceiling is in place they are 

directly overhead above this painting....) 

but once again... I feel they are too rich 

for the earthly realm to which 

Adam and Eve have been demoted. 

It is too close to that fresh clear Heavenly color.... 

it needs to be a paler more faded hue.

 

And while I ponder this issue, I am reminded

 that so many of The Castle's outer opening doors

 need those "overlap panel" strips added

 to the already "finished" doors. 

No time like the present to make those little changes, 

think I, and quickly cut the needed strips of wood. 

And yet, many of those doors have window trim 

that will need to be cut away along the side

 to make room for attaching those overlap panel strips...

 

Here you can see the Stables door.... 

the simplest example to alter. 

The protruding stone trim on the left needs to be 

cut back by about one eighth of an inch 

to allow for enough width for the overlap panel 

to be glued securely. 

I have started to make the saw cut in the above picture...

 

And here the offending "stone" piece has been abbreviated!

 

Here you can see the strip being glued in place... 

it needs to have enough overlap to cover the gap in the doors

 while still having a good amount of glue attachment to the door itself..

 

This is the interior view showing the needed

 abbreviation of the window trim "stone".

 

And this needed to be done for all the doors 

that have already been "completed".... 

most of which are in the Lord's Tower. 

I will not bore you with showing every trim being trimmed... 

suffice it to say the Lord's Tower panels have been attached! 

 

And while I am waiting for the Glue to dry, Dear Readers, 

I turn my attention to the ever annoyingly unfinished 

sections of the Tree House which stands at my shoulder,

 and ponder the possible "next steps" to take

 in the quest for "stability" if not completion. 

 

The Nursery and Nanny's room have been 

"under construction" for a dozen years now 

(utterly ignored for the first ten of those) 

but I was chasing other Dreams and had lost my path. 

 

 

The partially completed walls would fall down

 every time the house was shifted or moved, 

or decorated with snow for winter..... you get the picture. 

I used tape to hold the doors closed and the walls in place.... 

But what would it take to attach some of those walls? 

Were they ready to be glued in place? 

What exactly was the "next step" for this 

complex puzzle of partly finished pieces?

 The most rickety corner was the little side wall to the

 Nanny's Room where it extends past the original hinging post.

 Was there any reason not to make it 

a little less likely to fall down...? 

Some little "support braces" perhaps? 

I scrounged in the worktable scrap pile and

 came up with two little cutoffs... bits of matchstick... 

to glue alongside the wall... you can see them there

 abutting the little wall and they keep it from tilting outward!  

So simple.... not a problem, not in the way.... 

not even preventing the wall from being removed

 (not yet glued down!) but backstops to all accidental movement!

 So emboldened by this success was I,

 I needed to see if I could determine what was keeping

 the walls themselves from being finally glued down...!

 

This required the "overhead view.... 

(and results in a too dark photo.... sorry about that!)

 Several of the walls have been removed 

(otherwise called fallen down). 

The Nanny's room (the most complete section) 

is to the right, the back wall spans 

both rooms and abuts on the stair tower..... 

and the stair tower is needing completion

 before the back wall can be attached. 

 

Which necessitates removing nearly all the walls 

(excepting the Nanny's room end wall and short wall). 

Here they are loaded into the "safe-keeping box" 

along with the furnishings.

 

So we can access and complete the stair tower walls! 

This picture shows the stair tower from the top....

(with the help of the flash!) 

I had already added the glittery wallpaper to the inside wall 

(the same as used on the lower stairs walls...)

 

Here is the side view of the stair tower door....  

again using flash so you can see the wallpaper...! 

Why is this necessary?

 Because the stairs are visible through the door to the Nursery... 

and it hinges open... so it will be visible in the end.

 It was a bit tricky getting the glue on the outside edges of the

 stairtreads and then wrapping the cardboard tube snugly enough

 to grip the stairs but not get too squeezed out of shape.

 Yes, I stood and held it for a while.... 

quite a while in fact! 

But it worked!

 

Here is the back hallway view.... 

the glue is still drying and I am testing the wall in place

 to make sure the parts all align properly.

 

By now I had decided there was no reason not to glue

 the Nanny's Room opening door wall frame 

and the small side wall in place.

 Because the walls slant a bit (on purpose) 

the attaching join is very irregular. 

I added an extra "matchstick brace" to the slanted junction. 

There will eventually be an extra layer of

 cardboard holding it in place as well.

 

The Tower Stairs doorway also needed some trim... 

being glued bit by bit!

 

The top of the arch abuts the back hallway wall... 

so it needed to be ended at the right spot.

 

And while the Tower Stairs trim is gluing, 

we can take a look from the back side of the 

Nanny's Room opening wall and short wall 

seeing the room from the inside point of view.

 

Which made me realize

 the window seat needed a tiny cushion. 

I pulled out my velveteen scraps...

 and whipped up the perfect little cushion...

 

Just right for that tiny little alcove! 

Alas, this is one of those spots that will be

 impossible to see in the finished room... 

but I will know it is there... 

and I will Dream of sitting on that little seat

 while the moon rises overhead

 and the fireflies dance in the garden below..... 

well, I can Dream, can't I?

 

Well, Dear Readers, I don't know about you,

 but sometimes those bits and pieces

 and little steps lead to the most

 wonderfully surprising places! 

 

The Chapel Floor.....

 

In The Beginning.....

I Hope you don't mind, Dear Readers, being given a glimpse of the Distant Past when the Chapel was just in the early stages of construction. This picture was taken in early 2011, about a year after I had begun building the Castle Dollhouse. I know it is a dim and moody picture, but it shows clearly how much of the Chapel design was already well defined and well under way. With the exception of the ceiling painting, the back altar section of the Chapel has seen almost no alteration since this was taken. The wall murals have been given their initial painting, the stained glass windows are done, the painted rock walls and floor are in place, the electric candles are shining and even the window and ceiling edge trim are already in place with the beginnings of the "ceiling angels" already painted. Over the next couple of months I had finished the other stained glass windows (The Peter and Paul window on the side wall) and the Noah's Ark and Nativity murals as well as begun the ceiling painting. But then my focus shifted to completing the Great Hall Floor tiles and beginning the Lord's Council Chamber. And soon after that I fell deeply into the Tree House Project and didn't return to working on the Chapel until two years ago. I am sure some of you long time readers might have wondered if it would ever happen! So when I did return to the Chapel my focus was quickly on completing the ceiling painting... the largest unfinished task. And in all this time there was no thought given to the floor.

 

I had originally thought I would use mosaic tiles for the floor 

(this was before I knew about sculpey)

 but they were glass and would be difficult to cut and shape. 

(I was thinking of the famous abalone tile floor of the 

bathroom in Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle... 

I wanted an iridescent effect).

But when I returned to the Chapel two years ago, 

I was thinking I could make sculpey tiles the way 

I did for the Great Hall and The Lord's Chambers. 

So I started baking a bunch of sculpey in

 various shades of gray and silver

 (I had decided by then to keep the color on the floor to a minimum....

 it shouldn't compete with the ceiling.)

 

Sorry for the darkish picture.... it was taken in February two years ago! 

But it shows the glittery gray sculpey I had come across 

and wanted to test in the Chapel.

 

Here you can see the tiles being tested in the Chapel... 

shown with the flash,

 which gives an unrealistic picture of the actual look...

 

Which would look more like this. 

Yeah, I know it is really hard to tell with just a partial covering...

 

Here is a closer view showing the sparkle in some of the tiles.

 

 Perhaps with more tiles...? 

Unfortunately, the lighter gray color 

which I liked best had been a limited supply... 

and when I bought more of the "same color" 

it wasn't the same color but gave

 that marbled effect you see to the front. 

Clearly, the pieces were not coming together as I had imagined. 

And the more I looked at it the less I liked

 the whole grid effect of a tiled floor. 

What I really wanted was the ancient 

bare rock surface of an Old Chapel Floor. 

Nothing fancy. Just big solid pieces of rock. 

More like what the walls were made of.

 Like the lowest floors in the Castle... 

the Kitchen floor and the Stables and the Dungeons...

 

Well, here is a picture of the Entire Castle 

opened and with the flash on.... 

taken a couple years ago while I was debating the floor issue.... 

see the lovely floor in the kitchen with Belle and Old Meg? 

(You might have to poke the picture to see it at all!) 

That was the effect I was wanting. 

 And the only real problem was that to make it 

required using the plastic "bondo" material,

 a two part polymer you have to mix and use very rapidly 

because it hardens quickly, and it is mandatory to use 

with good ventilation because it is toxic and it stinks! 

So the project went on the back burner (this was in October!) 

until the temperatures could warm up enough to

 leave all the windows open for several days and nights.... 

a tricky season to find around here! 

But three weeks ago I saw my opportunity coming... 

we had just suffered excessive heat for three days and nights, 

and it was going to cool down and stay cool for three days and nights..... 

So I got started! 

And there was no ability, Dear Readers,

 to mix, smear and shape the stuff fast enough

 to also have time for taking pictures!

 

I had all the doors and windows open, 

but the stuff stinks and you have to work very fast. 

The smearing to shape the floor was very

 rudimentary and uneven, and I also had to

 try to score a pattern of the rocks also very fast! 

No time to ponder anything just apply it and let it go. 

Then after twenty minutes you can start 

to rough sand the material to smooth the worst of the ridges. 

 

Suffice it to say, at this stage I thought I had ruined everything. 

It looks awful, it stinks, and the rock pattern if there was one 

was an unrealistic mish-mash... 

I had to walk away and leave it overnight.

 

The following day I decided I needed to give it a chance.... 

work on it and see what I could manage to achieve. 

So I made sure the rock outlines were clearly defined 

(it is chisel-able and sand-able when hardened) 

then I applied the first coat of primer.

 This only made me more aware of the

 "unrealistic" nature of the textured surface... 

(a sweeping valley that crosses over several rocks...

 not realistic at all!) 

But I carved down the worst of the ridge and

 figured I would camouflage it with paint in the end. 

 

The first layer of "stone gray" paint... 

the same color used everywhere on this castle.

 

Then the darkest gray in all the grout lines.

 

And some "texturing" with the dark gray

 just to add "depth" to the eventual coloring.

 

And the light gray again.... "dry-brushed" over the surface,

 trying not to cover the dark grout lines.

 

And a couple of days later deciding it all needed some "dirtying up".... 

it is supposed to be old... and worn....

 

Showing the whole Chapel.... 

to see how it is "shaping up".....

 

And adding many more paint layers.... 

all those colors I used on the Folly Rocks last summer.... 

coming in very handy!

 

Sometimes it is difficult to know when to stop.... 

when in doubt I give it a couple of days to rest 

and come back with fresh eyes.

 

And deciding that yes, I did need to add 

the white grout lines between the rocks. 

If I didn't like it, I could always paint it over again!

 

And this does help "unify" these rocks with the 

purely painted version in the Altar area. 

 

And suddenly, Dear Readers, I am reassured... 

I have Not ruined the whole thing! 

These rocks are pretty nearly what I had been hoping they would be.... 

They may get a little more paint at some point... 

but for now I am holding steady. 

For the Chapel Floor it's a good beginning!

 

The Chapel Ceiling.....

 

 Slowly But Surely....

I Hope you will understand, Dear Readers, why it takes so long to make so little progress on such a small piece of the painted ceiling in The Chapel of my Castle dollhouse. For one thing, the paintbrushes I use are small to tiny in size. For another, I have to mix the paints to the right color blends and consistency as I need them, and being acrylic paints they dry quickly... which is good in one sense but means I am constantly mixing more and using only a tiny tiny bit in a teeny tiny space in a little specific corner of this ceiling before needing to use a slightly different color and so on! The Triangular area of The Judgement scene is 5 inches tall by 10 inches wide at the widest, the angels are all less than two inches tall and the people are 1 inch at the most..... it is slow and careful going! But when I get started the hours can disappear, and bit by bit the figures become what they were meant to be. I finally got back into it last week... just painting the features on the angels' faces... then outlining all the human bodies...

And starting in on the Angels' robes... 

and forgetting to take many photos...

Adding details to their wings, 

another layer of blue to the background

and starting in on the devils.... All in a days work!

And then because the morning sun was shining into the Chapel

 I needed to take a bunch of pictures while the light was so beautiful...

And you can see how the Judgement Scene arches over the doorway...

 with Christ's birth on one side and his death on the other...

The Madonna and Child over the altar.... 

Christ on the right and Moses on the left...

The incomplete Creation Scenes above the Adam and Eve Temptation....

 completely washed out by the direct sunlight....

And the whole ceiling in one shot... 

revealing how much there still is to do!

And working on the Creation Scenes again.... 

adding the faces to the suns in the rest of the scenes...

which was all I accomplished that day...

Because some days, Dear Readers, the slowness of the progress

 is due to my own uncertainty about what to do...

 first... next.... before... after..... what color... how much..... 

and fixing tiny oopses.... 

the Moon faces were particularly challenging here, 

being each about 3/16th of an inch across!

And the oh so tiny details on the leafy trees.... 

in two additional shades of green...

not to mention the flowering blooms

 with an entirely other green...

And starting to add more grassy ground plants...

And adding the grassy ground around Adam and Eve....

never quite sure when to stop.

And the next day starting to add layers and details to the beasts...

Bit by bit making them sort of recognizable... 

the Medieval painter had a fairly standard list of beasts to include.

Here the beasts are mostly completed...

 the ox and the horse, the sheep and the hare, 

the boar and the stag, the camel and the dog... (or wolf)....

Here they are even closer... 

each Creation "world" is about 2 inches across...

And adding a little more outline definition to Adam and Eve... 

I will have to decide if they need more.

And that is as far as I got, Dear Readers,

 adding tiny bits of paint and Slowly but Surely

 making progress on the Chapel Ceiling!