The Folly sat "completed" except for the shingles for the longest time. As I am sure you know if you have ever built a little house from a kit, it takes weeks and weeks to get even this far! The winter of its inspiration was over, spring arived, the outdoor garden beckoned and then took over and the Folly waited.
At some point during that summer, after a daring visit to that dangerously tempting miniatures shop, the stove arrived, and a few plates as well.
And a lovely Chinoiserie screen for the upstairs dressing room - because it is nearly impossible to go to the miniatures shop and come home with only two items! And a little brown dog has taken up residence - he is waiting for his master to come home and start putting the shingles on the roof before winter arrives. (The dog came from the tea bag box! :)) But his master is taking his time because shingles are sort of daunting, especially when you've never done them before and there are so many other things to distract you! And before you know it, it's winter again! And that means (for some of us) Christmas!So what does a lover of all things miniature who is really still in denial about her dollhouse obsession do at Christmas time? I am sure many of you know this answer because you find yourself in the same place.......you make miniature ornaments, of course!
And in my case, this year I got carried away making some tiny worlds I had been fantasizing about (and collecting pieces for) for many years. You must, dear readers, please forgive the very unfinished pictures here, and use your imagination to really get the whole picture, because alas, I have not FINISHED these ornaments! And most of them are not HOUSES so maybe they don't quite fit in my blog......but here they are anyway.....I call them my "snowball" ornaments because they are supposed to look like snowballs with little "worlds" inside, and maybe they will look like snowballs when they are finished!
Skating by moonlight...
Fairy by a forest pond.....
Tea in the garden.......
Close-up of tea in the garden.........
Moonscape (useing toys my boys left behind)....And my favorite....Santa's parlor (not yet DONE)
I had to make a chair for Santa........
And then another for Mrs. Santa...........
Here they are just waiting for Santa and Mrs. to get home.......
Here is a better shot of the whole snowball.....and why, yes that is a lovely painted ceiling they have! It looks familiar you say? Well, you may have seen this ceiling painter's work before in this blog! And not even very far away............
In the Folly, which is SLOWLY getting its shingles.........
But, alas, I did NOT pay correct attention to the directions when it came to the shingles! It said VERY CLEARLY "stain shingles before applying". I was impatient. I wasn't sure what color I wanted the shingles to be. I thought "how hard will it be to paint them once they are on the house?" Well, I will have to find that out the hard way! I am (fairly) certain I want to make them a dark slate gray color, with a pattern row or two of a purple or blue slate color....maybe even both! ....which was a common style here in this part of the world during the Victorian era. So you can see, it will be hard. And painstaking...and slow......WHEN I get to it!
The front has almost all the shingles done......I was making such good progress before I got distracted.....but more on that in another post!
The kitchen has a cupboard that needs a coat of paint too.....
And the parlor has a fireplace with a large (perhaps too large?) gilded mirror above it .....and the lovely old easy chair has found its way here! It looks as though the builder has moved in while he works on the roof.....I wonder if the Poet knows.....
No matter! He can stay if he wants to. Just as long as he gets to work on those shingles!
And the little brown dog is waiting for someone to light a fire in the fireplace......Just a little Folly for the Folly.
If you follow me.
