Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Deep in the Forest Room Box



How do you like the decorative oak leaf border? I love it, myself. The reason for it is that I wanted to hide a remote controlled LED light, and I felt the room was too high for the general ambiance of the room. 
You can see the opening I made in the ceiling so the light can flood the room when it's turned on. Also, when the batteries die, I can stick my hand up in there, turn the lamp off it's base and change the batteries. I'm still looking for smaller remote controlled LEDs, though. Mine is about 2.4 inches wide.

                                           Here's a picture of the room taken with a flash.

                                  And here's a photo of the empty room, with the LED on. 

The corner fireplace is made of egg carton stones glued to a styrofoam base. You may notice there's no "mortar". People have been building with dry stone since, well, the stone age, and since I like the look of dry stone walls, I rarely use grout to simulate mortar.

By the way, when you use color washes on egg carton stones, the paper gets hard and starts to look like actual miniature stone. When I was trying to decide on a color palette for this fireplace I picked up a stone walkway I'd made 4 or 5 years ago and for a moment wondered what I'd made it with. Egg carton stones, you knucklehead, as I mentally slapped myself on the forehead. That walkway just looked so good to me, like real stones. Do you ever amaze yourself too, thinking, I can't believe I made that, it looks so good?
I knew I wanted a window. A nice old timey window, with a sliding wooden shutter to hold back the chilly autumn and winter nightime air. Obviously, it's midsummer now, all that nice deep greenery. I had a just big enough piece from a clear acrylic tile sheet to make one leaded glass window. I wish I could find more of that 1/2" squares sheeting. All I've seen over the past few years was 1/4" tiles.

I used balsa for the log walls and floorboards. I've always used basswood, but upon seeing someone's balsawood floors, I liked the more textured look of them. 
I used a scriber pen to give the walls and floor more texture.
After staining the logs with a cherry stain, I decided they didn't look quite right, so I went over them with a color wash, mixing a shade of brown acrylic paint with water, then brushing over the stained wood, dabbing away any excess wash. I decided to add a bit more accent with dabs of another darker  wash in a different shade of brown. It gave the walls more character, I felt.
I wanted a lighter stain on the floorboards. I'd used a Minwax Pecan on the little chest, so that's what I used on the floor. Once again, I topped the stain with the same kind of color wash I used on the walls.


The inspiration for this room was the hutch below. I painted the flowers on it years ago, and it's always been one of my favorite pieces on miniature furniture, but I never seemed to find the perfect place for it. The chairs are resin, by Reine, and prepainted and I fell in love with them too, so I made a table to go with them, and built a setting for them.


I'd like to mention that the 2 silver cups on the table are beads, as are the items on the hutch's top shelf. I've used beads and buttons in quite a few of my room settings. 
The ceramic water crock isn't ceramic, it's made from a wooden barrel, but I'll write a post about that later. I also painted the wooden chest next to it.

                                         Here's a better view of the other side of the room.
Almost all the crockery you see are made from wooden beads and turnings. The blue and white jug is a purchased ceramic item. By the way, the wooden clogs are plastic, painted to look more like wood.
                                            I also made the bench and the shelf above it.
The decorative back and the design on the legs were made from some laser cut shapes I purchased years ago from Michael's craft stores. I stocked up on them and have been using pieces cut from them for various pieces of furniture. 













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