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. 

A Room Box for a Maine Lobsterman

 The time is circa 1900. Amos Gooch is a lobster fisherman living in Cape Porpoise Maine. After he sold his cottage to a rich fellow from Away (anyplace out of Maine), he bought himself a new lobster boat and found himself a new place to live. You see him here in his cozy new digs, with his lifelong best pal, Cap.

I made the blue table and hutch on the left from an unpainted Town Square trestle table and the top half of a kitchen sink cabinet by Reutter. The table as originally designed was too wide for my purpose, so I took it partially apart, removed the trestle and made the table narrower.

I turned the top half of the Reutter cabinet upside down and added a little lip to finish the top. I had already used the rest of the Reutter sink for another room box. 

I wanted something to stick under the table, so I made a wooden crate. What could I put in there, that would add some more visual interest? Fish netting! I had a nice fish net made by Amy Robinson, but I didn't want to use it here, as I just wanted something poking up out of the box, and it would be a shame to crumple up a nice fishing net and hide most of it in a box, so I made a servicable substitution. By the way, Amy is based out of Biddeford Maine, which is the next town up from Cape Porpoise.

To make the net I used some cotton gauze. The stuff I had at home was too stretchy and had a funny pattern in it, I suspect it might have been polyester, so I went to Walmart's fabric and notions section and bought a new little packet of cotton gauze.

Next I mixed up a few colors of paint with water to make a grey wash. This particular wash was on the blue-grey side. 

I spread a piece of gauze on an enamel tray, then I dabbed on some wash on one end of the fabric, splashed on some water, dabbed on some more wash, patted the dry half onto the wet half, and when the color looked ok, I carefully lifted the fabric off and laid it on a couple sheets of paper towel to gently blot off the excess water.

Next I tranferred the netting onto a fresh surface so it could dry, crumpling and folding it to shape. I made a few of these. Once dry, they tend to keep their crumpled shape fairly easily. 

I dabbed a bit of glue on the parts of the crate where I wanted the netting to hang over, then pressed the netting down a bit over the glue.

Amos's chairs are Town Square's Chianti chairs. I had several of these that I had no use for, and didn't manage to sell on Ebay, so I pulled off the leatherette seats and replaced them with matting I cut from some old straw coasters I had laying around. I sanded areas of the chairs to give them a lived in look.

By the way, the flooring is a bamboo placemat. I just trimmed it to fit and glued it down.

The blue hanging wall cabinet is the top half of a Michael's hutch.

While looking through my stash for things to put on the shelf, I found I had one of those shiny, cheap tin buckets. I figured if I toned down the shine on it, it'd look just right so I sprayed it with Krylon matte finish. 

I also had a beige metal dust pan by Multi-Minis, nice pan, wrong color. I wanted mine black, so I gave the pan a coat of matte finish, then painted it. I bumped it a couple of times during the drying process, so I had to reapply color and finish it off with a couple more coats of Krylon before I was through. I did the same thing with the shiny tin ladle, turning it into a more antique looking black one.

By the way, the little wooden chest was made by cutting a piece of scrapwood and a small section of molding. I stained the molding a darker color, glued them together, and applied a dab of silvery paint to simulate the latch.

One more little tip.

I loved the style of this little plastic cabinet, but wanted to tone down that plastic shine, so I brushed on a wash of thinned down brown paint over the whole thing, including the white knobs. I think it came out rather well. 

If you'd like to see Amos's original cottage, the one he sold to the rich city slicker click here.

The Baron's Study - a room box

This room was inspired by some castle interiors. I only made one piece of furniture for this room, that's the big cabinet on the left. It's a piece for show, the doors don't open. I always mention that to save people from asking if the doors open. I designed the box to have a space in which I could insert a small light to simulate daylight streaming in through the window. The small bulb emits a soft glow, sort of early evening light. For this shot I removed it and set a lamp with a bright bulb to shine down into the opening behind the window. I wanted more of a late afternoon light.

I painted the pictures using 17th c. paintings for inspiration.

The floor and the placement of the painted panels below the window and the bookshelves come from the picture of an old Swiss chateau.