Roof: Part 1

Gluing the roof structure together (with a little help from Charlie Brown and Snoopy). More to come...

Starting Over...Again

For a while now, I've felt a bit burnt out on the midcentury house - I think I made the design, with multiple opening panels, a bit too complicated for my skill level. I just can't seem to get it right, and it's much more frustrating than I've let on.

So, I'm going to put it aside for now. I may come back to it in a few months, or a few years. But for now, I've begun another project (one I'm sure I can handle).

Here's a clue (and it's NOT a Tudor/medieval building!):

How I Brick a Chimney

1. Make egg-carton bricks for an earlier, and MUCH smaller project - the back of the fireplace in a room box. Realize I have neither the patience nor the coordination to make thousands of tiny identical bricks for a bigger project.

2. Decide against using individual bricks for the same reason no one ever builds an unreinforced masonry chimney in California anymore - one sharp shock and the whole thing could collapse. Build a chimney out of plywood and glue it to the house.

3. Order brick slips (Richard Stacey's, of course) from the UK.

4. Attempt to use broken brick pieces and scraps of (real) slate (saved from making the downstairs fireplace) to make a clinker-brick base. Hate it. Scrape it all off with a putty knife before the glue has a chance to dry (but save the broken brick pieces in case I ever decide to try it again).

5. Start gluing brick slips in place the regular way. 

6. Run out of brick slips two-thirds of the way through (I just HAD to use so many of them on the screened-in porch). Order new ones.

7. Open package of new brick slips and realize that, since they're from a different batch, they're a different shade of red. ARRGH!

8. Think "the hell with it" and start gluing them on anyway.

9. Quickly realize the different bricks create a subtle and believable "repair line" - such as might be seen on a 94-year-old, unreinforced chimney after earthquake damage necessitates some work on the house. (If this house existed in real life, it would have been rattled by earthquakes in 1925, 1933, 1948, 1971, 1987, 1989, 1994, 1999, and 2010...and I'm not even counting smaller quakes, which happen all the time. I have yet to live in a house built prior to 1970 that showed no evidence of earthquake damage.) Instantly love it.

10. Finish gluing on the brick slips. Allow to dry.

11. Seal brick slips with a 1:1 mix of glue and water. Allow to dry.

12. Break out the mortar and a very old, very tiny trowel that inexplicably turned up in my late grandfather's tool kit. (Pity I'll never know where he got this thing - it's awesome.)

13. Clean off excess mortar throughout the mortaring process. Continually acknowledge that I need more practice at this, since I'm not very good at it!

Next up: adding the siding. It's about time I made some progress on the exterior.

New Workspace and a Midcentury Fireplace

It took a while, but I'm finally settled in enough to resume work on the California house. Progress might be sluggish for a while because I've decided to rip out and redo a couple of things (I know, I know...but it doesn't look right yet).

Some time ago, other miniature bloggers posted pictures of their workspace. I didn't, due to the fact that at the time, I was building my French townhouse in a dark, dusty, cramped garage. Thankfully, I now have twice as much space, allowing my sunny new living room to double as a workroom.

Working on furniture placement for the second bedroom (using the master bed as a placeholder).

Some months ago, I found this tiny Malm-esque fireplace in a secondhand store. Details stamped on the base indicate it was made by Durham Industries around 1980 (the company also manufactured cast-metal Holly Hobbie miniatures), although I couldn't find any information on this piece specifically.

Malm fireplaces are still made by the same Santa Rosa-based company that created them in 1961, making this a perfect fit for a California house remodeled in 1962. It's about 1.5" wide, so it's technically 1/24th scale, but it's so cute I don't care. It was originally gold-tone, but I painted the base black (to resemble lava rock), painted the inside black, and painted the outside sky blue.

I was thrilled to discover that the pipe did, in fact, open into the fireplace proper, making it very simple to thread in a "flickering fire" LED from Evan Designs (it's much more realistic in real life).

Noir in Miniature

The Starlet Bungalow in black and white. Is it just me, or does a grayscale color scheme add drama?

In the absence of color, I could swear these pictures tell a story I sure didn't make up. This picture makes me imagine Lydia moodily staring back at her own reflection while removing her makeup, contemplating fame.

Coffee table chaos: the signed photos (she'll have to do more later), the scripts to read, the pithy trade papers, the highly coveted award...and to what end? Is that all there is?

I barely even notice the SAG card in this picture because the keys dominate the image - even the tiara looks like an afterthought. Why is Lydia staying at the famously discreet Chateau Marmont? Is she secretly shacking up with an illicit lover, conducting secret business deals away from prying eyes, or merely getting away from autograph hounds for a few days?

More moodiness. The empty couch almost seems to imply that someone else should be in the bungalow with Lydia. Or perhaps the couch is vacant because our star can't stop pacing the floor? (Come to think of it, the carpet looks rather lumpy in this picture, even though it isn't in real life. Has Lydia "swept something under the rug", so to speak?)

Shipping minis this holiday season?

Sender (and recipient) beware...according to a UPS truck loader, there are quite a few ways for things to go wrong. (Warning: strong language and some adult content. Possibly NSFW.) Prepare for the worst, miniaturists!

And it gets worse: according to an experiment performed by Popular Mechanics, items marked "fragile" seem to be singled out for MORE abuse. (Ugh, what is WRONG with people?)

I am especially shocked that Popular Mechanics rated the US Postal Service gentler than FedEx or UPS, since I've had more than a few mailed parcels arrive smashed, with broken items audibly rolling around inside, or simply looking as though they'd been used for baseball practice. When I've had miniatures arrive broken, guess what - all shipped by USPS from within the USA. (Curiously, I've never had anything mailed from overseas get damaged in transit...)

Anyway, to cut a long story short - if I ever need to ship miniatures, I'm shipping them in one of those cheap hard-sided coolers...inside a big wooden crate...and if necessary, I'll tuck the crate inside an old Volvo wrapped in a couple miles of bubble wrap and ship that via truck!

All Right, Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready For My Closeup: Spring Fling 2013

Hollywood, California, 1956.

Lydia Lang, a luminous, curvy brunette, is finally a star. This is a peek into her private sanctuary, which I call "The Starlet Bungalow".

"Hollywood" and "bungalows" go together like "California" and "sunshine". Bungalows have been used on studio backlots for decades - mostly as offices and dressing rooms (although Warner Brothers' former animation building, known as Termite Terrace, was basically a bungalow the size of an airplane hangar). Some are in use to this day (Disney Studios famously preserve and use their fabled "Hyperion Bungalow", moved to its current home from the studio's original location).

Although trailers were certainly in use by 1956, it wasn't unusual for big stars to have their own bungalows (an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour even shows an actress taking refuge in the privacy of her backlot bungalow). Lydia finally got her own.

I watched Sunset Boulevard, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (R.K. Maroon had THE coolest office), and - my favorite - The Artist for visual inspiration. The porch railings are based on the porch railings outside George Valentin's dressing room. I made them out of 1/4" basswood strips and love the way they turned out.

There is a topiary hedge on one side of the bungalow, inspired by the whimsical topiaries seen to this day at Fox Studios. I didn't have the skill to do anything too fussy here, so I drew inspiration from a hedge that has neatly trimmed comedy-and-tragedy masks. Rather than copy Fox's hedge directly, this is meant to be a Walk of Fame star.

Rumored to be the secret daughter of Greta Garbo and Leopold Stokowski (she is actually the daughter of a USC professor and a research assistant), Lydia has played priestesses, queens, spies, revolutionaries - she thrives in roles that add to her otherworldly air. Last night, she took home an Oscar for her starring role as Queen Christina of Sweden. Flowers from the studio's top brass have begun to arrive.

I also took inspiration from Cecil B. DeMille's re-created office at the Hollywood Heritage Museum - it has a door with a window (and green pull-down shades), so I took the door off of my 2012 Spring Fling and swapped it for the kit door (a plain slab door is better suited to the previous Fling anyway). Really, a star should be able to see who's at her door before opening it!

This vanity was the first thing I made for the Fling, and I'm glad it was - it's the trickiest thing I've ever done in miniature! The bulbs are real and do light up, although I couldn't get a picture of it without serious glare. Vanity tray is by Patsy-Mac, brush/comb/mirror are from Dolls House Emporium.

Of COURSE Lydia has a chair (from Minimum World) with her name on it! (Such a chair would actually be used on-set, so please humor me by pretending she's re-using a chair from her first big picture.)

The dressing screen is from a McQueenie Miniatures kit. The costume is for Lydia's current project, an as-yet-untitled drama set in 1830s California.

The bookcase is a modified House of Miniatures open-top cabinet, filled with film canisters (actually miniature "biscuit tins" from SP Miniatures with my own labels), scripts and books, a rotary phone (originally a pin), and the fixings for a mid-afternoon cocktail (hey, it's 1956, and even Mr. DeMille kept booze in his office) - gin and tonics by Caroline McVicker, tray by Pete Acquisto, syphon by Glasscraft. The "gin decanter" was originally a tiny perfume-bottle pendant.

Four pictures of "Lydia". The young woman in the pictures wasn't famous, but she reminded many of her friends and relatives of old-school movie stars - polished, sharp, and always dressed to the hilt.

Close-up of Lydia's coffee table (another House of Miniatures kit), with a tiny Academy Award (made by Treefeathers), copies of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, a stack of autographed glossy pictures (I signed them all with a .005 tip pen!), and an open script. (I may have gone a little detail-mad here: even though the text is WAY too small to be readable, I shrank down and printed out a script page from Sunset Boulevard. The two-column format seen here, not standard for screenplays, was used in this case because the film is narrated from beginning to end.)

If you are unfamiliar with Variety (which you probably are), I recommend the Warner siblings' witty take on the trade paper.

Overall view of the seating area. I hope someone takes the time to notice that the window shades have pull cords with covered rings on the ends (I used quilting thread for the cords because it's heavier and tends to hang straighter than all-purpose thread). The sofa is yet another House of Miniatures kit.

Overall interior view. Do note the ceiling beams (and the poster for Queen Christina on the far right).

Loaned tiara (actually a ring) with a Screen Actor's Guild card (Marilyn Monroe's - I couldn't find a blank one) and a set of keys for a room at the fabled Chateau Marmont - where Hollywood goes to misbehave. (What? Lydia's house is being painted...really...)

Another angle.

If you were wondering how I got the background to look so realistic...that's because it's real. I wasn't sure I could paint a realistic backdrop (but if I had, the Hollywood sign would have been on it).

I don't expect to place in the contest, but I am very happy with how this build turned out!

(Disclaimer: Lydia Lang didn't really exist, and the 1956 Best Actress Oscar actually went to the late, great Anna Magnani for The Rose Tattoo - another classic movie worth watching.)