I'm a Giant . finished for now

The studio apartMac is finally finished! I took some photos before we went out of town last week but I had some technical difficulties and only managed to upload a couple of quick shots to Flickr. I am happy with what's here but I'm going to take advantage of the extension to edit a little bit and refine some pieces.

I stuck closely to my inspiration and I think it all came together. Of course, my favorite bits are the little macbook and iPad from lilushop (thanks to Modern Mini Houses for the tip).

The billy balls that my assistant (3 years old!) and I made are perfect in the eBay vase.

I've seen this wood slice wall art around the internet a good bit so I had Mr. Lemon chop up some sticks and I glued them above the fireplace (another cheap eBay find). The little houses are from a vendor at Handmade Arcade and the birch logs are from Gigi N Studio.

I'm most proud of the wood shelf. It was a scrap leftover from the fireplace slices and it fit perfectly above the sink (that's a chair from the Irwin Interior Decorator set).

These are just a few of my favorite vignettes. With the extension, I'll be able to take better photos in different light and get some good views of the whole thing. The iMac is a beautiful piece of design but it's so hard to shoot the scene!

I'm a Giant . making some progress

It probably seems like I haven't been working on my studio apartMac but that's not true. It's just that I've been doing all these little things that don't look like much. I spent a very long time on the stone floor. The vinyl sheets were from eBay and I had to cut them to the size of the base which meant stacking one on top of the other. To make it look more realistic, I cut away the top layer in a stone pattern then sealed up the seam. You can't tell in the right lighting that it is not one piece.

I also worked on the kitchen unit. I made a farm sink out of pieces from the Irwin Interior Decorator Set. I think it looks pretty good although I do need to touch it up a bit and attach the bar table.

On the left side of the unit, I'm building a wall behind that fireplace. I have an art piece in mind that I'm very excited about. If I use the Petite Princess chair, I will paint it so that it looks like grey leather. This tiny space can seat more than 10 guests! And there is so much more in store. I'm hoping to finish up this weekend.

While I enjoy holiday crafting and all the sewing I've been doing for the doll I bought my assistant for Christmas, it always feels right to work on the minis.

I'm a Giant . billy balls and beads

My assistant and I went to our local bead shop to pick out some vases for the iMac studio apartment. We found these yellow resin beads to use on the mantle perhaps. The 3-year-old picked out the turkey for her dollhouse and it is having a lovely time, so I hear. The wooden bead has already been painted white and will probably become a shade of grey. We will fill it with the 1:12 scale billy balls we made. The white slate is the flooring I plan to use. It's a bit shiny in a plastic sort of way so I'll fill in the grout more and Frank Lloyd Wright it up after our Fallingwater inspiration.

These are the first run of billy balls. I think they are more 1:6 but they look great in the pink "vase" from the bead store. They now also live in the upstairs dollhouse with the turkey. Her house is play scale (Ryan's Room), so about the size of 1:12 but not actually to scale and very chunky for small hands. I think these look great on this 1:16 Petite Princess chest in this photo but the smaller ones are way more awesome.

Finally, I bought a few sets of the Kaleidoscope furniture for my birthday from Fab.com. This green flocked sofa and fuschia chair are actually quite large. I would say they are more like 1:10 but I'm not good with numbers. I have a Lundby and usually work with 1:16. I really don't care about scale (although you wouldn't know it from this post) but these are just too big for my purposes. I really want to keep the coffee table. But if someone wants to buy this (box, olive rug, and all but the coffee table), please let me know. It's actually quite heavy.

I think if you have a house that has tall ceilings or a more open floor plan, this would be great for you. I'm happy to take it out of the box again and measure it or photograph it next to familiar objects (don't you love all the diet coke cans on eBay?). Email me if you're interested: lemoncadet at gmail dot com.
I paid $29 for it. Make me an offer. If you're nice, I will throw in some handmade billy balls in the scale of your choice (or both).

Giant . space planning

I started putting some furniture in the studio apartMac. I am surprised at how much stuff I can get in there. I'm thinking I'll cut a hole in the back that will be a stairway leading to the lower level where the bathroom and bedroom are -- kinda like in a boat.

That TOMY sofa is killing me. I hate it in there; it's just what my "assistant" (to steal a term from MyRealitty) was playing with in our Lundby. I was too lazy to grab something else.

I will definitely be making some sort of kitchen area from these Irwin (Interior Decorator Set) pieces. My plan is to research Manhattan apartments for their kitchens. There is little I love more than House Hunters when it's set in NYC. I'm like Babe, pig in the city when I go there.

I've been adding lots of inspiration to my Pinterest and working away on the Billy balls.

I'm a Giant . pulling some loot from the permanent collection

When I'm playing with my miniatures sometimes I pretend I work for Rachel Zoe and I "pull" styles from my vault. Yeah, it's like that. I might use this fireplace instead of making a hanging one like planned. The speakers from the iMac are too big. The sofa is vintage Fisher Price; I printed out the bricks and used this as a fireplace in a scene. I'm thinking of painting the trashed Petite Princess chair to mimic grey leather. Oh, the colors in the background are scrapbook paper I'll use for stuff. Maybe I'll use the yellow Lundby chairs or the acrylic chairs but definitely with a different table. Maybe the Eames rocker will live in my studio apartMac and maybe I'll paint the elephant in one of these ochre shades. See my new MacBook and iPad? Awesome. Some drawer pulls and knobs, another stolen idea.

These are the accessories I'm starting with. Why yes, that is a Princess Diana commemorative plate. That's how we roll. That's a wheel of brie and a Rilakkuma flan. Indeed.

I'm a Giant Update

Things are really coming along well with the iMac dollhouse. Here is the shell of the home. I think this will be more of a roombox with just a main living space OR perhaps something like a studio apartment. We'll see what happens when I start placing furniture in there.

Here is the template for the floor. We (well, Mr. Lemon) cut some dowel rods so that the final floor (foam core) will just rest on top of these supports. That way I can take it apart to store it in our super small house and also change out the flooring. We've had to hack quite a bit of the inside of the iMac away to make it work but I'm so happy that this will be a reusable space.

I've been adding away to the Pinterest mood board so check it out. I also spent the day making Billy Ball flowers out of air-dry clay and wire. I ended up making some that are really too big so someone lucky who loves the 1:6 may win out. I have to wait until they fully dry to paint and flock.

I'm a Giant!

I have been wanting to jump into the I'm a Giant mini challenge since it was first announced but I felt like I couldn't just make a scene in a roombox like I always do because it's a challenge and I wanted to do something really cool.

Then I remembered it. The iMacquarium! A while back I had come across these things when trying to figure out what the heck to do with that massive old iMac we had collecting dust in the basement. I tried to get Mr. Lemon to help me make a dollhouse with it then and he said no.

But here he is now with the 143 blog getting inspiration from their geodesic dome house. We have one of these (in real size) in our neighborhood and stalk it regularly.

I don't know why he changed his mind but we set to work right away. On my laptop screen is the pdf we found on the iMacquarium site telling you how to take apart the computer. Unfortunately it stops where it gets hard but we figured it out.

Here's where we are in the process now. The shell needs surprisingly little to stay together and weighs next to nothing. I've started a Pinterest board with all my inspiration. This weekend I'm going to troll through my minis and start pulling some pieces. I know that I want to use bits of the computer as accessories. I'm hoping to use the roundy parts the speakers are incased in to make a hanging fireplace. I'm excited to get started. We have already been to Michaels for supplies and Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater for proper inspiration.

Oh, and if you do decide to take your iMac apart, it might help to know that the colorful part of the case isn't tab in slot like the rest of it, it's more like these pull down tabs in slots so don't try to pry it out, you have to tug it down before pulling it out or you will break one of the tabs off like we did.

Fab challenge with Call of the Small

Before my little blog break, I saw some cool earrings on Fab.com and thought they would make the perfect accessory in a scene. Being too cheap to buy a whole pair just for myself, I asked the amazing mini designer behind Call of the Small if she would go halvsies with me and do a challenge. I don't think we set any rules: just use the earring in a scene. Here's my result.

I assumed she would do something much cooler with the earring than hang it on the wall as art so I took the safe route by doing just that. I made the frame myself (a first!) with dollhouse moulding. I used seed beads to shadow it away from the backing paper. The fireplace is actually a vintage Fisher Price couch that I turned upside-down and sideways. I printed out the brick paper and stuck it in.

The rug was actually my first idea. I don't know if it's cheating but it came to me shortly after I bought the earrings. I had the pattern printed from one of the artist's other designs before the package even arrived.

I used the roombox I designed (have I talked about that yet?) to stage the scene. My favorite part is the coral. I found the orange faux coral at Michaels and hot glued it into a bottle lid.

I bought the abstract expressionist stamps at the Post Office months ago specifically to use in scenes and finally Rothko made it.

Time: I must confess that I have been working on this scene all week! I've been playing with it bit by bit when I could get in a minute.

The goods: sparkly chairs are Petite Princess; coffee table is a glass tealight holder with a piece of paper glued on; dishes are re-ment, Ocara, Playmobil, and random eBay finds; orange chair is Reac; side table is a vintage Fisher Price chair, possibly a booster seat (?); the credenza is a dollar store table that I chopped the legs off, sanded, and washed with orange paint to be the right color and size; record player and other stuff is Tomy. I totally forget who made the earrings but hopefully Call of the Small will post a credit.

This was really fun for me. Thanks so much to Christine of Call of the Small for taking me up on this challenge. I can't wait to go see what she's done!

Bicentennial decor

I was only a toddler in 1976 but for some reason the design of that year really fascinates me. When we were house hunting a few years ago we looked at this place with an entire bathroom wallpapered in liberty eagles. So when a living room set popped up on eBay, I watched it with great interest. I didn't bid and it was relisted. I felt it was my duty to buy it at the lower price and a couple of weeks later, it arrived from the original owner. I think it's cool that dollhouse furniture follows the trends in the 1:1 world; read this interesting post by diepuppenstubensammlerin.

I have people in mind when I work out my inspiration for a scene. This place is rented by some hipsters who think that bicentennial decor is hilarious (like myself). I played around with some doily action but ended up taking the space in a more modern direction. They like contemporary art and nice glassware but also throw in stuff they've picked up at yard sales and the Salvation Army downtown.

I do realize how crazy this all sounds but my job can be super high stress and staging these little scenarios relaxes me in a way that sewing never will.

I'll put more details in the flickr captions as I feel I've gone on long enough.

Making some minis

Z and I set to work on another scene this weekend. I bought a bunch of new chairs and wanted to play around with them and so did she. We were having some issues with the layout of everything so I decided to make some pillows to go on the floor. As always, I had some help with accessorizing the space. The more I look at the photos, the more I think there is just too much stuff in there. I kinda have this rule in my head though that I only photograph once and then I dismantle everything. I don't look at the photos until after my design assistant has gone to bed and the light is long gone.

The pillows were so easy to make, I'm ashamed I haven't made more mini stuff for our scenes. I used some muslin I had in a bin and a DJ Lance I had printed onto iron-on paper a few months ago. I finished them while Z was eating lunch and surprised her with them. They add to the 1970s sort of rumpus room vibe of the space -- lots of wood paneling and random furniture, some kids stuff and whatever snacks you have in the fridge.

I like the lighting.  A few more pics and a list of what's possibly what over on flickr.

Minis

After I finished up Play Eats, I had an important far away work meeting to prepare for.  I have been back a few days and I'm still so full of jet lag, I've gotten very little done.  It's hard to believe that it is already April (probably because it was snowing/hailing or something on my way home from work last night.

Z and I have been very busy making scenes lately. I know I have only mentioned this briefly but the world of miniatures has consumed me. Luckily, Z is always up for some decorating and the girl does have a good eye for layout. As you can see in the top photo, she likes to help me out and is actually quite careful with the loot. So far what's broken has been able to be fixed (except, of course, for the chair that I dropped). Above is an ideal scene for her. She basically just shoves as much as possible into the roombox and calls it a day. I like to edit a bit more.

This is the right side of our most recent scene. I asked her before I shot this what was missing and she said, it needs more stuff, mama! I let her add the cheesecake and her silver rock, the thermos, the spoon and a few things out of view. I look back at what I photographed before her accessories and it looks so bare.

We have done lots of scenes. They are all here in this flickr set.  I usually put the origin of all the stuff in the description of one of the photos so if you want to know who has made something, look for the photo of the whole scene or just leave a comment.

Plans

I Can Fly, illustrated by Mary Blair, is a nighttime favorite for us. I love the her style, I love the colors, I love the whimsy. I love that red chair. I can't stop thinking about it.

I'm going to try to make one in miniature. My plan is to find an existing 1:12 chair -- probably something with a different back. Then I will bend wood or something to try to make the oversized roundy back.

Do you think that's even possible? I was thinking of starting with this.