Amos's Cottage - exterior

Yesterday afternoon I finished playing about with Amos's garden, and I wanted to get some pictures before the sun went down.
A few people thought there should be a seagull somewhere. Well, I bought some seagulls several years ago when I first got the idea for Amos's cottage. They've been hanging around waiting for a place to settle themselves ever since. One has settled atop Amos's roof.

Star has been playing at cooking in the side yard. She's been preparing a tasty leaf stew. I hope she remembers to pick up her toys before it gets dark.
I suddenly felt I just had to have some antique style lobster buoys, which were final items I added to the front yard. The other seagull is nearby. You might recognize the bird bath as New England Miniatures' HN142. The Victorian front yard just cried out for a birdbath.

The side of the cottage.

Here's a closer look at the lumber pile and the bouys.

To make the dirt, I first glued on some sand using a spray adhesive, just as I did for the sandy area in the front of the house. After brushing off the loose sand, I painted the remaining sand with brown paint. Some of the sand stuck to the paint as I went along, but it didn't matter, plenty of sand was left in place.
After the paint was fairly dry, I sprinkled a little more sand here and there. I thought I was going to need to spray on a little more adhesive to keep it down, but it turned out that I didn't need to.

Here's a closer look at the dirt.

Amos Gooch's garden, continued

It's been a while since I've been able to get back to working on Amos Gooch's cottage. Today I'll show you what I've just finished. There's still a bit more to do to the garden, and I'm hoping I can finish that this week.
Here's the front of the house as it looks now. I still need to finish applying sand to the right hand side, and I feel the yard still needs a little something in the foreground on the left.

I used the wooden, unfinished napkin ring to make a keg for Amos to sit on. I cut a top out of basswood, and sanded the edges a bit so it wouldn't stick out, then I stained it with some brown paint thinned with water. I applied two different shades of brown. If my cans of stain had been at hand, I could have used them, but the paint was handier. I applied it just like a stain, paint on, wipe off. I used first one color, then another. Just a reminder, if you want to use paint like a stain, water it down. Also, there are acrylic stain mediums you can buy, if you prefer. Just mix the medium with an acrylic paint, and it becomes a stain.

Some barrels and kegs are held together with iron bands, while others used wooden or leather straps. Since my napkin holder had wider, rounded lips at top and bottom, I decided to go with the wooden strap look.

I blended a little water into a brown paint, and applied it to the rounded lip of the napkin ring, doing a section at a time. I immediately wiped off the excess paint.


I also gave the walk a coat of paint. It's supposed to represent crushed shell. below you can see it partially painted.

Here's what my pallette looked like. There's white and Payne's Gray on either side, and in between is a mixture. The very white parts of the picture are just reflected light. I'll mix a bit of paint and apply it to the walk, then dip my brush in lighter or darker paint as I need to. The walk should be white, but not pure white. The variations in gray need to be subtle.
Here's a view of the new section of garden.

More sand has to be glued onto the board, and I may still add a few more little plants. The side still has to be done. I'm thinking of painting the sand to simulate soil, to make it all look a little more interesting, and I still want to add a bit more greenery along this side of the house.

Amos's Lumber Pile

This afternoon I got back to work on Amos's yard.
First I glued some "mulch mix" in the planting areas out in front of the house. I'll often just paint in my dirt, or maybe mix a little sand with the paint, but this time I reached for the coffee grounds-tea leaf mixture that I used for the Bungalow's garden. I felt I needed more texture to contrast with the sand.

Next I glued in the plants just how I showed them in the last Gooch post. As you can see, I did decide to use the tall grass, using some shorter ones to blend everything together. That old standby filler, reindeer moss, helps as a ground cover, hiding lumps of glue or plastic.

I felt I needed something else along the side of the house besides plants. A barrel seemed to be a good choice, and I happen to have a nice unpainted wooden barrel on NEM,Item #AN141 and here it is.
And now it looks like this.

I started by painting the inside of it a dark brown. Next I used some dark brown and a lighter, warmer brown color. Color names don't really matter, since brands use different names for the same or similar colors. The dark brown looked like milk chocolate, the lighter brown looked more like nutmeg.
I dipped my brush in water, then in the darker brown paint and started squiggling the brown paint on part of the outside of the barrel. Then I dipped the wet brush in some of the nutmeg color and started squiggling it on, overlapping the wet paint and dry, fresh wood. I more or less sqiggled them together, then while the paint was still wet, I wiped the barrel with a paper towel to get the extra paint off. This way you wind up with a stained look rather than a painted one. Of course, I could have used stain, but it was down in the basement and I was up in my studio over the garage and I didn't feel like going all the way down then all the way back upstairs.

Anyway, you get a more aged effect using the paint. As always, when you want to try something like this, try it first on pieces of scrap wood. It's an easy technique, but you have to get a feel for it.

When the paint was dry, I used a black Sharpie marker to draw in the lines for the boards. They don't have to be perfect. Afterwards, I painted on the iron bands with black paint.
For the scrap lumber I just used the bits and pieces of wood I saved from other projects. I stained them with watery paint, rubbing off the extra paint before they were dry. I used a few different shades to make them look more interesting. I poured some wood glue into the bottom of the barrel, and stuck in the scrap wood.

I used more scrap pieces for the stack on the ground, also staining them with paint. I used hot glue for the top plank that's sort of diagonal, wood glue for the rest.
I spread a little glue on the base, sprinkled on some sand, and then artfully arranged some more greenery to make everything blend together naturally.

Amos Gooch's front yard

Over the weekend I worked a bit on Amos's house. I felt like starting something fresh, so I began work on his front yard.
Here we see Amos and Cap having a smoke out front. Amos is sitting on a napkin ring, yes a napkin ring. I found this unpainted wooden napkin ring and it reminded me of those old time kegs that came in assorted shapes and sizes, so I set it aside til I needed it. Cap is sitting on a piece of broken coaster set holder.
OK, I bought a set of coasters, and they came in a wooden tray, but once I opened the package I saw the tray was broken, which didn't matter, I never use those holders anyway. The two halves of the holder do look like benches, though. I'm still not sure if Cap prefers the bench or another seat, he hasn't expressed an opinion.

First, I needed to decide on the front walk. Originally, I thought maybe sand, but then decided that wouldn't be right, a crushed shell walk would be better. I was NOT however, about to start pulverizing sea shells to make them small enough for 1:12 scale. I decided to try and easier route, that old standby, drywall compound.

You're seeing it unpainted, and still damp. I spread some glue on the base, then spread on the stucco. Next I used a stipple brush, the kind you use for stenciling, and started pouncing the brush up and down all over the stucco. This made quite a few pointy bits that stuck up, so I waited a while til the compound had begun to set and dry a little, then used my finger to pat the pointy bits down.
Hopefully, after I've painted it, it will look like crushed shells.

You could do the same thing to give a wall that rough stucco look. It also reminds me of some of English houses I've seen in some old photos. They had rough stucco with pebbles in them, sometimes they were larger, more like small stones. I seem to remember a dollhouse made around 1900 with the same look. You could stick tiny pebbles in the stucco.

Next I started on the soil.
I wanted a mix of soil and sand,with a bit of grass. Since I've used painted sand to simulate grass in the past, I thought I may as well sand one side of the yard and see how it went.
I started by spreading some glue on the base, and then spreading some sand on it and pressing it down. Then I remembered my can of spray adhesive and thought I may as well try using it to glue on the rest of the send. It would certainly be better than having a glue coated finger.
I sprayed some adhesive in the rest of the section, shielding the wall with a piece of cardboard. Then I spread some sand and patted it down. After several minutes I brushed off the loose sand, first with my hand, then a soft brush.
It looked pretty good, but I felt I needed more sand, so I resprayed and added more sand, repeating the process as before.
I found that as I brushed off the extra sand, It just kept coming off tiny bit by tiny bit, so I decided to try spraying adhesive over all of it to keep it in place.
It stayed tacky for a while, and I started to worry a little, but as it dried it got firmer.

Next I painted some brown dirt for planting areas, and decided to try out some plants.
I found a great looking silk spider plant on sale a while ago. The baby plants hanging on the trailing stems were perfect for mini gardens. Two of them are in the corner.

I had also found two little clay pots with plastic grass "growing" in them. I thought the grasses would be great in some mini gardens, and I could use the pots for planters. I'll have to take a picture of the one I haven't taken apart. You can see a section of tall grass behind the other plants.
I'm not sure if I'm going to use the tall grass in Amos's yard yet or not. I merely drilled the holes to I could stick some plants in temporarily, to see how they'd look.
I wish I could do that in a real-life garden. Invariably, I'll plant something, and then, when it's growing, wished I'd planted it somewhere else or maybe a foot or two over.

A Faux stone floor

This evening I've been rearranging links for New England Miniatures, trying to make the Links page a little easier to navigate. I decided to move my description of how I used drywall compound to make a stone floor here, instead of on its own page.
By the way, sometimes it's called drywall compound, other times stucco, or some refer to it as wall plaster.


Here's a picture that gives a better view of the floor of Tall Chimneys kitchen. I spread the drywall compound and let it dry a few minutes so it wasn't gloppy. I used a pencil to lightly trace out the shapes of the stones. If you press down on the pencil too much you make ridges, not enough and your stones tend to become indistinct. It takes a few practice trys. I made a couple of errors and just resmeared it up and started over. When your stones are drawn let the floor dry thoroughly overnight or at least a few hours. I next sanded the floor where I had any unwanted bumps and ridges. After that I started smoothing it with a damp rag. A damp rag is the same as sandpaper to unpainted drywall compound. I didn't want the stones perfectly smooth, but I didn't want them lumpy, either. I just kept working with the rag til I got the look I wanted. The nice thing is, if you feel you have totally botched the whole thing, or even just one section of it, you can reapply compound and start over or fix a section. I know, I goofed a couple of times and had to do a fix.

When you're happy with your stones you can paint them. I like to use color washes when I paint stones. I'll cover the stones in a base color, then start applying washes. You can wait for the base to dry or you can apply the washes right over it while its damp. The look can differ a bit one way or the other, you have to try and see what you prefer. To make the washes I select the other colors I want to show up in my stones. I don't recall the exact blend. Most likely it was a mix of ochre, off white, a beigey color, a brown...Color washes are easy to use. They're wet and just flow right onto the surface when you touch your brush to it. If you don't care for the color you can go over it with another wash and change it, or you can intensify it. I did a bit of color washing over my base color in a general way for the first step, giving the whole floor a sort of subtlely mottled appearance. I then began to pay attention to the individual stones. I'd do a stone here and there in a browner wash, then others with an off white wash til I was satisfied. The whole secret to successful painting techniques is to relax, let your wrists loosen up and just fool around with it til it begins to get comfortable and it seems to just naturally flow. I've made many stupid painting mistakes when I was tense and worried how it was going to turn out. It's funny, after years of painting I'm still pleased and surprised when things turn out just right.

A rag-rug idea

I had this idea for a while, for an easy to make rag rug.
I made one for Miss Frobisher's Cottage, back when I was new to making miniatures. I placed strips of embroidery floss side by side and stitched them together with my sewing machine. While I was doing it I kept thinking there had to be an easier way, maybe with spray adhesive?
Well, it took me enough years to finally buy some spray adhesive and try it.
It doesn't look bad at all. I should have spent more time on it, some of the threads got crossed, leaving a few little gaps, but I realized that it was almost 3:30 and I had to get dinner started before family started asking me "is there anything to eat around here?"

I used some embroidery floss my daughter left behind when she moved out years ago, and some cheesecloth. Old gauze bandage would do fine too. I've got some that's been sitting in my dresser drawer for 15 years from when I burned my hand. I should move it to my studio where I could get some use out of it.

I started by cutting out a piece of gauze and laying it on my table, then I cut lengths of embroidery floss a bit longer than the size of the rug I wanted.
I sprayed the cheesecloth with adhesive, and started laying down strips of the floss. It does get to be a bit of a sticky job. I found the best way to do it was to lay down the thread, then hold it down on the gauze at one end while I slid my finger along the thread to lay it flat on the gauze. Then I'd reverse and smooth the other way. I could lay down several threads, then I found that I needed to give the gauze another spritz of glue to continue.
I also learned that it doesn't matter if the glue sprays onto the threads.
Here's a picture of the rug and how it looks from underneath.
I made the rug bigger than I needed it to be, so I could cut off the raggeddy ends.
The spray adhesive stiffens up the rug a bit, and it lays flat.

If you're a bit more careful than I was, taking a little more time, you should have a very nice little rug without too much effort.

About horseshoe hanging

I keep hearing from people that the horseshoe above the cabin door should be hung with the ends up, or good luck will run out.
I just rehung it the way it was in the first place, because there was a shadow of glue left on the wall.

I knew there had to be conflicting folklore about horseshoe hanging, because so many horseshoes are pointed downwards, not upwards.

On the subject of hanging horseshoes:

In depends on where you're from how they're supposed to be hung.
It seems that the horseshoe was associated with good fortune, period.

In some places, they say hang it upwards, so luck won't run out. In others, If it's upwards, the devil will find himself a seat above your door. In an old English tradition, bad luck could be aquired, but good luck could be taken away, so never hang your horseshoes upwards or bad luck will fill it up and enter your home.

Folklore says if you find a horseshoe, take it home with you for luck. On the other hand, if you find a horseshoe, throw it over your shoulder for luck.

There's lots more horseshoe folklore out on the internet, I won't repeat it all. It's pretty much like that old nursery rhyme:

See a penny, pick it up,
All the day you'll have good luck.

See a penny, let it lay,
Or bad luck will follow you all the day.

PS: I was just checking to see if I remembered the rhyme correctly, and it seems there are variations on the rhyme too. Picking up pennies could be good or bad, depending on cisrcumstances.

Some days you just can't win. My teenaged son doesn't believe in luck, period.