Amy's Kiosk

The arrival of Shanghai's chilly winter air signifies a number of things, among them:
1) The approach of the school holidays;
2) More cold and wet weather;
3)A sharp increase in air pollution levels and the number of 'red' air days, when we can't play outside.


These three things generally mean I end up with... MORE TIME FOR CRAFTING! So today, I let the kids run riot in the living room and finally got started on a project that's been brewing in my mind for a while.


My lovely mum, when she came to visit us during October half term break, brought me a little shop stall from England. It's adorable! I love it! I've managed to find a picture of it on Google but the link isn't right and I can't track it down on Amazon or anywhere.  But this is an image of the basic structure.


It's very versatile with a simple stall, back wall and a roof.  I bashed mine a bit in the construction and leveled out the counter top.  I know that a sloped surface works great for displaying food and smaller items but I'm after something more staggered and multi-layer in terms of display and so I wanted a flat surface to work on.


When I first laid eyes on it, the clean lines and simplicity of the construction, set me to thinking about the amazing remodelled Lundby houses that I've been swooning over on Pinterest, like this one from Pandurohobby, and this absolute gem from Mousehouse. I just adore those amazing wallpapers against the stark whites, like this funky little house too, from Craftiness is Not Optional.


I wanted to make a little gift kiosk to display some of the things I've been experimenting with, using some wicked cool scrapbooking supplies.  Here's what I came up with today.

So clearly, my photography skills need work, and my backdrop is not exactly great.  I have to admit - as much as I enjoyed doing this, I found myself fantasising about the next two steps of this project.  But I'll get to that later.

Here are some close-ups.

The stag's head is a lasercut from Kaisercraft that I mounted on a piece of scrapbook paper wrapped around heavy guage card. The tiny blue skulls came from Chinatown in Bangkok, the lillies are from Chatuchak market, also Bangkok, and the cloches are from a craft shop on Hennessy Road in Hong Kong.

These gorgeous little giraffes are from a bloke in Tianzifang market, Shanghai, who makes models out of old drinks cans. The picture is a frame I've posted about before here, and a piece of scrapbooking paper.  I think the picture is cute but what really grabbed me was the relationship between the red dress and the teal frame. *Pop!

So there it is.  Stage one of a three step plan.

Anybody else's creative journey look like this???

Tiny Frames

Alright, these are my favourite thing that I've made so far! I tried lots of different things and it was a really great learning experience.  (The tall, skinny blackboard on the right is the one I made a while ago.  I'm just including it for the sake of completeness).

Blackboard: That was the first frame method I tried and I did it the 'regular' way one would, using wood, sanding it down, chamfering the edges, cutting the ends at a 45 degree angle, creating a 90 degree join.... It was very fiddly and tough to keep it square (still haven't made a gluing jig).

Arch-topped mirror: For this one, I used card in two different thicknesses.  I made the top using a circle die which I ran through my die-cutting machine (it's a Big Shot. I got it last summer and I adore it, even though it nearly cost me my marriage to Mr Gypsy because I made him drive out of the way to go buy it from an amazing craft shop in the middle of Dorset's the New Forest). So I had 4 pieces for this frame: the three sides of the square and a semi circle for the arch.  I glued them together on graph paper, which helped keep my corners square, and then cut it away with a craft knife afterwards.  Then I drew around it onto a thick piece of card and sandwiched a piece of tinfoil between the two.  The glue I used was white PVA glue.

Circular frame: several circles die cut from card and then glued together.  Three little flat-backed flowers. Gesso.

Corkboard: layered cardboard, glued onto a pre-cut rectangle of card. Mitre-cut edges etc.

White chunky frame with beading: By the time I made this one, I was fed up of messing about with tiny, fiddly strips of card and I realised: the beauty of using card instead of wood is it's cheap! So this final one was quite simply a rectangle cut out of some thick book board card, with a smaller rectangle cut out of the middle of it.  Then I cut out another skinnier rectangle to glue on top of it and glued some tiny bead strands on top of that for the... well for the beading.  It's my favourite frame and my favourite method by a mile!

Shabby welsh dresser (or kitchen hutch)

Having seen so many of these beautifully packed with tiny treats and beautiful enamelware, I was very keen to get started on making one.  As a result, I made it sort of along side the little bed and using the same painting technique so I'm not overjoyed about the colour.  It's a bit too much shabby and not quite enough chic.

 But I like the overall look of it. Even if it is probably a little bit short!

Shabby bed

My tiny bed is made from cardboard, layered together. It was a bit of an experiment and didn't turn out quite as well as I had planned in my tiny brain: the cardboard is too thin and looks flimsy; one of the side bits underneath the base is wonky (I need to make a glue-ing jig); and I tried a new paint technique which didn't go so well.  But I learnt a lot.  And if I write it down here then I stand a half-decent chance of actually remembering what.

To make the decorative parts on the headboard and footboard, I took inspiration from this fabulous lady here.  I used dimensional paint from my scrapbooking supplies to make the little curly bits.  The heart is punched out of card.  It quite like how this ended up.

The problem came with the paint: I followed a paint distressing tutorial that suggested starting with a dark brown coat, then following up with a light coat and then using a file on the edges to reveal the dark paint beneath. Well I probably used the wrong kind of paint: I used a dark brown acrylic. Then, when that had dried, I started painting white acrylic over the top but it just sort of 'woke up' the brown paint and then I was left with a horrible yucky mess, which I tried to fix by spraying the whole lot white.  The spray left a nasty, cheap-looking sheen on in and didn't cover the gross brown mess.  I know the picture of the bed isn't great - it's not worth uploading a better one - I just wanted to show the technique with the dimensional paint.

Chandelier

As a first attempt, I was quite pleased with how this turned out! I know it's a bit rickety - I can't find any thicker gauge wire at the moment so I just twisted together some really thin copper filament.

I used the tutorial from here, with the exception of the real lighting bit (baby steps - I'm still a novice).  I used jewellery findings as sconces and beads for candles, as suggested in the tutorial but, when attaching the sconces, I wound the wire round the curlicue at the bas of the chandelier and then up through the jewellery finding and through the bead 'candle'.  Then I cut the wire, leaving a bit for the wick, which I dabbed with a little black acrylic paint.  I know real chandeliers don't have real candles anymore and this would probably burn my tiny house to ashes if it were real.... But I figure, if I can't have 'real' candles in my tiny fantasy house then what's the point? (I haven't had real candles in my 'big' home since before the boys were born!)

High-backed Pew

This is a little bench chair or pew. It is carved out of foam board and then I chamfered the edges with a flat metal file. Foam board won't take paint, so I gave it two coats of gesso and sanded it again before painting it with blue gouache.  Then I sanded it on the edges for ageing and dry-brushed on some brown acrylic.

I think I might have said before - I know nothing about art! I have no experience of paint and i don't know the difference between them. When I look at the beautiful paint effects on other blogs, I realise that this is a key skill in making our minis fab, so I have started experimenting with different paints. I loved the gouache here - it goes on so thick and gives really good coverage. I like the matte finish on it too, and the fact that it's a bit textured (or maybe that's just the gesso coming through?).

Fireplace

Here's a little fireplace I made.  The grate and the firebox are made of black card and toothpicks.  The surround and mantel are foam board.  As it's quite thick, you can cut it on an angle with your craft knife and end up with a sort of bevelled edge.  It also files down nice and smoothly. I have a small set of metal files that I'm using to make most of my bits at the moment.  I am having lustful thoughts about a Dremel tool, or a lathe... but until we decide to settle down, it's not very practical. Anyway, it's a nice problem-solving exercise to think of alternative ways of making things than the obvious.

The decorations below the mantel are three little metal charms from a haberdashery.  I stuck them on with hot glue and then painted the whole lot with gesso, then white acrylic, then dry-brushed on a little brown grubbiness.

You can see how I made it from the back here.  The backplate is part of an egg box.

The toothpicks have a nice little decorative carving at the top. I glued four sticks along a strip of black card and then glued a narrower strip of card above. The bottom of the grate is thin strips of card, woven together and glued. I gave the whole thing a spray with some blackboard paint and then brushed on some pearlescent eyeshadow for patina.

I made the grate a little too big and it sticks out of the front.  It's also missing a hearth but I'll get around to that when I build the ground floor of the cottage.