New......

And Not So New..... Progress!

It was a busy weekend in my RL World, Dear Readers, with the removal of the last Christmas decorations and the Beginning of a major refurbishing of one of the bedrooms in my house, so not much got done on the mini houses. But whenever I say that, I often discover that I got more done than I thought I did! Since the Christmas Trees have been taken down, the Doll Houses have been shuffled around again, and it suddenly feels as though there is a Lot of room, and the new positions of the houses makes it easier to see what needs to be done. So I started to "chip away" at the problems I was having with the Willowcrest. The windows continue to be the most obvious sticking place when it comes to moving forward with this building! Above you can see the kitchen window from the exterior, after I had already added the cross pieces at the bottom of the windows where they abut the sill. I could not find a good picture from before.... but I had already decided that it looked too unrealistic to leave them with no "bottom" to the windows! And to make matters worse, this window was originally constructed with the exterior sill sitting above the level of the window openings so that it would show from the interior and look awful! (It must be a mistake in the kit design!)

This picture shows the interior view (or it would if it was lit well enough... sorry about that!) where you can see the window sill and the added pieces at the window bottoms when looking out from the inside.

And since the kitchen wall still has not been attached, 

you can see it better here.... along with the larger pieces I am adding 

on the interior to hide both the exterior pieces.

And testing it with the sink I plan to use in this kitchen...... 

before adding the interior window sill.....

Which you can see here.

And I think it looks okay, even though it would look better

 if I had realized before adding the muntins...

that the windows would need an extra "bottom" piece.

But it turns out that once the sink is positioned in front of the window......

you can't see much of the sill anyway!

And while I had the sink out, I glued all its pieces on too!

And while I was adding the fiddly little pieces to the windows....

 

I also added the cross bars and muntins to the cellar windows.....

although here, I decided that there was not enough room 

at the bottom to add the window bottoms.

Probably not noticeable to anybody else....

But I think it looks strange... and will probably

 hide it behind a bush when the house is finished!

And here you can see a test run of the kitchen stove....

Not a new piece, but I haven't shown it here yet!

It resembles the stove in my RL kitchen.....

because this house resembles my RL house in the basic layout, 

so I decided to use that to influence some of the design choices for this project!

Here you can see the mini stove on top of the RL kitchen stove!

The rooms in this kit are really quite small.....

just like the ones in my RL house....

You start to notice that as soon as you try to place the furniture in them!

Here you can (sort of) see the Willowcrest back in the construction area....

(It is really difficult to get good pictures at this time of year!)

But I think, Dear Readers, that I am getting closer 

to being ready to glue the walls on this house!

 

 

I have also decided that I will need to paint all those "trees" in the parlor, 

and not just leave them the unpainted color of the sculpey clay.

 

 Here you can sort of see them as they are 

(picture taken months ago when there was still a little sunlight...!)

I think they need to look as though they are the same carved stone as the fireplace... 

otherwise they neither look real nor like stone.... 

but just sort of raw... and that has been bothering me!

And while I have debated with myself for a long time about the name for this house....

in my mind I have always thought of it as "Hardwick Hall".

Yes, it is a bit of a Grandiose name for such a tiny bit of space!

But it belongs to my Witches, and it does have a fairly Grand facade....

and I am just getting tired of calling it "the Willowcrest"!

So I am making it official..... "Hardwick Hall" it is!

And on an Entirely different note... also a New beginning...

There is a new persona in my doll Worlds.....

She is made by the very talented Sumaiya.

Sumaiya's blog was one of the first blogs I discovered 

years ago as I was finding my way back into miniatures, 

and I have always been enchanted with her exotic and elegant dolls.

As soon as I saw this one posted on Sumaiya's blog,

I knew she had to come play in my Little Worlds!

She comes with the name "Meera"

But I think that is only part of her name...

She obviously has the ability to hold her listeners Spellbound....

and perhaps, like Sheherezad, 

she has a thousand songs to sing...

or ballads to enchant us....!

I do not know yet what her story will be... 

or where she will lead me...

But that, Dear Readers, 

is part of the mystery of anything New!

And I do hope you have enjoyed 

all this "Little" Progress!