MECO Show and Sale

MECO Show and Sale
2016 Show & Sale will be the Saturday 14th May 2016 held at the Peachland Community Centre in Peachland BC. contact person Barb Janes-Yeo at 250-757-2842 barbandpaulyeo@shaw.ca

Sunday 26 May 2013

Leonardo Davinci Kind of Day


This week was an interesting one, to say the least. I found myself with a double event this weekend, back to back, with a little bit of everything happening at each. Of course, they were at opposite ends of the city, happening in and about the same time. This is the way of events. Both sets of people really hoped I would appear.  This is the way of people. Happily, things worked out exactly like they were supposed to, so I wasn't forced to use my little blue box.


Of course, hitting two events today left little time for me to do much other than run, but now, I can sit and relax with a coffee and a little blogging action. 

The adventure begins with a workshop I set up for the MECO meeting today. Since I had to leave early to make the second event, I taught a shorter workshop, and will teach the second half in a month.

The real trick in a workshop, of course, is to have people walk away happy, and with a finished project. Even in our abbreviated time today, that happened. We had many flavours of the above cabinet, from the classic wood tones, to painted furniture, to black ebony. Everyone was quite happy, or at least I made it out quite alive, a bonus in these kind of situations. 

 
 Here is the crew, studiously building wee boxes.


 The day isn't complete if we haven't got paint on our hands, and quite frankly paint up to their elbows (not naming any names, you know who you are!). 

Miniaturists are known for their yoga poses. This one is called "side ways glance at a box, is it straight?". 

Once the workshop was done, and the paint and such were happily drying, we were treated to strawberry shortcake and a warm brown beverage of our choice. Time was ticking though, and we had to dash to the next social soiree. 

As luck would have it, the next party was just starting as I walked to the door. This was even after I held up my right and and said turn left to my most helpful but long suffering driver. Got there in the end, so it was all good. Of course, there was no rest for the wicked, or even the mildly naughty, so I was immediately thrown into a lovely little artist's grotto, and painted this: 


 This is an original water colour by me. It always amuses me that artists have a very discernible style.  Not surprised, of course, as the artist owns the neurologic fingerprint. My water colour wasn't very water coloury - you can see that I want my world more solid. Its just how I roll...

After that, we were shown how to make gnocchi, broccoli pesto and pasta, and a Tiramisu by an authentic Italian Chef. 

I don't think I could have planned a more eclectic kind of day if I had actually tried. 

I did have opportunity to work on the Washtub cottage this week as well, knowing that I wouldn't have time today to play, as I was so busy playing. 


 One of the tasks I set myself this week was to build the false doors that go into the Washtub. To build a door frame, I set my little door onto medium cardstock, and built a little wooden frame around it. After the glue set, I peeled away the door,  cut out the frame base, and proceeded to stain and age the door accordingly. 

 Voila! The magic of television and editing. I could have built the frame with paper, as I had previously, but I wanted the door recessed a bit, so I used actual wood. I glued a small bead as a door handle, and dabbed that with my magic gold paint pen. I think it turned out quite nicely. 

 The wee door, as it appears against the flooring. 

The second floor was cleverly devised. Remember when we left out one of the rafter pieces? Well, this is where it went - to be placed along the back, so that the second floor had a place to solidly rest. 

 My next project, as the floor was drying, was to make the top partition. These started out life as two rectangles. 


I drew out the area for my door, and then taped everything together. I used painter's tape, because it is not sticky enough to wreck the surface. I just wanted everything held together as I cut, so I would get two exact pieces (for a change) and not have to cut multiples. Plus I am running out of matboard again, so I didn't have enough to start over - always an important consideration. 

 Once taped together, I placed the rectangle up against the side of the house, and scribed the roof line, as instructed. These pieces were trimmed away. 

 The partition, trimmed away. It was just a matter of framing the door, painting and aging the walls, and setting in the hinged doors, which I described last entry. Admittedly, I changed the pattern a little. I found the original design of the door a little strangely sized, so I made a door that would actually fit into the hole. Kind of a revolutionary idea, but I am a rebel. 

 It was then time to start putting up the brickwork! This was done much like the floor earlier on, only on a bigger scale. It is very important to work fast, because again, you are working against paint drying, clay drying out, and if the phone rings in the middle of this? Don't answer it!  I worked the clay one side at a time, and let things dry a bit before I went to the next side. 


The house, now fully bricked. This turned out well. I will have to go over it with paint and get it to look more like a stone structure, but it is starting to shape up! 

Thus ends a rather busy week. Hopefully next week won't be so insane, but I rather doubt it - what every would I do if it wasn't? 

My featured video this week is how to make miniature ravioli in honour of the kind, yet put upon young Italian chef who taught us how to make Italian food the right way at my second venue. Hope you enjoy the video, and may your week be as hectic as your most peaceful day, my gentle readers! 

 

Sunday 19 May 2013

The Perfect Storm

Alice In Wonderland by Cate

Here we are, in the middle of a lovely long weekend. Well, I am anyway. You might have to go to work tomorrow, but I don't, for it is this lady's birthday (close enough to the date, anyway)....

 
Her Royal Highness Queen Victoria


Yes, it is the Victoria Day long weekend. A few great things happened this weekend for me - first, I was privileged to be included in the celebration of Member Cate's 25th wedding anniversary. A fine time was had by all, with inspired decorations,  good food, coffee that was brewed by the deity of your choice,  live music, and dancing. Lots of dancing. Did I mention dancing? I danced for hours - not my fault, they kept belting out really good songs (and by really good songs, I mean the ones I like).  My ribs hurt, my voice is gone, but all in all, a great time was had - I think Vickie (she likes her friends to call her Vickie) would be proud of the time spent yesterday in the celebration of a wonderous milestone on this, her birthday (or close enough). 

Other things that went right in my weekend - the season finale to Doctor Who, and the "sorta" conclusion to the current story arc - some are not a fan of Clara, or of the current Doctor, but I think they are brilliant, and I was happy with the resolution, not so much that it is 6 months until the next episode - long suffering Whovian that I am. Also, Star Trek came out this weekend - well, the sequel reboot that changes the time line so maybe we can give certain boy wonders a miss (you know who you are, Mr. Crusher...). I swear, I didn't know what way to turn, someone was DEFINITELY peeking at my Christmas list this week. 


Anyway, today was a catch up day - I wouldn't have gone out at all had I not run out of coffee supplies. I am still amazingly awake, which is interesting given the very few hours of sleep I had, but still - awake and productive. 

 As you recall, I have been working on my Washtub Cottage, designed by Fiona Broadfoot in the UK. I left off having finished my floors and my ceiling last time. Today it was time to work on my first floor partition.  The above are two parts of the same wall - they will be glued together in due course,  and inserted into the house later on.


The first step today was to prepare thin strips of medium card, with the goal of framing the doorways. I cut up an old birthday card, which of course is a "free" source of this weight paper, and it means also it won't either end up in a landfill somewhere or stored in my house in some dark corner, where they tend to breed and eventually attract "Hoarders" camera crews.


The strips are arranged upside down, so I could get a better shot. As the downside of a greeting card is the paint-resistant coating they keep insisting on adding for the look of the thing, I use the shiny side as my gluing surface, to save me many many coats of paint later on. 


While the glue dried on the door frames above, I began the process of making doors. The Washtub has 2 interior doors that are hinged (see below) , and two that are Tromp-l'oeil (French for fakey McFakerson from Fakesville Fakeavania). The above represents two doors, however - you will see why later on.


 Again, the trims are a clever mock up of paper. I cut out all my pieces first, as to keep a continuity in placement.


The door, put together with the decorative trim. From this picture, I can see a few ways that this could have been improved, but then again a cottage is expected to be a little "well-loved" and quaint. 

The door frames and doors all painted, just before they are dry-brushed to perfection. Or...at least to mine. 

A test fit of the door, and also the character of the walls has been added. I imagine I will be an expert in dry brush techniques by the end of this project. It does add a certain charm and character, however, so well-worth the effort. 


These doors are propped open between the rooms, and they do have a hinge attachment to ensure they stay that way.  Fiona (she doesn't know we are on a first name basis yet) has suggested a piece of acetate, but I would suspect anything that was thin enough, but flexible enough, would do. I have used strips of leather  in 1:12 scale as hinges in the past, and as long as you don't have any relative or what have you being unnecessarily rough with the door, this hinge method works as well as any. I have seen fabric hinges as well. The two door pieces are glued together with the hinge twixt the two. Eventually the other end of the hinge is sandwiched between the two partition wall pieces, as below. 



Here is the door, propped happily open, with a peak into the kitchen. Certainly it is starting to shape up. 


With the doors hung happily in the first floor door jamb, thoughts turn lovingly to the outer shell. These pieces are painted with a base coat, and "dirtied up" with the dry brush method once again. 


All painted up and ready to start building a house! I used my partition as a guide as to how mucky I wanted my walls, and so I had a uniform patina. 


The second floor will be inserted into the house at the pencil marks. Fiona does show them being added later, but I thought it wiser to draw the marks before hand, so I had a more accurate line. It is also a good idea to glue fiddly bits in while you still have decent access to the interior walls, and there will just be less tears all around.

The first step in assembly was to glue the back wall to the floor, preferably in some sort of gluing jig (i.e. a box). I see that I will have to paint the sides of the floor at some point, but that can happen in last looks. I have painted the groove as well, and when I finalize the partition, I am planning on putting a small piece of wood in to the space created from the absence of door between rooms so that there isn't a gaping cavern for cottage dwellers to leap every time they need to go get something out of the fridge. It was recommended that a small box - or other squaring up jig - be used. I found a box (okay, I emptied a box) and put it into service. This box has strange sides, and they weren't that even, so I put smaller boxes in to act as holds. I do have a gluing jig but it is too short for what I needed today.

Up goes the first wall! I have a bit of an issue with directionality, so this I say with all conviction - make sure that your walls are facing the right way when you glue them. It is often said "measure twice, cut once". Well, look at the picture, have it in front of you as a double check, and hopefully your treacherous left brain won't switch things maliciously on you while your right brain is off picking daisies. Happily I followed my own advice for a change. 

Up goes the second wall! I do love these laser cut houses, they are a joy to glue because everything is ramrod straight right from the box, and that makes for less tears and less holes in your drywall from when you toss a wibbley wobbley wreck at the wall.  I would say true story there, just as a comedic device,  but I also don't want the landlord thinking I actually *do* such dastardly things, so I will let you fill in your own joke and I will cue the laugh track...


Awesome. As I now have to wait for glue to cure (and I didn't even know it was sick), I am stuck for a bit. Too bad, I was flying along today. I did note that the partition is a little too tall - as you recall, I had some issues with not being told what height to make it in the first place. I guess I may have been a weensy bit out, but as it is matboard, it is a lot easier fix than if it was wood. 

As it is becoming traditional, I leave you with a tutorial on how to do something clever - this video shows you how to re-invent a piece of inexpensive furniture with reupholstering , but it is also handy to see how mini upholstering is done - enjoy!


 
Hope all have a wonderful Victoria Day - or Monday, whatever the case may be - and I will be back soon,  my royal lovelies! 








 

Sunday 12 May 2013

Happy Mother's Day!


Happy Mother's Day to all who celebrate it today. The UK, of course, celebrates Mother's Day in March (Mothering Sunday), which I don't mind saying gave me a few moments of panic when one of my facebook pals wished one of her UK pals a Happy Mother's day in March, and I thought I still had a couple of months to shop. Not cool dude, really not cool

Something that always makes me wonder at this time of year though - have you ever noticed that Mother's Day cards are always nice? Even in the funny ones, mom is always the victor and the hero, and often dad gets made the butt of the joke (see gassy comment below). That is great, of course, you shouldn't make fun of your mom. However, when father's day rolls around, we see he is a lazy, gassy, TV-watching sports addict with a predilection to pizza, golf, cars,  and in general being  a large goof ball, if the cards are any indication - no gentle humour, just a swift kick to the family jewels I guess I wonder how the dads feel about all of this, although the truth being known, cards are really a girl thing anyway, we just get way more excited (for a variety of reasons, and the card companies know this and pander to us for those reasons). I know I can sit in a card store for hours going through all the sentiments (nope, too sloppy, too mean, too crude, too rude, too uncomfortable, too inappropriate, too noisy and of course "really  - they thought THAT was funny?" ) to pick out the card that says it all, without saying too much. A card given is a treasure, and one I am always reluctant to throw  away once received.   I don't envy the card designer one bit though - no where in the world of art is any piece so scrutinized and criticized as that found in the card section of the local drug store...the stress of that job must be overwhelming at times

At any rate, this week we found ourselves dealing with abnormally warm days, not entirely unwelcome, but a tease - June is a rainy month, of course, and this little bit of summer in May always confuses the locals. I did not do many things this week, other than work on my sock monkey ....

 
Her top is a hair band, believe it or don't. Her skirt is sewn from cotton fabric, and took some doing - I found my rotary cutter had been dulled beyond use, so I was reduced to using scissors - nothing like being thrown into the dark ages of sewing. I did a little youtube surfing for tutorials, and found a fairly simple pattern for a skirt that I could expand upon to the double ruffle Flamenco skirt above. I am rather pleased in how it turned out. Not bad for someone who has learned most of her sewing skills from Youtube, anyway (really, go take a look, some of those youngsters who make clothes for their dolls are brilliant little designers!).  There is still quite a lot of beading and artistry  to be done on my Flamenco monkey, but that is the easy part for me, the hard part (construction sewing) is done. 

 Today I worked a little more on my Washtub Cottage. As you recall, last week I had just put down clay on my floor...

 
 Today I started the paint job. The directions called for an air dry clay that may or may not be available in my area (I didn't go looking) , but what I did have was Das clay. I wanted my grout to be grey to white, rather than terra cotta, so I gave the floor a nice wash with my grey paint first. 
 




 Sadly I can't do much about my flagstone, I am not horrendously happy with it. I am not good with random - I tend to do better with patterns (such as the tile floor beside it). Wish I would have done a more geometric design, but nothing for it but to work with how it turned out. 


While I waited for my floors to dry, I started on the first floor ceiling. 

 I measured the board off, and prepared to add the beam structure. 

 I lined up my floor to the ceiling, to make sure I had the channel for the partitions marked off and oriented correctly. 

 Once the center beam was placed, I could start putting the shorter beams in place. The "ribs" were a slightly thinner wood than the center "spine" beam. They were placed at about 1/4 inch intervals, except for two pieces that were left off and have a mysterious function at a later date, to be told to me in not so secret later on (I just didn't read that far yet). You will notice, no stairs in the Washtub (which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on your point of view). 

Beam Me Up Scottie!
 The finished ceiling. The astute will spot where the two pieces were left off from the ceiling - again, that was deliberate for a reason to be named later. The next step, once the glue was dry, was to paint. 

After the First Coat of Paint
 Note that there are some cross pieces in the beam structure, added for a little interest. Also, I darkened the wood from the redder Burnt Sienna to the more sombre Burnt Umber.


 This is after the second coat, and also after the distressing/antiquing look. This was achieved using a dry brush technique, with a make up sponge as the brush. Clever, no? The next step was to paint in between the beams, to give the ceiling that distinctive plaster look. I didn't have any ivory paint as they called for, so I "buttered" up some white paint with a little pastel yellow. 

 A little touch up perhaps is needed, but not bad!


As the ceiling lay drying, waiting for me to flip it about and put down the floor boards on the other side, I went back to the first floor and did a little antiquing to the stones there. Again, I am a little more pleased with the terra cotta tiles than the flag stones, but I got it so it is workable. Sometimes too one has to think - maybe it will just look better once decorated, so I am hoping against that promise.

 
 The thing I like about 1/4 scale is that paper becomes so versatile. A hard wood floor in a bigger scale means finding milled stock wood that is thin enough, and has a good grade grain, which can often cost just as much as lumber at the lumber yard for full scale projects. But 1/4 scale and you want to make flooring boards? Cut 1/8 strips and glue them down...Voila! a hard wood floor.  I won't lie to you,  however, actually cutting these strips is a little tedious. If you have access to a paper cutting machine of some sort, like the old style machete cutter they foolishly used to trust angst-ridden teenage artists with in school with, then you could make short work and very accurate cuts. These strips don't have to be exact, by the way,  but it would definitely be quicker work.


I put the strips down randomly-ish - okay, there was a little bit of planning for where the floor breaks were. You don't want the majority to be grouping anywhere specific, for one thing. I put in a full board every second one, to ensure I didn't have a break too close to another one. 

  
The floor, trimmed, and ready to paint. Note the gap for the partition wall

  
The floor, painted black a couple of coats. It is starting to look quite nice already. The next step was to  dry brush brown over top, in one direction as to simulate wood grain. The final step was to go over it with an ivory paint in  dry brush technique (again with the make up sponge) to give the floor a dusty, aged feel. 

 Niiiiice. This I do like. 

I called it quits about then, but all my floors and ceiling are done. Now it is on to the first floor partitions and doors and walls, and I can start on my exterior.  So far, I am very impressed with how the cottage is going up.  One thing that I like is this kit was laser cut. That is something you should always look for in a wood kit, because you won't have to deal with excising stuck pieces, breaking pieces, and crumbly wood (which are common in the die cut process). Plus it has a pleasant barbecued smell that is rather nice as well. 

That is all for today, it is time to wrap things up for the day. Before you go, though, help yourself to a pot of Mother's Day tea - this video is quite clever, and although it uses fondant, the technique can be easily translated to polyclay (just don't let anyone eat these if you are making it out of polymer clay...!) I hope you enjoy the video. 

 
 Once again, until we meet again,  happy Mother's Day, you children I adore! But you could call a little more often...