New inspiration

My husband and I have been planning our next France trip (a whole 12 months + away but you can never start too early I always say!) so we're excited about all things French at the moment. Especially given that we were supposed to be going in about 2 months but have put it off to next year. So we got thinking about going back to the chateau where we got engaged and decided we had to go back there for a couple of nights. Here are some pictures of the gorgeous interior which may inspire some of you Francophiles!

This was the room we stayed in:



This was our bathroom:



This was the breakfast nook tucked in the passageway between the bathroom and bedroom:



Another breakfast setting in one of the rooms (one of my favourite rooms - I even bought this fabric for my own home!):



Gorgeous bedroom:



This was the King's bedroom (apparently they had to include a King's bedroom in case he came to stay - for the record, he never did!):



The coat room:



The hallway. The staircase, entry and central halls had hundreds of handcarved corbells with gargoyles/trolls/animals etc on them, and every one was different:



This is the exterior of the chateau. It was built in the mid-1800's I believe and has 120 rooms. We only got to see the bottom 2 storeys plus the basement (kitchen/servant's quarters). We stayed in the room in the tower on the left hand side of the photo, second window up.

So we want to go back to explore a bit better and to see the parts that have been restored since we went. Hope you find these inspiring!

Exciting news

I had some of my cottages printed in the current issue of Miniature Collector magazine! Unfortunately they got my name wrong. Ah well, I have always been called Sharon by those who don't know me/have just met me.

Also, in case you are interested, I will be starting a blog on my sewing/dress-making. I have been stewing over this change in career for quite a few years, and now finally I have taken some steps towards starting my own clothing label. It will be classic/vintage in style, not trendy. Anyways, this is it if you wish to see how I go on my journey!

Rosedale progress

Apologies for the poor quality of my pictures. It seems I just can't take any good ones with it (I am sure it's the user, not the camera!).

I have added strips of mountboard to add height in the attic and then added faschia strips on the exterior to strengthen the added walls and allow something for the roof to butt against. Here is a picture of it so far, without the roof.



This pic is just to show the main bedroom. A shelf unit will fit in that corner where there is no wallpaper (to the left of the pic).



The last pic shows the lounge room. I covered over the transom over the door, as with the transom and door frame, I wouldn't fit cornice, so I will cut off the transom frame from the door frame and then I can have cornice!



And all the best for a fantastic 2011!

Merry Christmas everyone

I hope everyone takes it easy over the Christmas break, and if you are travelling, please take extra care. Christmas isn't an easy time for a lot of people (my father died at Christmas-time 11 years ago) and it's the time we remember those who aren't with us. It's also a time to appreciate those we love.

So have a wonderful Christmas everyone. And eat, drink and be merry!

Sugar plum fairy's cottage

I'd always wanted to do a Sugar plum fairy's cottage out of the Greenleaf Sugarplum kit. But when I received my free kit for this year's miniatures.com creating contest, I decided to make it into the cottage, against my better judgement. In my opinion, the proportions were wrong. I should've gone with my first instinct and made it into a chocolate shop. Given it wasn't working from the start, I never had much motivation to keep going. It isn't finished, and I am a bit disappointed with it, but with a few borrowed minis from my other projects, I managed to fill it enough to enter the contest.

I still want to make the Sugarplum into my real Sugar plum fairy cottage in future. And finish it the way I'd originally intended.

Loving the half scale Greenleaf kits!

So you will all be aware of the numerous projects I've started of late and haven't finished. Well, I am making some more! I've put together my half scale Buttercup and Rosedale.

I thought I'd blog this in case anyone else was interested in how I altered these kits.

Firstly, my Buttercup, which will be a gardener's cottage. I love Greenleaf kits but they always make the attics too small. So I raised the roof. I cut the gable ends off at ceiling height (ie just above the slots on the walls) and glued a strip of 2mm cardboard around to extend the wall height. You will see in my photos the grey cardboard added in. The inside is harder to see as I have painted it already, but you can see the vertical walls below the sloping roof, which is the added in part. Quite simple really, but made the attic much more usable.





Secondly, in my Rosedale, I wanted to make the stairwell open on the second floor into it's own hall rather than into the large room. So I cut the bannister/railing off the lounge room wall flush with the ceiling, put a small piece of scrap ply into the stairwell opening to close it off a bit, and cut the interior wall off the small second floor room. I will hopefully make this clearer as I go along.





I think I will fill in under the stairwell a little in the kitchen, to make space for a fireplace/stove. Here is a pic of under the stairwell.

Picasso gallery in Paris

Karin Corbin has blogged about Picasso art in her home town. My husband and I are also Picasso fans and so visited the gallery when we were in Paris. It was undergoing renovations whilst we were there and so they had erected a giant mirror to hide the renovations. The mirror reflected one half of the building, so it looked like a whole.



It aligned with a false wall on the inside also, so from the inside, it looked like the whole building had been sliced in half by a giant sheet of plaster/glass. It was very clever.

It was also interesting to note that the interior walls were all false and it was obvious that they sat away from the original walls. We guessed they did this to preserve the original building.

French restoration and renovation is light-years ahead of any such practices we have in Australia. Most large public buildings being renovated had large sheets of some sort of mesh over the scaffolding with printed life-size images of the building that was being renovated on it. Very clever.