Progress on the French reno.

 Hi all. I had great plans of cracking on with the French house renovation in any spare time, but it hasn't happened. I have been reorganising my craft room so I could fit an armchair in there. It's on castors, so I can move it super easily to get at stuff tucked in beside it. I also rejigged one set of shelves to house (part of) my Barbie collection. (Apologies for the naked Francie - I got into trouble from her former owner for that!)

Here is the upstairs/attic floor with the guest bedroom and the stair hall/whatever room:

The painting propped on the table is one I copied from a Charles Garabed Atamian painting. If you haven't seen his paintings, look them up. They are truly stunning. To be honest, it's not finished. I might try finishing it. Or not. But I like it in here.

The main bedroom and antechamber: 

And the reading room:

I removed the window in the reading room to put a French door in. Now I need to cut the opening to the floor and rejig a door I had in the stash. I don't want to make a dusty mess so the wall cutting is on hold for now. FYI the spiral stairs are not yet glued in. But the interior is so close to being complete, save for a few minor details like door handles, a piece of moulding and the stair rail for the ground floor stairs.

I must say I love this house. I have always loved it. And the Lea Frisoni house I based it on. But I had never quite finished it. I guess I just felt it was time to make it more my own. I did retain a lot of the original details though. Now I am starting on the exterior finishing.

I have also been painting more mini dollies, made from Jean Pardina moulds. I love these tiny dolls. I love Patsy dolls. So in the photo there are two A Marque dolls, two Patsy dolls and a vintage style baby doll. I am pretty happy with them, although they need some neatening up. I have just painted them with acrylics. 

I've been up to all sorts of stuff and really enjoying working on new skills, but will post more another time. I have had a lot of counselling over the last 12 months to sort through some stuff from the last 10 years. It has been very enlightening and I have learnt a lot about myself. It has helped in many ways, not least of which is the desire to work on stuff that intimidated me or I just didn't have the heart to tackle. I can highly recommend it.

Anyway, on that note, I hope you are all well and enjoying your mini time. Take care until next time.

Some of my minis

I have been a little busy of late. Hopefully when I get some photos I will be able to publish them here and explain why I've been so busy. For now, seeing as I haven't posted in a while, here are some metal minis I have hand-painted.

The radio at the back doesn't have a dial, so must fix that one day. I'm just not too sure how to go about it! Need to look at a picture of a real one to figure it out. At the front is a perfume bottle, one of my favourite metal minis. Behind it you can just see a French style candlestick. I intend painting a second one so that I have a set for my next fancy French dollhouse. Unfortunately I dropped the elk and his antler broke off.


Next are some toys I painted. I love the bear pull toy and the teddy with the green bow. They're so cute. I find painting these very therapeutic, although time consuming! I also need to add pull strings. Another thing to do when I'm feeling less lazy!