My Dollhouse May Soon Be Condemned for Structural Problems

New direction for
the capiz chandelier

Hi!  There is going to be a slow-down in the rate of posts since I returned to work this week.  Mini making is taking a backseat, but it was fun being able to "play" all day while it lasted.  Teaching is such an all-consuming profession; it leaves little time or energy for any other thing. 

I switched gears on the dining room lamp yet again, not in the design, but in the process by which I am achieving the design.  Rather than stringing the disks together, which is not working out with glue, and doesn't hang right with the same stringing technique that the full-scale world uses - it seems that miniscule circles made of plastic don't have enough weight to pull the string taught - I am fusing the disks together.  I provided a sneak peak, above.  Like most other projects, it is tedious, and time-consuming.  And I don't quite know how it will turn out.  In a way, it's exciting.  Oh, and the "one milk cap full of hole punch confetti" comment on my last post?  More like, fifteen half-pink milk container fulls and one serious case of carpal tunnel.  According to my calculations (WARNING: math ahead!!!), if I have a square pendant, with 3 strands of six circles on the inside, and 5 strands of three disks on the outside, that would mean I would need to punch:

• 6 x 3 x 4 (six disks long, by three strands per side, by four sides) =    72
• 3 x 5 x 4 (three disks long, by five strands per side, by four sides) =  60

Which means I need to punch 72 + 60 disks or 132 punches.  YeOuch!

My shade

Also, I finished one window covering for the master bedroom.  The drapery hardware is a plastic coffee stirrer with two star beads as finials, and the fabric is a free swatch from the Shade Store.  Shhhhh!  That is our secret, the Shade Store thing, kay?  I fabric glued the cut swatch to the straw.  Voila.

My Arco lamp had its neck
broken

Second floor collapsing onto
kitchen.

Another mini task taking up my time is fixing up what I've already completed.  One step forward, two steps back.  This is a toy, and it is being played with, and it is sustaining damage.  My Arco lamp proved to be "unsuitable for play".  The floor above the kitchen caved in.  I want the dollhouse to be a pristine, museum quality piece; my daughter wants it to be "well loved".  I'm trying to strike the same balance in my own home.  For those of you keeping score, Tootie Pie is winning.

Lighting for the Dining Room

One milk cap full of hole
punch confetti +

Hour upon hour of tedious
stringing =

The first planned, faboo, lighting fixture for the dining room proved a bust.  It was supposed to be a sort of Sputnik chandelier, made with cross shaped cross-section coffee stirrers.  I couldn't get that one off the ground.  But I promised something faboo, and faboo it will be.  So, still proud of my milk container wall art success, I was considering a similar project for my dollhouse.  Instead of cutting them with a hot cutter, I could simply hole punch out the disks.  That part would be easier.  But then...



Fabulosity



Round disks, chandelier...Does anyone see where this could be going?  If you guessed a capiz shell pendant lamp, well, you're a strange person.  No one else could dream that up but me and you, weirdo.  It won't have that wonderful clinking sound that real capiz creates, but I'm confident it will look fabulouser than my half-baked Spunik plan.  I am able to pierce each "shell" with a pin, so that I can string them together, but I'm hoping to be able to simply glue them to a string.  This project is tedious enough without having to string together hundreds of circles together.  But super glue is only succeeding in affixing my fingers together.  So I may be doing quite a bit of stringing in the next couple of days weeks months. 

A Blurb on My Blog

I started this blog having no idea why I was doing so.  I had a vague notion that others were doing it and enjoying it, and so I set one up.  I wrote a post.  A very dull post.  And that was it for seven months.  In that time, I felt as if I had something to say about the education debate raging in this country.  Not many teachers weigh in on the debate, or at least not teachers who are still in the classroom, because there is a current gotcha political environment that keeps them quiet.  I have been extremely careful to not name names or identify students in any way, but even that makes me wary.  I don't have much to say that is positive in regards to teaching.  So, I try to stay neutral on the subject as much as possible and not use this blog as a platform from which to groan about my work.  "Try" is the operative word.  Sometimes it is hard.

I wanted my dollhouse more like this..

And less like this.

Also within that time, my daughter was reaching the age where a dollhouse would be appropriate.  And I got to thinking about my own design sensibilities and the miniatures that are available on the market today, and there seemed to be a disconnect.  I didn't want the wood-fired stove, the high-above-the-toilet water tank with chain, and the hand pumped water spout sink.  My dollhouse was going to be modern and fabulous; no washboards or lace curtains in my little home.  And so, I thought I'd try my hand at making designer miniatures.  Well, that is proving time consuming and difficult, but I am not quitting.  I may be sidetracking myself a bit with the latest dollhouse renovation project that I have taken on, but it seems to have created another opportunity with this blog.  I am starting to network.

So, I am hoping that this will lead to a different direction for The Hard Way.  My most popular posts are still not the ones regarding miniatures - it is a niche market at best - but they are starting to infiltrate the top five more and more often.  I have joined two contests, and a link party.  I am excited about this project.  I have found that I am much better at styling a dollhouse than I am at building one.  It has been a fun journey, and I am looking forward to where all these detours take me.

I Love Free Things and Paint, and Painted Free Things, and Free Paint

I have installed a steampunk art piece in the kitchen.  I found the component pieces outside a Salvation Army store, ground into the dirt.  When the prices at a Salvation Army shop are too steep, go hunting in the muddy parking lot for odd bits of plastic.  Clean them off, spray paint (of course), and you have great art!  Or not, the choice is yours.

Another great free find I made the same day was a giant bag of Barbie furniture.  The larger pieces, after a Clorox bath, made their way under our Christmas tree.  The stash was especially heavy on baby items, so Tootie Pie was thrilled, of course.  But, the smaller pieces, bleached, prove to be a treasure trove of decorative items for a dollhouse.  Sure, they are all technicolor bright, and nothing matches, but I believe in the restorative power of paint!   I painted the bottles that were on top of the Master bedroom armoire in Testor's gold paint, and they went from cheap to chic! 

I know that a lot of the contestants in the Undersized Urbanite contest are making all sorts of clever things, as they did for the I'm a Giant challenge.  Me, I'm wallpapering and spray painting things, for the most part.  Sure, it takes some creativity, but by and large, my dollhouse is a smaller version of my own home: someone else's trash with a new coat of paint.  Ah, well.

Shab

to Fab

Master Bedroom Progress

Master Bedroom so far

My furniture in a 1970's
German advertisement

 

The future floor covering

I have two days before I have to return to work, so I am frantically trying to complete as much of my dollhouse projects as possible.  The majority of today I was at my daughter's school for her book fair and to volunteer during lunch.  So, I now have one and a half days.  Yikes.  Today, I worked on the master bedroom.  Oh, and I repaired much damage that Tootie Pie and her friend inflicted on the dollhouse when they started being silly and tossed the furniture around.  The chive flowers, of course, sustained critical injuries.  I have extra as back up for just such an emergency.

I found the make of the "Made in Hong Kong" furniture that I am using: it was made by Paul Kerkman for Modella.  The drawers on mine were red, so I papered them in the matching wallpaper, which is "gold on sea green mums" Lokta paper.  I'm still debating the bed, and so I swapped out the purple ETA math manipulative bed for the green, but I might spray paint that white, also.  I have printed the bedroom linens, and some were too turquoise, and the others I need to sew up tomorrow.  The floors are more messed up on the second level, so I am going to carpet them in  embossed felt, that I have to order.  Those with discerning eyes will notice that I took a photo of the children of the house, Calico Critters, and framed it.  I think it may be time to go back to work for real.  Here it is so far.

A shot of the corner...

...and of the modified sideboard

Champagne Chair Contest Entry

I've entered another contest.  This one is the Design Within Reach Champagne Chair Contest.  I have always coveted the things sold at DWR, but, contrary to its name, the prices are still out-of-reach for this cheapo.  To offset the astronomical prices, the prizes are gift certificates to this awesome store!  I want, I want.

So, I have been mulling over my design for a while.  I lost the cork portion of the champagne cage, which didn't help me meet the deadline.  And, then, since we drank the champagne long ago, and I had other, although very similar,  designs for the cork, I had painted it, which is against the rules in this competition, so I had to sand it.  Are you beginning to see why the name of this blog is The Hard Way? 

I actually shaped my first attempt with the wire, but then when the seat proved too difficult, I went with plan B.  It's sort of an upright hammock.  I don't know how it stacks up against the competition, but I'll be dreaming of the Saarinen tulip table or the Jacobsen egg chair that I'll finally be able to buy put a down payment on with my winnings.  I'd certainly be less blasé about L's crayon marks on my kitchen table when I dropped anywhere from $1800-$4600 on it.  We'd definitely have to throw out all the Sharpies.  And the mice.  And my husband.  And probably L.  And, let's face it, me, too.  And no one, NO ONE, would be allowed to drop their plastic bags or jackets on my $7000-$16,000 chair.  They wouldn't even be able to look at it, at that price.  Nuh-uh.  Oh, how I wish my house was so precious that we'd need to give all visitors a silk gown and cashmere socks before they would be able to enter. 

Aren't contests great?  Of course, I have no design training under my belt whatsoever, and I'm sure many of the entrants are graphic designers and interior decorators and product engineers.  Me?  I was a computer programmer and now I'm a math teacher.  So, yeah.  There's that.  But, my mini work will be featured on the DWR site, just for having participated.  So, there!

...to this



From this...

I am Cancer-Free

This will be my last post on cancer.  I no longer have it.  This part of my life is over.  Ovah!  Forevah!  This post is full of graphic information, so if you want all the details, read on.  If you don't need the play-by-play, just know that I am cured of cancer, and that's all you really need to know.

I had my radical hysterectomy on December 18th.  It was a six-plus hour operation that I awoke from around 9 p.m.  I was petrified about deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot that occurs after surgeries and can kill.  Since I had a stroke less than four years ago, I was at increase risk for blood clots.  Yeah!  So, after one night lying down, I was up and around the next morning.  After being instructed on foley care and Lovenox injections (again), and a screw up about visiting nurse service, I was discharged.  For those of you who don't know, a foley is a tube inside your bladder that leads to a bag that collects your urine.  Or, at least, that's the idea, but sometimes is doesn't work as expected and pee ends up on the living room floor, or so I am told.  One excruciatingly bumpy car trip home, and I've been recovering ever since.

A week and a day after the surgery, the foley was removed.  One day after the foley was taken out, I started leaking.  Gushing, actually.  It started on a Thursday, but not in full force.  It was just a sneak peak; not the full package.  Friday, around 4 p.m., was when it began to pour.  I remember the time exactly, because Mr. Murphy made sure that the serious issue began precisely when my onocologist left for the weekend.  So, I had to wait until Monday to see the doctor.  She told me it wasn't urine, which was good, because the idea of peeing oneself, even after a surgery, is disturbing.  During this doctor visit, she gave me the results of pathology: no signs of cancer in the lymph nodes.  I was cancer-free.

The gushing lasted for one week exactly.  It was either lymphatic or peritoneal fluid.  We will never know for sure which, since it ended before I could get my urogram CT scan.  So that's the whole dramatic tale.  I was aware that I had cancer for two and a half months.  I went from the sinking feeling when the doctor who performed the biopsy needed me to come into the office for the results (uh-oh), to morbidity, to relief in less than three months.  So it's been another crazy emotional ride.

I made a promise to my daughter that if the surgery was successful and I was cancer-free, that we would get her a pet mouse.  So, a week ago, we went to Pet Palace and welcomed two new white mice into our home.  The sequence of pictures I took with her and one of her mice is so joy-filled, it really was the capping event of blessedly happy news.  Now, hopefully the tumor-prone mice will stay cancer-free!