1:12 scale basketry and other things.

Today was a sunny day, the first in a long time, too sunny, my camera couldn't cope with the light after about ten minutes and slightly malfunctioned, but finally, I could take photos!! :D And auto enhance fixed the malfunction! 

Laundry basket and log basket. The log basket was made the same way as the laundry basket, using a wooden base to drive the rods into, which was then hidden by gluing twisted thread onto. I don't know what the wood in the laundry basket is, I picked it up in a forest park, a few years ago, it is possibly of the pine variety, but to be honest, I haven't a clue :D The space between the rods, changes the weave appearance dramatically, despite using the same gauge of thread and rod. As you can see, I don't bother with staining the rods :D I am not sure what I am doing with the baskets yet, paint, stain, leave as is..

The button on the laundry basket is a French knot, Giac of englishmanordollhouse.blogspot.com/‎ posted a link to a great French knot video tutorial here. Thanks to Giac finding that video, I can finally do French knots, before I was hopeless at them, but that video for some reason, worked a charm.

All of the basketry was made using tutorials found easily online, there are a quite a few. I used this one, in particular for the detail in the weave on the laundry basket, No.3, Fantaisie. The baskets are very special for me, because they were made with thread that came from a now derelict Victorian factory nearby, Barbour threads. I grew up around that place, and I remember the thread lying all over the roads when it fell off the lorries. I sneaked into the factory a few times too, when I was a child, shhhh! :D

Basket tips TRIED AND TESTED

(skip if you want, I was looking for this info, maybe somebody else is too :D)

I used Hamilworth floral wire No28. and Crawford Linen thread no.25. colour Drab.

Oval basket -  I recommend 5 x 7 rods, if using similar gauge of rod.  I originally tried 5 x 11, but when the base was complete, and I bent the rods to begin weaving the walls, I realised the weave would be too narrow at the front in comparison to the sides. So I had to snip the excess rods down to 7. The base of this oval basket is 30mm x 18mm, and I used the base of an oval glasses case as a guide. (There probably is a rule for oval basket rod numbers, but I don't know what it is :D ) The diagram below is just a rough layout of how the rods should cross. Again, if using rods of a similar gauge the gap between the red rods should be about 2mm, with the exception of the two rods at either end, they should be flush.

If weaving a square shape, do not pull the thread too tight as you turn the corners, check that everything is square, or over time, the corners will begin to draw inwards. You can see this happening near the base of the laundry basket. P.s. I have no idea if I even turned the corners properly, I just went with the flow, and it all worked out ok.

Keep your rods as straight as possible.

If you use this site http://jicolin.free.fr/techvannerie.htm for weaving techniques, the first one "simple" only works on an uneven number of rods.

For the basket trim, I ran two lengths of thread through glue, twisted them together and left to dry, until the twist was set, before gluing onto the basket.

The handle ends are florist wire, bent into shape and pushed into the weave. I, can't think of a better word, smooshed, some glue through the weave on the inside of the basket, to secure the handles.

That is all I can think of right now.

Paper minis! I LOVE MY PRINTER! I found images of flattened out boxes on flickr, though the owner of the account, Jason Liebig, amazing collector of packaging, mostly sweet tooth stuff though, has disabled downloading images, probably not for this reason though, I would imagine folk wanting to stock up their miniature kitchens was the last thing he was worried about. :D. So I sneakily used screen print and then fixed them up in MsPaint. The resolution wasn't great, but I think they turned out very well. Free advertising? Artistic interpretation? Personal use? I just had to have those boxes, look at retro Tony! If Jason finds out, sorry, and thank you. I don't want to bother him with miniature grocery permission seeking, to be honest. :D Will a link suffice? (As you can tell, I am slightly nervous around permissions). The sizes are guesstimates, I just went with what looked right, as best I could. Ms paint is slightly nightmarish for resizing, and my Word trial is finished, and I didn't realise Word had an annual fee! I set the properties on MsPaint to cm, so I would have a rough idea of what size they would print at.

After I saw Moniques' miniatures at Fabulously Small, more specifically, the belt and the jeans, I wanted a belt too! :D I have had these buckles for well over a year now, I bought them from the The Dolls House Mall. The black one is real leather, from a strap I had. I had to shave it down with a razor, as it was quite thick. The buckle pin is wire. The stripey one, is made from woven fabric, the same fabric I used for the seat cushion in the kitchen. I smeared PVA glue onto the fabric and left it to dry before cutting it, which stops it from fraying.

These take no time to make, that is why there are four :D. The buckle part is fiddly though. My choice of fabric was limited, so the new two,  I am not so keen on. These are for a wardrobe, that isn't quite ready yet.

I have wanted to make a suitcase for a long time now! I scanned a section of my leather jacket, and then resized that scan, lightened the colour, and printed the result onto paper. Although the grain is not visible, the print is made up of many pixels of brown tones, which gives it a bit of depth, rather than just one solid brown. I found finding free large images of leather online impossible, so if you need it, I have uploaded it here.  I am contemplating, (almost certain) there will be a tutorial on this one, as there don't seem to be any opening suitcase tutorials online. Obviously, it is obvious how it is made, ie. two open boxes stuck together, but the techniques to make it neat, etc. might be of use to somebody. Plus, I need to refine a few things and I need a larger suitcase, to set my smaller suitcase on, so I might as well take photos along the way :D 

The buckles are silver wire, bent around, round nosed pliers. The brass on the handle was made using the heads of miniature nails. The brass on the straps, are gold no hole beads.

And it opens! That was a slight challenge. The lid came off completely during construction, so I had to make some alterations, and now, for now, it is fully working again. The lining paper is a resized version of this vintage design, which had to be copied and pasted in paint over a large area, laid over each other, a bit like a jigsaw, to make it large enough to resize to a nice scale, unfortunately the detail was lost, but I liked the pattern anyway. 

The family album is full of tiny photographs from our real family photo album. The black corners are drawn on. They aren't as crisp as I wanted them to be because my ultra fine nibbed pen dried up, so I had to use a Pilot pen instead! I must stop leaving caps and lids off of things! The "photos" are glued onto pastel paper (nothing special about that, it was the only suitable paper I had). The pattern of the endpaper is a resized version of this.  My mum is the little girl with the bob haircut, upper right.

I LOVE MY PRINTER!

No doubt these two will have starring roles in all future scenes :D Donkey is as expressive as ever, thankfully Teddy is poseable, so it won't get THAT boring. The bed linen is lace from Little trimmings, and I have forgotten where the rug came from, but I bought it on etsy.

Where did I set those buckles? Definitely, not time for a workshop photo. This shows the mess made when creating four belts and an album, this photo is a tiny section of the mess.  I found the buckles eventually. They were nowhere near here :D

Many thanks for the lovely comments on the last few posts, I have not had time to reply with thanks, just those with specific questions, as I have been trying to catch up with everyone's blogs, which is increasingly difficult to do, I might add, we all know what I am talking about, I added a few more to my list recently too, but very well worth it!! :D