Happy Christmas and super KDF mini's from Pepper!

Long overdue post!

Awhile back, Pepper very thoughtfully asked if I "needed" anything from KDF ( don't we all :D ), as she was well aware there are some must-have miniatures that you literally cannot get anywhere, unless you go to a miniature show. As it happened I did "need" some Causeret pottery and Ray Storey glassware, quite badly actually. My shopping list items ended up being mostly unavailable, so Pepper had to choose for me, and she chose perfectly! She also had to dig into her Ray Storey glassware collection, as he had sold out prior to the show. So another giant Thank You again for that Pepper! Aaand... she got me more than a few extras! Everything arrived individually wrapped in tissue paper, and I had no idea what was in each one, so you can just imagine how amazing my afternoon was the day I unwrapped each of the following miniatures....  Warning - Photos do not do these miniatures justice, though they still look amazing despite the lighting conditions :D

Pottery by Elisabeth Causeret. 

They are just...beautiful. The crackle glaze is even more crackly in reality.

Each piece is signed with a potters mark on the base, bit hard to make out in the photo. They are incredibly stable too.

More Elisabeth Causeret Pottery. The mugs are both the same size, one is just standing slightly in front of the other.

Even more Elisabeth Causeret Pottery ( I know, I have been spoiled!). The lid on the teapot is removable.

Ray Storey bottles.

Colander and ladles by Orsis Miniatures. Very bad photo, these are delightfully dainty, ie. each ladle handle has a curl at the top. The matchstick is 3.8 cm long.

David Provan spice tower, honey pot with dipper and recorder.

The recorder has a thumb hole on the other side......I forgot to turn it over to show that :D

Each container has been turned for a precision fit, and the lid has a beautiful knot too.

Potato peeler by David Provan, part of me believes that you could actually peel a tiny potato with this. 

The last miniature parcel to be opened was this little box, I actually didn't expect anything to be inside it, but it was a tad heavy....

...?! :D

YES! The most amazing amount of biscuits!! And they were beautifully arranged in rows, which I forgot to record, in my haste to get them out of the box. I will definitely need tweezers to recreate how they were arranged :D I've even got an order for eating these, bear goes first, followed by star, then rectangle finished off with plain rounds, then back to bear,etc, :D. These were made by Orsis Miniatures.

And everything together! I had taken an inpromptu photograph of some of the pottery in the conservatory, but there has been an invasion of cat hairs and fluff, so I didn't include it :D Spring clean coming soon...

Thank you so, so much Pepper!

Pepper has opted for payment via miniatures, so this is one side of a swap, sadly she has to wait for the other side as I haven't made them yet, as much as I would have loved her to have them for Christmas :D

Hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and New Year.

1:12 scale Christmas boxes - Super bumper edition printable! :D

Happy Christmas! I'm a tiny bit late with this one. I haven't even got my 1:1 decorations out of the attic yet, but the miniature ones appear to have been brought down. Priorities! :D

Quite a few of the images used for this printable are from Joannes flickr site Take a break. Joanne very kindly uploads a lot of ephemera for other crafters to use free of charge. She used to make dollshouses too! Small world eh? Other images were very poor quality sourced from eBay and fixed up for printing, which I'll probably explain more about in the future, for example the doubl-glo box was very low resolution, and both tinsel boxes are made from copying and pasting bits and pieces together ala Dr Frankenstein :D

The Santa (who needs his face repainted) is an old resin Christmas decoration, the Christmas lights were made using Miyuki beads and green thread for the wire. The plug is a piece of dowel, coloured with felt tip and with wire as pins. I used a plastic clothing label tie to create little bulb tips in each Miyuki bead (very hard to see). The miniature tree is a handmade bottle brush trimmed into a tree shape, with some railway modellers flock applied and no hole beads, and it's unfinished! :D Sort of threw everything together for this scene!  One of the bulbs has fallen off :(

For the printable, I recommend using a sharp craft knife for cutting out the boxes! I used one of those Swan Morton ones.

For best results print at Fine quality, on to 220GSM card.

Link for PDF below.

Christmas boxes

After printing lightly spray with fixative (or hairspray) to seal the ink.

If you need any tips on cutting out the boxes, etc, for a neat fit, the start of this post has a few. I find tabs annoying to cut out and unpredictable at this size (making the box lid too tight for the base etc.), so I make tabs later on, using paper. See the bottom half of this post for a picture explanation, under the title Shoeboxes and boxes.

I recently bought a bone creaser/folder, highly recommended if you do a lot of this sort of thing! It has saved my nails, which were actually wearing away from all of the creasing....

Cut out all of the windows before cutting out the individual boxes. For the fiddly windows,ie, curvy, spiky areas, use short cuts to help preserve the details, rather than trying to follow the line in one go.

Unlike the other boxes, DO NOT cut out the window on the two tinsel boxes, until the sides have been creased. The tinsel is a fly tying material called Chenille Sparkle, which I bought from Troutcatchers. If your husband/son etc, fishes, I wholly support you nicking from his stash of fly tying equipment :D There are some card pieces in the printable that you can use to wrap the tinsel around.

On the printable G, W, R stands for Green, White, Red, just pencil those onto the boxes, so you know which base belongs to which lid, as the sizes are slightly different. The dividers are also on the template, and are for these 3 boxes. 6mm beads and smaller will fit the boxes.

Unfortunately I couldn't mark out the cuts for printing, so you will need to measure and mark those out. Each slot should be 7mm apart. Make the first cut for a slot, then place the knife directly beside it and make another cut, then use the tip of the knife to remove the "slot" waste. Then the pieces will all slot together nicely.

Some of the other boxes in the printable. You can use cellophane of some sort, to create plastic windows too,  I haven't done that yet....

If you cut out the middle row of trees on the Holiday snow box, you can then put a bit of cotton wool or wadding in the box, and it will show through.

I've included some Christmas Cards in the printable, not shown here. The card might be a bit too thick, but if you run your finger nail or bone creaser along the edges of the card, it should give the illusion of  thinner card.

There are also interior cards for the two Christmas Light/ Lamp boxes, which are a bit awkward to fit, but you can play about with them, as you see fit. I ended up chopping some off.

The plain white card bases (in the printable) need to be creased and folded so that the black lines will be on the inside.

Any idea how to make miniature icicle ornaments? :D

And I think that's it! They would make nice little Christmas ornaments too, with a bit of thread on them and everything glued into place. I would love to see them in a Christmas setting, stall or attic, anything really, so if you make them up, leave a link below :)

 Also, I recently received a package of exquisite miniatures from Pepper, which I can't wait to post about, then that'll be me for this year! :D But even though it's a bit early, I think it is anyway, I wish you all a Happy Christmas, in case I miss you next time due to it being that time of the year ie. Hectic! :D