Guild Show

We're off to the IGMA Guild Show 2010 in Teaneck, New Jersey.

For show hours, directions and other info, click on the link under my picture at the right.

Hope to see you there - it's going to be a great show!

Lyttleford Cottage

Just in time for IGMA!  A small half-timber house with a cozy interior.

I couldn't quite decide on a name, so finally settled on Lyttleford Cottage, after the imaginary town I invented as a home for my mini English houses and shops.

Victorian Cottage

This is something I'd been wanting to make for some time - a small Victorian cottage with board and batten siding. It turned out to be a lot more time consuming than I had anticipated.  One reason was that instead of using commercial scale siding with the battens (the narrow vertical boards) milled in, I decided to put them on individually. Figuring the spacing was a bit challenging, but I'm happy with the result.

The cottage is in the "Gothic Revival" style popular in this country from roughly the 1830's through the 1860's The steeply pitched roof, fancy trim on the gable ends and the board and batten siding are all typical of this style, which is also called "Carpenter Gothic."

The wonderful shake shingles (which I also used on the Garden Cottage that I'm teaching in Castine) are no longer being made, so I am hoarding them, and only use them when nothing else looks quite right.

The interior has a sitting room and bedroom.

Walnut Cottage

A walnut cottage in a summer landscape. The "hostas" in the center foreground were made from HO scale kits left over from the 1/4" scale flower arrangements I made for the Toy and Dollhouse Museum of Kansas City. I'm a huge fan of hostas, which grow very well here in Michigan, and have many varieties in my yard.

The inside.  There's a fireplace on the left wall, and a shelf holding books and accessories above the door.

Another Way to Make Plates

I also occasionally use .005 white sheet styrene (available at hobby stores) for plates. It can easily be painted any color you like with acrylic craft paints.

Nuremberg Kitchen

As sometimes happens, I've been so focused on working that i neglected to stop and take pictures.  Here's one of the things I just finished:

Toy kitchens have been made at least as long as dollhouses. Many were made in Germany, hence the name "Nuremberg Kitchen."  This one is an 18th Century version.  I love making these, because it gives me a chance to make lots of little detail parts. The hutch and settle are my own castings; the table and chair are scratch built. The accessories are mostly modified cast metal.  I make the plates by coating paper with about 3 coats of acrylic gloss medium, punching them out with a 1/8" hole punch, and making an indentation in the center with a very small nail set to give them some dimension.  For more elegant settings, I often paint the rims gold.

Whitledge-Burgess Connection

Ray Whitledge and Scott Burgess are teaching a great class, "La Coeur de la Maison" in Milwaukee, WI on October 13-16, 2010.  As you might guess, it's a lovely Country French style room. The original has two of my room boxes built into one of the back walls.  You can see it at:

http://www.whitledge-burgess.com/gallery/album18/room1

You can increase the size of the image by clicking on it.