Where have I been!??

Holy moly it was been quite a few months!

For those of you that don't follow my Instagram or may not be aware, my city was hit with a biblical type monsoon flood in early February 2019. Biggest flood in history I might add, and it smooshed over 70% of the city.

 

As well as a big ol puddle of water, all the sewerage lines broke so everything was contaminated and super smelly on top of being wet. The sheer weight of the water even cracked out foundation and was left unsanitised for months. By the time my building company agreed that I needed a cleaner, this is ow the cracks looked under the flooring. Completely full of mould, slime and what i can only call as poo goo. Disgusting.

It was a huge job replacing the bottom half of my house, and naturally because there is thousands of houses affected, it took months before contractors could come to work on my house. While I was waiting for repairs, another plague hit my city. Epic amounts of mould. What furniture did survive the flood was now covered in the biggest forest of mould I have seen. All of our remaining furniture was gone after that. Being a severe asthmatic, anything porous like wood or fabric, was thrown out.

Even my dog passed on his blessings as we waited for the council truck to pick up a little of the furniture.

But after a lot of waiting, my house repairs are, finally, almost complete. Replacement furniture was arrived and I have been slowly putting stuff together and trying to take and invent of all the craft items I need to replace. which is pretty much all of it, I might add.

 

Thankfully my feature wall survived for the most part. There was some damage along the bottom and around the window sill, but a small sand and touch up did the trick.

Storm got his pillow corner back. So he was fairly happy to cuddle on the new pillows.

Replacement shelving is in and for the past week I have been organising and storing craft bits and pieces that i managed to save in time. Since I pretty much left it all intact for 5 months, there was a lot to go through.

All in all, this is why I have been absent for months and there is still a little bit to go before I'll be back making miniatures. I have put in a huge order for clay so hopefully that will arrive within the next month.  Once the builders have put on the final touches and I have my order of goods, I should be ready to start up making minis again.

Thanks for reading though all this and I promise I'll be back soon. cya xx

Prom gown

One of the things I love best is the feeling that I am helping others to learn and enjoy sewing. I try to encourage anyone I can to this end.

Here is a requested prom gown tutorial that is very simple and easy to follow.  Learn how to make your own pattern to suit the type of doll you want to make the dress for!

Watch the full video here:

Fallout kit bash

Wow, its been a whirlwind for me with so much going on! Finishing off the renovations for my craft room and working on this miniature fallout inspired kit bash at the same time.

There is a two part video series on this kit bash so you can watch me work and see some tips on how I achieved this completed project.

Watch the videos here...

Part one

Part two

Base house done and aging process of the floors and walls have begun.

Adding dirt and plants to the house really brought the abandoned house look together.

Here is the completed house in all its glory!

Best painting ever! Cute little magazines too.

I'm glad we moved on from bright yellow and green dining sets. I seriously hope we don't regress in the 2200s and go back to this awful colour scheme haha. Anyway, true to the fallout theme I painted the dining set to match the game.

You could still use these stairs right?

Mmmmm sugar bombs...

I was thinking that there should be a lamp or something on the bedside table. Thoughts?

Awwww look at the teeny tiny toilet.

Craft room tour and update

Hey guys I'm back! Wow where to start?! So, basically, as I'm sure many of you have noticed, i haven't published a blog or a youtube video in a while. 12 months to be exact. 

I took a break from miniatures and blogging with pretty much no explanation on social media, which probably wasn't the best move. But, i promise i had good reasoning! I'm excited to be back doing what i love which is creating.

Why i took a break

Taking a break wasn't something that i had planned on doing. I fell fairly ill and I'm (finally) mostly recovered. Right in the middle of my illness, both my parents also had life threatening illnesses, to which they're both being treated for to this day.  While i was away from crafting my husband and i took the opportunity to renovate the dungeon (lol just a nick name, promise) down stairs to be my craft room. Now we can have the kitchen table back haha. 

Its still incomplete but the foundation is there now. Here are the progress shots!

Concrete floor, semi-passable brick walls and so many holes. We had to replace the left wall and make is structurally safe and rewired everything. There was a huge hole in the external wall too that needed to be sealed.

Once the building work was done it was time for paint. Lucky for me the person tinting the paint did a wonderful (cough not) job of having the sample match the paint. We ended up with a base coat that was 3x darker than requested. But we persevered and finished it off with a nice pastel purple called cloudberry.

I wanted to have one wall a feature. So i chose a marbled mermaid look using a few colours in a matching pallet. I hand painted the marbled wall and gently used a roller over the top to blend everything nicely.

Next the tricky bit. Using holographic gold paint, i hand painted scales over the entire wall. The effect of using this paint leaves a shiny and bright gold scale up close and from the other side of the room, the gold holo paint merges into the wall to appear marbled.

I'm fairly happy with my wall and should be lovely and calming for me to stare at when i need a break from crafting.

The majority of the furniture has also been built and it's ready to be populated with my crafty supplies! All of the furniture i chose was either white or a pale beige to match in with the walls and not distract away from the feature wall.

Do you see a sneaky gremlin chicken on the windowsill? Haha!

I still have to install a large art print, caulk peg board, desk accessories, bins etc before the room is complete. I'll be slowly finishing off my room in the next month and by then miniatures and youtube tutorials will be back!!

Now for the scary and large process of purging old craft supplies and organising my new room... I'll keep you all posted!