More Awards

Goodness me....these awards are all over the show.

Thank you Sam for awarding me the Sisterhood award.

I do believe that as I have already had it and passed it on I don't have to do it again but thanks very much for giving it to me.

No foxgloves today...I am still recovering from the grocery shopping ordeal this morning....honestly...all that trauma and it costs you so much to do it..crazy...I wish I could just have food pills.

Then I spilled coffee all over the place...not my fault this time...the lid on the Folgers can didn't fit....so the floor got another mopping...I think we'll maybe eat dinner off it tonight.

And now I have to cook said dinner...another of those housewifey things I find a chore. I tend to cook in bulk, get it all over with and freeze it. Pot pies and sausage rolls tonight...I do the filling, Mick does that yukky pasty stuff.

So Mick has tootled off to get a new tire for his motorbike and left me cooking.

Dang that bike costs him more to maintain than me....but isn't that often the case with the 'other woman' :-)

Award time

Rosanna has very kindly given me this award

The rules for this one are.I have to to list seven things I love, then pass it on to another seven Kreativ Bloggers.

Hmmm....only 7 things I love...aside from my hubby (have to say that 'cause we only recently got married), my Son and the rest of my family.

1. Surprises from Mick...he isn't a chocolate and flowers man, which is fine by me because I get things like Micro drills and lava rock of Mount Fuji.

2. Yes rocks..love them and pick them up from each state I visit. Our trunk is always full of rocks after a road trip. Oh no...that just made me realize how am I going to do this now we go everywhere on the bike...I'll have to limit it to a pebble from each state :-(

3. My sense of smell.....Mick doesn't have one so it really makes me appreciate mine Sometimes I feel sad for him but we do get to eat lots of spicy food...he can't taste much else.

4. Music...especially live bands. no matter how well known or not and pretty much any kind except rap.

5. English pubs...one of the things I miss most about 'home' Especially the small ones with a folk singer and his guitar up the corner

6. Reading...pretty much anything except those ripping bodice, thundering loin type of novels.

7. History...I love to read about history and different cultures... native American and African are favorites but more recently getting very interested in Mexico and it's history.


And now to pass this on....

De from Delightful Minis - for being the most productive and varied miniaturist I've ever come across....you go girl !

Minikat - because she wants to buy me beer and chocolate

Grace at Treefeathers - because we both have long hair, live in the desert and get hair round our toes.

Sans - because she appears to be the only one brave enough to attempt to make Foxgloves.

Rute - amazing for a 15 year old. Go check out her blog.

Lotjes - a fellow flower maker.

Don't ever, ever.........

........Put regular hand washing dish soap into the dishwasher.

Yes you can see where I am going here. The inside door of the dishwasher was grubby....how that can be is another story...anyhow so I squirted it with Dawn and started to clean. Duh, I thought, why not just put the dishwasher on rinse....that'll clean it while I go clean somehting else.

So I did and proceeded to go clean the bathrooms. Then came into the workroom.

Half hour later I decided I was hungry...it was 3pm ish and I hadn't eaten anything yet so I tootle off into the kitchen to make some breakfast / lunch.

Oh my....did you ever see that Doris Day movie where she dropped soap suds into the swimming pool...well the kitchen looked just like that.

So I had to mop the floor....again.

The dishwasher appears to be pretty clean now....of course I still can't see the bottom of it as it is covered in suds lol.

Stuck in a corner

Well, I've mopped myself into a corner, literally. Luckily it just so happens that is it where the computer is so I can take a break. Don't want to be getting footprints on my clean, but wet, floor now do I :-)

But really, what is the point of cleaning when you live in the desert. I dust and within 5 minutes everything is covered again.

It is hot so I am in and out all day. I feed the birds lots so am forever dragging in sunflower seed shells or bits of seed.

Add to that I have really thick long hair and shed like the worst dog ever and you'll see why I hate cleaning. My hair is blond which makes it worse....you can't see it to get at it until it starts forming hair balls under the dining table.

I don't have a pet but I did buy a pet vac.......for my own hair :-)

And the house we live in, not only is it full of nooks and crannies the vac won't reach into without pulling out one of the attachments, one wall of the living room is almost all mirror...can I say 1970's. Which is rather strange seeing as how the house wasn't built till the late 80's. I hate it with a passion.....not just for it's ugliness but it is so hard to keep clean. I have considered embracing it and doing the living room to match...glittery disco ball and all :-)

Seriously, it is enough to make me consider going out to work just so I can justify paying a cleaner to come in and do it.

Oh well, back to the slog I guess. May as well carry on while I'm on a roll...I am cleaning like I am about to give birth or have visitors over.

Friday already ?

I can't believe we are at the end of another week already....I am getting old....time is going past far too quickly for my liking. Having Mick home for 2 days totally confused my sense of time.

Anyhow, I am going to try and step away from the foxgloves today. I have reached a point where I am getting irritated with them and that isn't very conducive to creativity.

I know that the answer will come to me right when I stop thinking about it...so I am going to stick on some music, clean the house and ignore them for a day :-)

I also appear to have lost one of them this morning but it should be easy to find...it is about 4 inches long so it can't hide as well as the little bits do.

STOP !

If, by any chance you are attempting to make foxgloves with this my instructions, completely ignore my last posting.

It isn't working and they look like crap.

I am struggling with the buds that are partially open. I don't like working with florist tape at the best of times but, it seemed to work. Now I am wondering about it's longevity so it is probably best not to use it at all.

The problem I am having is, I guess, related to scale. I can get them to look perfect but the buds are too big. If I make them smaller then the detail I put into them is totally lost.

I hate it when that happens, you want detail but on things this tiny sometimes you just have to create the illusion rather than making it just like the real thing :-(

So I am now stuck as to how to proceed. I will figure it out but it may take a little while.

Nikki, sorry they are taking so long but honestly, they look real bad and I won't send out anything like that.


Back to the drawing board....or should that be back to the paper and toothpicks.

Buds, buds, and more buds

Nothing new to show you all today. I have a little production line going on here. Those shown in the photo are 12 foxgloves with the top layers of buds on and fresh buds drying.

I don't really like working like this but it does make it much quicker in the long run. If I assemble the parts all in one go I then I have them all ready to put together. Pretty boring not having anything new to share though.


I also need to cut out more leaves....yuk. That is something I don't do all in one go....it does my eyes in far too much to attempt that. For 175 buds, with each bud having 3 or 4 leaves, that makes somewhere in the region of 600 leaves to cut out.

Mick is working from home yesterday and today, for the simple reason he has lots of work to do and gets too many interruptions at work. So, in the interest of making sure I am not a distraction to him either, I have decided not to vacuum, dust, do laundry etc and am quietly making foxgloves instead :-)

Foxgloves continued.

So here are revised instructions for the next 2 layers of buds.

I wasn't happy with the way they were turning out previously so you'll see I changed the way I have done them slightly.

Ignore the fact that this starts at step 9, I will eventually put this all into one document with complete instructions so have now started numbering the steps.

I am actually still not happy with step 11 so will likely change that again :-)

* * * * * * * * *

9. Following down from the very top buds, you'll see that the actual flower part of these are more visible than the first you did.

Take some floral tape and cut it onto strips approx 1/8th inch wide.

Wrap around the end of a toothpick until you have a bud shape.

10. Once it is wrapped, push the end against a hard surface to flatten the end.

11. Paint with the same pale green color you used earlier and add blush with chalk. Dip the flat end in white chalk. As with the previous buds, add the leaves around the base but don’t bring them right to the tip of the bud.

12. The next level of buds are starting to open.

Take another strip of 1/8th inch floral tape and wrap once or twice around your wire.

Then, and now comes the tricky bit, place the end of a toothpick just onto the floral tape.

13. Continue wrapping the tape going up onto the toothpick.

14. Gently slide off the toothpick and you will see you have a round opening at the end.

15. I wanted to square this opening off a little so I used a cuticle stick that I have sanded down. Just push it in and wiggle it around a little.

16. Paint this bud in the same color paint you will use for the flowers, but add some white to make it a shade lighter. Then take a smear of white paint on a non absorbent surface and gently dip the end of this bud in. You will be left with a tiny ring of white around the opening.

17. Take a ball nose stylus and gently push the sides in…do the top and bottom first then the two sides.

And this concludes today's lesson :-)

I now have to go make a whole bunch of these on top of the other buds......I may be some time before we can move onto the flowers.

Foxgloves

I apologize for the lack of updates on making these foxgloves but I am still making the tiny buds.

I have about 150 to make...no make that 175...I am sure I'll lose at least 25 in the carpet.

However, I have redone the next step and will post new photos in the morning.

Lighting

After posting the photo of the lit staff we made I've been asked a bunch of questions regarding lighting things up.

Let me just say, Mick did all the lighting stuff...I did the easy part and made the staff.

Mick is an electronics engineer who makes life support equiptment (ventilators) so lighting a staff, or any miniature, is simple to him. He speaks in the tongues of strange languages such as biology, physics and chemistry...all completely over my head.

He is working like a madman at the moment on a new ventilator they are about to launch but, once he has figured out all the problems and it has all quietened down, I'll ask him if he will do a quick tutorial.

In the meantime, maybe you can figure it out from this photograph.