Christmas comes early

At the dolls' house session this week we made a poinsettia plant, which is very cute, and was very fiddly to make.

I've dressed the living room with the tree, some presents, swags and a stocking.

The tree, which lights up, was a bargain at £2. The presents are made from packaging foam that I save, covered in mini wrapping paper that I print from the internet. The swags are two sparkly pipe cleaners, costing pennies, with some red ribbon bows and plastic berries in the middle that I spotted at Durham market.

Finally the stocking is felt (stiff felt, not craft felt) with florist wire and cotton wool. Oh, and some left over leaves from the poinsettia.

Seasonal decorations

I'm starting to think about seasonal items for the house, most of which I'll make myself. I'm on the lookout for the little foil bits from sweets, which will make perfect mini Christmas crackers.

I'm going to buy a tree with lights for display in the lounge, and make some 'candles' and decorations for the shop.

A pack of felt arrived the other day, so I made a little Christmas stocking. You can buy them of course but the ones I've seen look iffy in terms of quality. This one is hand sewn, not glued. I plan to pop some 'presents' in before I display it at Christmas.

Before all that of course is Hallowe'en, so pumpkins are next on my list!

Shop: sandwiches

I've created another batch of sandwiches, this time at a reduced size. You can see that the ones on the tray to the left display tray much better than the original ones. Of course, reducing the size makes them even more fiddly to make!

Shop: window cheese display

I find Fimo so hard to bake. I prepared some mini cheese rounds, crackers and apples and popped them into the over on 150 degrees. Within 10 minutes some of the cheese had started to burn, but the smallest items - the crackers, were doing fine.

Never mind, I still use the burned items, just with the overcooked side away from view.

The cheese window is almost complete. Both displays need prices and perhaps some point of sale signage to tempt potential shoppers to call in!

Shop: window dressing

A quick search for 'Victorian shop fronts' on Google resulted in a range of images showing panelled wood behind the items on display.

Some spare balsa came in handy, so I cut it to size, actually half an inch longer, and I stained it in walnut once I'd added strips of wood to give an impression of panelling.

I made a shelf from some spare cornicing, reversed, and steadied in placed with a big blob of blu-tak.

The other window will feature three biscuit tin boxes and some cheese, which I'll make in the next few days.

Shop: new items, and sandwiches

I found a website called My Tiny World which has a good selection of shop packages and stock amongst other mini items.

My order was efficiently managed and arrived very quickly. Three of the packages had been crushed in transit, but My Tiny World immediately offered to send out replacements once I'd contacted them. That's great service so I'll be ordering again from them.

I love the little biscuit tins, which are made of tin. The tins of cocoa and conserves are excellent quality in terms the print clarity and materials. The Le Soleil Malines conserves tins even open, so you can fill them for added real life effect should they be used in a kitchen.

The very cute Twinings tea boxes come in a set of six, so I bought two.

Finally, I made more sandwiches for the shop.

At last - we're moving house!

This week we carefully moved the house from my project area in the kitchen to its permanent home in a corner of our back lounge.

After I placed all my items in the house I realised that I need a lot more. I don't think it will ever be fully finished. The lovely thing about it is that I can always add to it.