The Sheds

The Garden Shed

I’ve always wanted to create some little buildings, so when I stumbled on Little Bits & Pieces by Julie, I knew the time had come.  Julie Warren’s delightful 1/12th Scale Garden Shed tutorials are the motivation behind these two finished sheds and one more under construction.

Garden Shed, 2019. Made from a tutorial by Julie Warren. Thanks, Julie!

 

Garden Shed, 2019. Interior with furniture from Julie Warren tutorials. My apologies to Julie for not immediately filling this shed with little bits and pieces. No self-respecting gardener would ever have such a cleaned up shed. I was so eager to build the next shed that I haven’t filled it up yet!

 

The Beach Hut

On the coast of England you’ll find rows of enchanting vacation cottages.  Some are fancy with all the conveniences of home.  Others are very simple, some might say “primitive.”  They don’t have running water or electricity but, instead, there are shared public bathhouses and water hydrants.  These simple beach huts, frequently held in the same family for generations, are points of pride.  Some are furnished and decorated for comfort or whimsy while others are basic and entirely functional.  Mine is a mix of both.

Beach Hut, Coast of England, 2019. The design for the hut is from Julie Warren’s Little Bits & Pieces by Julie Garden Shed tutorial. Thank you, Julie! After visiting the south coast of England and being enchanted with the beach huts, which have no running water or electricity, I decided to make one of my own, even if I could live in it only in my imagination.

 

Beach hut window, 2019

 

Beach hut furnishings based on Julie Warren’s furniture tutorials but with my own twists.

 

Beach hut furniture based on Julie Warren’s tutorials but customized a bit, although the wall cabinet is her design entirely.

 

The Retreat

I knew from the start that the Garden Shed was going to be a garden shed.  As I was building it, I knew that I wanted to make a beach hut next.  As I finished the Beach Hut, I decided I would use up my craft lumber by building one of my own design.  (Disclaimer:  It’s impossible to use up craft lumber.  No matter what you try to do, you’ll have to buy more to finish the project.)  Based on the materials on hand, I initially didn’t know what type of shed it would be.  I was considering a bakery, a potting shed, a reading nook or a restful retreat of some sort.  As it turns out, the supplies I had on hand determined that it would be a retreat that looks very much like a pastry shop full of books and plants and with a comfortable place to recline.  It’s not entirely decorated yet, and the rooftop garden needs more work, as gardens always do.  Here is The Retreat.

 

As a work in progress, this photo was taken on my messy work area. This is why I need a retreat.

 

Every shed should come with tea and pastries.

Paper Sculpture

Couture #10 – Crystals, 2019.  I tried to capture the essence of frost moving across the land and ice crystals hanging in the air.  The sculpture is 7″ tall, made of paper and glue embellished with beads and mica.

 

Couture #8 – Iris, 2019. Miniature paper dress created in celebration of Mardi Gras for Modella Art Gallery’s Arti Gras Party & 6×6 Silent Auction on Feb. 23, 2019.

 

Couture #9 – Elizabeth Russell Hall’s Wedding Dress, 2019.  This is a miniature paper model of Elizabeth Russell’s 1847 wedding dress. My goal was to reconstruct the dress so we would know what it looked like. The model is fairly accurate except that the bell-shaped sleeves were angled at the cuffs (longer at the back of the wrist and shorter at the underside of the wrist), and the ruffle was smaller scale.  Compare the model to the original antique dress in the next photo.

 

Elizabeth Russell wore this dress when she married George E. Hall in 1847. The dress is silk with a cotton lining in the bodice. Made in England. Considering its age, the dress is in remarkably good condition. Though the colors have faded over time, they were once vibrant:  royal purple plaid with vertical stripes of red, orange, yellow and gold on a tan background. The dress was made for someone who was 5′ tall or less. The buttons are handwoven Dorset buttons and purely decorative since the closure on the bodice is hidden hooks and eyes.

 

This is a detail of the back of the model of Elizabeth Russell Hall’s wedding dress.

 

Dorset buttons on the front of Elizabeth Russell Hall’s wedding dress.

 

Couture #7 – Fertility, 2018. Paper and fiber sculpture.

 

Couture #6 – Oceania, 2018. Paper and fiber sculpture.

 

Detail of Couture #6 – Oceania

 

Coral Reef 2, 3D collage, 2018.

 

Coral Reef 2 (detail), 3D collage, 2018.

 

Coral Reef 1 (detail), 3D collage, 2018.

Small Art (SmArt)

These are really small projects done in 1/144 scale.  A standard dollhouse is 1/12 scale, i.e. 1″ in the model represents 12″ in ‘real life’.  If you wanted to make a dollhouse for a 1/12 scale dollhouse, you would use 1/144 scale.

Crazy?  Yes.  Fun?  Definitely.

This stump is a piece of cork which was very easy to carve, and that’s why it has so many nooks and crannies to explore. It’s home to a tiny creature. Not sure exactly what it is. It’s very shy and has never been seen.

 

A well tended garden is just outside the back door.

 

 

Sandy’s Garden.

 

Sandy’s Garden, reverse side

 

This 2′ piece of oak was salvaged from a lot that had been bulldozed. It’s a work in progress, named The Swordfish because of the way it looks from a certain angle.

Chicken Dinner. This is 1/12 scale, but small enough as a piece that I decided it qualified for this post.

Sweet Treats

Wooden produce crates make perfect miniature buildings.  Two examples below – a French bakery and a mouse house.  Pardon the quality of the photos.  These date all the way back to the era of pre-cell phone cameras.

The Mouse House

A house put together by a mouse would be expected to have lots of odds and ends.

 

 

Second floor.

 

 

St. Francis, patron saint of animals…who else would you expect to find in a mouse’s garden?

 

French Bakery

 

French Bakery

 

Fresh baguettes, gateaux and other delightful sweets! Your coffee is already poured.

 

Stillwater Grand Opera House

 

This model of the historic Grand Opera House in Stillwater, OK, resides at the Stillwater History Museum at the Sheerar Center.  For the full story of the original building, the restoration of the model and lots of photos, click here.

 

 

Enchanted

Fairy house, gnome home or mouse house, you be the judge.  Everything used in this house was found, not bought; disassembled and reassembled; bashed, broken, glued, painted, and tweaked every which way.

 

The shell of the house was falling apart and some of the roof was missing. It was going in the trash until it was saved at the last minute for this crazy little project.

 

 

 

 

 

Before and After: Fairy Chair

 

 

 

 

Fairies can’t be expected to bathe in an ordinary bathtub.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fairy Doors

In the late winter of 2014, the OSU Botanic Garden had an infestation of fairies.  During that year, sharp-eyed visitors were able to spot more than a dozen diminutive portals to fairy homes.  A small, secretive group of volunteers monitored the doors throughout the year to make sure the fairies were not disturbed.  You don’t want to make a fairy mad!  Here is a sampling of the doors which the many artistic fairies created.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Radio Waves

This 1936 radio cabinet had been gutted and all that was left was the cabinet.  Now it’s a period, 3-story miniature house.

 

The salvaged radio cabinet that no one wanted.

 

The house is 1/12 scale.  The top floor is the living room.

 

The second floor is the kitchen. The semi-circular cut out behind the stove was where the speaker used to be.  Many of the furnishings were salvaged or repaired commercial pieces.  Others, such as the stove in this photo, I made by hand.

 

The first floor bedroom connects to the bathroom. The electrical wire in the left foreground powers the lights on each floor.

 

Bathroom on the first floor.

Here is the renovated cabinet, unfurnished. Some of the structural supports of the original cabinet can be spotted in this photo.

 

Here is the entire cabinet, fully furnished and lit up.