Miniature Stone Walkway

 Hi Mini Friends!  This Apothecary project has been so fun!  I decided that my storefront needed a sidewalk and steps up to the door.  I had already used the egg carton stone technique on the inside wall and decided to do something different for the walkway.  I used joint compound and carved the stones out of that.  Although while I was carving the stones I didn't take any pictures because it can get a little messy and I wound up with joint compound on my fingers.  But the process of carving the stones was so fun and truly mesmerizing.

I used a piece of chip board and traced the shape of the rounded window so I knew where my stones needed to be.  I cut out a few rounded pieces of cardboard and built my steps.  Then I covered everything with masking tape as the joint compound is a rather wet substance and I didn't want the chip board wet and soggy.

I also built a few borders which I'm not sure was necessary but I did it anyway.  I wound up taking them off and just using my finger to edge any access off.

I used a small tipped clay working tool (not pictured) and just went to carving.

This was the really fun part.

After all the carving, I had to let it all dry overnight.   The next morning, I lightly used a fingernail file to sand down any bits that didn't need to be there.  Also, I think my joint compound is getting old because when it dried it was more powdery than I remembered so I had to be careful.

I gave it a basecoat of paint in a medium gray color.  Then I went over each piece dry brushing white, black and light brown.

When the paint dried, I gave it a generous coating of Mod Podge to act as a sealer.  My paint chipped off pretty easy before the glue coating.  Then I broke out my tinted sawdust and gave some of the cracks some moss.

I love the look and the way it turned out.  I'm wondering if a nice "wrought iron" handrail is needed??

HEY, guess what!!!  This post makes 1,000 posts on my blog!  Congrats to me!  And while all of my 1,000 posts are not miniature related it still serves as my creative lifestyle since 2009.  From gardening, woods hunting, farm life, fur babies, my day care I had for five years, and all in between.  I have really enjoyed blogging and can look back anytime I want.

Thanks for being here!  Do you like my apothecary so far??

XOXO ~Laurie

Miniature Tin Ceiling Tiles

  Happy day my friends!  I haven't been able to decide what type of ceiling to put in my Apothecary.  Sometimes you just need to walk away and focus on something else for a bit and the answer will come to you.  I decided to try using heavy duty aluminum foil as tiles.  And lo and behold it worked!  The process was really fun and easy with very little waiting for glue to dry.  

First, I rounded up some jewelry findings (I don't know what else to call them).  I found one that I thought would be the perfect size (one inch across) and shape and hot glued it to a small piece of scrap chip board.   Then I cut pieces of heavy-duty aluminum foil into about two inch by two inch pieces.    

I placed a piece of foil on top of the jewelry piece and held it down kind of tight with one hand then pressed with my finger on top and also using some of my clay working tools to go around the piece to get as much detail as I could.   

Then I flipped each piece over and spread hot glue on the inverted side to fill the design.

I cut a piece of chip board to glue the pieces of foil to to make the ceiling.  I found this much easier than trying to glue each piece into the apothecary.  I wound up needing more tiles as I trimmed the foil and had to make more.  35 in total.

I glued each piece to the chip board with a dollop of hot glue.  After they were all in place, I used orange, brown and black acrylic paints to aged them up a bit.

I then cut and painted wooden skinny sticks to serve as the borders and glued them down using E6000 glue.

I gave the borders a coating of gloss ModPodge to finish them off then glued the whole thing into the box.  The whole shop is just a square box I have had for literally years.

And there you have it folks!  My "antique" tin (foil) ceiling!  Pretty easy and made for a fun afternoon!

Thank you for visiting!

XOXO ~Laurie