windowscene with a fun detail

hi there again my dear minifriends, I hope you are doing well. I've got some positive news (I'm now confident it's not just an occasional-upswing): I'm doing better finally! Some treatments I started, one months ago, another one last week, are definitely kicking in. Meaning I've - mostly - got more (muscle)strength, air (!) and energy and I feel a little bit human again! And so I've put another little scene together the past week, just because I could :D. This time using my mdf-corner with the window in the windowopening it came with (I've always just stuck a 'wallpaper' and fireplace in front of it ;). Nope, unfortunately not my view (although mine is great too!), just a printed one, nice hey?

the dressings and floor are for the scene I've started last year - and mostly finished - and I wanted to show the blinds and floor already. The Roman blinds are easy to make and to get the look and thickness I wanted, I used a single layer of a tissue as 'fabric'. Although it's very fragile of course and I'm not even sure how - or if - it will hold in time.., but we'll see.

and I made a little video to show how the blinds pull up, how fun is that? I couldn't get the close up of putting the cord around the metal thingy in focus or the cord around the metal ends, but I was already very happy I managed to get the first part of the cord on there (after a few takes), I actually need tweezers for that ;). Or a pair of minihands, but the only ones I have at my disposal ere my cat's and they just don't suffice :D.

how about the anti-peekfoil on the windows? You might say it's redundant since this room is 'overlooking' a canal with the next buildings on the other side. And I would agree, buttt.... I always like how it looks AND what you don't see is that there's a(n imaginary) sidewalk directly under the window, where mini-people walk, always looking (way too) curiously inside, haha :) . I've used some of the scraps of the fullsize kind I've had on my windows in my previous house and it works just as well for a small scale.

 

the Houseworks window I used, it came with the mdf-corner it's in

the real fun part of this all I think is the tiny thingy to wrap the cord of the blind around. 'Cause hey, you can't leave that just hanging right? :D It's from a very thin sheet of brass I first made 2 tiny holes in and then cut a small strip using the holes as guides. Since I figured doing it the other way around, would just have been torture ;). Folded the ends at a slight angle, et voilá! I think real ones have slighty longer ends, but this is just a short-ended version. In the months I hadn't seen it I'd forgotten how small it is and I think it adds some real fun and realism to the window. I can get a bit squeeky about details like that ;) And that's saying something, not being a very 'squeeky' kind of girl :D haha. It's só small, that the nails - that are absolutely tiny - look a bit too big for it.

something else I love how it turned out: the Arts & Crafts-chair-kit - another last year's birthdaygift - that I think fits well here. It's from mdf and just needed some paint. But how to get a realistic woodlook on mdf? The description on the kit's website is to mix a gel-medium (for adding transparency) with paint (50/50) and then: paint-sand-paint-sand-paint-sand and seal.

but as it turned out not necessary (in this case anyway): this cool wood-effect (if I may say so myself, I'm very pleased with it!) was the happy result of just ONE layer of gel-medium mixed with some lightbrownpaint, then very slightly sanded (hobby-sandingfile grid 240/320) not to loose the grainy relief that comes from the brushstrokes and the thickness of the gel-medium, added some darker brown paint I just 'smeared' with my finger in a not so orderly fashion to add depth to the colour.

these steps resulted in some unexpected, but surprisingly realistic, woodgraineffect that I really like! And my sandingfile happened to have some unidentified black on it, that accidentally rubbed some on my chair and gave it a perfect extra layer of usedness. Don't you just love happy accidents? I do, love them! The light sanding also unwantingly rubbed of small pieces of the paint that I wasn't too happy with at first (the gel-medium or maybe the acrilyc paint I used? makes the layer rubbery, which doesn't combine well with even the very light sanding I did), but those simply became wear and tearspots, and to disguise the exposed mdf in those places I just rubbed in some darker paint: PERFECT!

I discovered later that I've always put the backsupport upside down to what it's 'supposed to'. So I turned it again, but although I do like it the right way too, I actually prefer it the unintentionally 'wrong' way I had it. And apparently makes more sense to me :D. Below the picture how it was meant to be. I might be messing up (an important part of) the design, but hey, that's a bit of 'artistic' freedom the maker will probably forgive me ;).