Sugarplum Cottage to Monarch Cottage 14

 

Life got in the way of building this week, but some progress has been made.

The furniture has all been painted ivory. It is a nice, soft color, perfect for the cottage. I considered painting some embellishments, like flowers or stripes, but then I found some watercolor flowers in a free clipart site. 

The photo shows them printed them out on plain white paper and taped in place as a test; they passed. I have some decal paper to print them on, so the background will be clear. It will appear that the decoration is painted on. The process requires spraying with a clear sealer, which had to be ordered, so this is as far as this step has gone.

The sod roof is now glued, except for the gable over the front door. I'm afraid that the felt will look too bulky in this small area. I painted some of the shingles green and stuck them on to see if the gable can be shingled. I'm not in love with the effect.

(Click on the picture to enlarge it for details)

The layered look worked out fine on the small bay window roof.

The wooden edges of the roof should have been painted green before gluing the felt, but once again I got ahead of myself. 

It is hard to see in this photo, but the door now has wood-patterned Contact paper on both sides and the window is installed. It will be glued in place once the interior is finished. 

The felt roofing worked well on the open back. The boards that reach from the roof to ground on either side have been stained. They blend well with the Contact paper wood pattern.

The easiest way to stain small pieces is a stain-filled felt pen, available wherever stain is sold. When it runs out, the felt tip can be extracted and the pen refilled.

Sugarplum Cottage to Monarch Cottage 13

 

The roof!

 The sage green felt worked better than I had hoped. Stretching it flat was pretty boring but layering really put some oomph in the exterior. The strips are taped in place and the slopes over the front door are not yet covered. 

The green of the porch benches now clashes with the green of the sod roof.  They need to be a warmer color, maybe pick up some of the burnt orange from the Monarch butterfly wings. Since the benches are not removable, repainting is going to be tricky; time to hunt up the Frog Tape. 

The furniture has been painted with gesso. It was painted ivory after this photo was taken. Tomorrow some decoration will be added before it makes its final appearance here. There is a lacey handkerchief in the stash that may serve as a sheet and pillow cases for the bed. Will need to dig into the fabric box for some suitable bedspread material. 

Since the "windowpanes" will be glued on the inside of the windows, the edges of each window needed to be painted to cover the gray edges of the cardboard timbers, the wooden edges of the walls, and some gesso that slopped over from painting the interior walls. The outside corners, where two bits of the timbering met, also needed to be touched up. A jar of brown paint and a very tiny brush took care of all that. The interior window frames need to be made.

So many details at this stage but it is fun to be able to hop from one thing to another. It will all come together in the end.