March | 2020 | Missing Willow Farm

This Week On The Farm

We received our asparagus crown shipment and got those planted in the garden yesterday. We are harvesting radishes at the moment. The doe who visits us every year when we have lambs is back visiting inside our pasture. We call her the babysitter. Our shipment of chicks arrived today and are settled into their condo in our small barn. Life goes on.

European Alley Book Nook

Here’s something brand new… a book nook! These little things are getting popular for adding miniature magic to bookshelves. They measure roughly the height and width of one or two books and are decorated as slender dioramas. When sandwiched between two books on a bookshelf, it appears your shelf is a passageway to someplace either real or imagined. Thanks to our recent travel, I was inspired to make a European alleyway. I was enchanted by the colorful homes we came across in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal.

It was important to decorate all of the surfaces before gluing the box together. I used texture paste and a cobblestone stencil for the floor.

I had to put a corgi saying hi in one of the windows!

I made chipboard trellis flower boxes.

I sewed a small gift bag to hold wine and bread as a gift for one of the residences.

There’s a kitty asleep in a window directly across the alley from the corgi.

Alice Teapot Tea Party

I am happy to share something special today. I was invited to be a guest designer for Alpha Stamps and made a little Alice In Wonderland tea party shrine using a Little Niche Shrine – Teapot and a Chipboard Teapot Blank. Whenever I make a miniature scene I like to add as many tiny things as will fit. The niche is 2 by 3 inches. Challenge accepted!

I started the project by painting the edges of both teapot cutouts with white acrylic paint.

The paper I used to cover the teapot is Heartland’s Kiss Kiss. It’s a soft pink on one side and has bits of soft blue on the opposite side. I was able to get all of the paper needed for this project from a single 12×12 sheet. I used the teapot shape to trace around the exterior of the pots then glued it in place. Once the glue dried, I cut out the handle and niche spaces with an X-Acto knife.

Once both sides of the teapots were covered, I assembled the niche and papered it with this wonderful Blue Watercolor Clouds Scrapbook Paper. I can think of at least a dozen uses for this gorgeous sky paper right now.

The tree that holds the Cheshire Cat cut from the Tin Sized Alice collage sheet is a 5 inch Creepy Tree with just a little branch cut away to assure the niche opening isn’t completely covered. I painted both sides of the tree with burnt umber acrylic paint.

Here’s the niche teapot glued onto the teapot blank to make it free standing. The grass for the niche is a tiny bit of green felt. I cut a bit of the opposite side of the Kiss Kiss paper for the blue lid and base. So pretty! Now it’s screaming to be decorated.

The tree needs leaves and I wasn’t excited about cutting a ton of them out by hand. Laser-Cut Miniature Ivy worked perfectly and was a lot of fun to play with. After figuring out how many sections I wanted to use, I painted both sides with acrylic paint. Once dry, they were glued in place on the tree.

I knew I wanted a squirrel to overlook the tea party. I grabbed one from the Into the Woods collage sheet and shrunk it down a little bit. I baked off a little circle of brown polymer clay to simulate a knot hole.

The tea party needed a table and I fashioned one from a few stacked silver beads for the legs and a tongue depressor cut to the width of the niche. To cover it, I used a wood grain paper from 49 and Market’s Captured Adventures collection.

I wanted to utilize every inch of the space so made a little party under the table for a Micro Mini Flamingo. I love making miniature food so was super excited to play with the Mini Silicone Mold – Many Sizes Bundt Cakes mold. It makes seven different sizes of tiny cakes. I used paper clay to mold the cake and let it dry overnight. This photo shows my decorating process. The first cake has been painted with beige acrylic paint. The second shows how I get a bit of brown pastel chalk on my finger and rub it on the cake to give it a baked look. The glaze is made from equal amounts of white acrylic paint mixed with Glossy Accents. Finally, I added a small polymer clay cherry to top it off.

The table is set with all sorts of gorgeous little bits. The cake stand was made from a Verdigris Tall Flower Bead Cap and a Tiny Cake Plate Filigree. To give it a little extra height, it’s resting on a little slice of wood. One last touch was to add a spray of cheerful Tiny Mulberry Blossoms.