Tiles, Coblestones and Paint, and Yet More Paint......Honeydukes

I have been working hard on the main bones of the ground floor over the last few days and have nearly finished the painting.

 The black and white tiles are copied from what I have seen of photos of the Honeydukes in Universal Studios. I purchased these mini ones from Romney Miniatures and they were extremely easy to cut and glue down. I did have to lightly sand the edges of some of the tiles to ensure they were completely straight but this didn't take long.

The cobblestones are from one of my favourite suppliers Richard Stacey who has a website and an Ebay Shop. These were very simple to lay and cut and are all made of real stone. I also bought his cutting tool which worked great. Wish I had bought one of these five projects ago and a snip, excuse the pun, for £4.50!!

 I spent some time pondering the paint and eventually got a large jam jar and poured in two acrylic paint colours I thought would give me the green I wanted. Then I poured in white to tone it down a bit. This is the second coat and it is still a bit too dark, this photograph has lightened it up a bit.

I have now spilt my mixture into two jars. This darker shade I will use on the weathered outside of the shop and the new mixture I will add more white paint to and give the shop furniture a 3rd and definitely last coat tomorrow.

The pink shade of the staircase I am happy with. In fact there is a lot less pink in the shop than I thought so I won't have to mess around with that colour at all.

I persuaded my other half to cut all the cornices for me tonight so I will give them a last paint before fixing them in place.

Acrylic paint is a very matt finish so I am going to give everything a coat of gloss Modge Podge both to seal/protect and to give everything a nice shine.

I went out today to get a few bits and pieces for the bay windows today. Not quite the supplies I normally go miniature shopping for but I am hoping my plan will work. Really want to get all the painting out of the way now so I can start messing around with the windows.

It's been an incredibly wet and miserable weekend here but I hope the sun has shone in your part of the the world. 

Diagon Alley's New Premises Ready For Opening......Well Nearly.

I decided to have a line up of the four Diagon Alley shops I have 'completed' so far. 

 All the kits seem to sit alongside each other nicely and the brickwork seems to be forming the link between them all I was looking for.

 Unfortunately placing them together has made one this glaringly obvious.......

...... The Magical Menagerie is much too 'red'. The other shops are brown/grey dingy and the different shade just looks awful. I don't know how this has happened or why I haven't seen it earlier.

The grey light of February probably.

Fudge and Fiddlesticks!!!

I have given it all a grey wash today but that hasn't worked so now I am thinking I will have to go right back and give all the ArtMache a white wash to start building up the dirty wash again.

Ho Hum.......

 The roof of this kit is flat and it is supposed to fit snugly on the top. Well mine does not fit at all snugly, after a lot of sanding it nearly fit so I have edged it with balsa and filled the square with painted sandpaper. As you can see I then tore away some of the edging as I want it to have a roughened 'burnt' look as a finish due to all the low flying dragon activity!! 

Too add a little more interest I have used Richard Stacey's twelfth scale bricks. These now have to be grouted then I will finish of the singed flat roof.

So I really am down to the last few jobs now on the exterior of this shop, these involve quite a lot of drying time which means I have also been able to work on the bookshop.

I seem to have had a lot of problems with this kit so I am hoping that "Flourish & Blott's" will be much more co-operative!!

 The Sid Cooke County Kit comes with quite a lot of moulding and as I am having the bow windows on both ground and first floor windows I have gone for the crackle option.

 Black and gold with Mahogany fittings is my overall scheme for "Flourish & Blott's". I see it as the most affluent of all the shops. After all they do seem to have cornered the market in Hogwarts set texts!!

 The interior wallpaper is 'Burlesque' by Les Chinoiseries a fabulous Spanish site that has both wallpaper and gorgeous miniature fabrics. I love the full on luxury of the black and gold. It is so 'in your face'.

This kit has a back door and back window. 

I am going to try and use both these openings to give the illusion of back areas within the shop some how. Lots of ideas, will have to see how I get on!!

I have these three unfinished counters that I bought ages ago from Maple Street Miniatures and I quite like the idea of using them here as a way of show casing some of the beautiful books I have set aside for this project.

The counters will also be a way of avoiding simply lining the walls with book shelves!! Very boring.

I have always wanted to have a circular staircase in this shop which is why I have not yet put in the middle floor. I am going to have a look at them when I go to Miniatura in a week or so, this will be about the third time I have looked at this type of staircase!!

Staircases take up so much room I usually avoid them, but..........I do like the spiral ones!!!!

The Magical Menagerie Has Walls and A Roof......Next Shop Unveiled!

The exterior of The Magical Menagerie is almost complete. I have spent nearly a week Art Macheing all the walls. It was a long, long job.

 Two reasons it took forever. Firstly, I like a smooth finish, so I have to make sure the surface is laid at more or less the same depth and it then has to be smoothed down with my fingers and various flat tools.

 Secondly, I decided to glue on most of the moulding before applying the ArtMache for the first time with this kit. Usually I mark out where all the moulding goes and then apply the Mache. Why I decided to change I do not know.......It was a BIG mistake!!! I had to be so careful which slowed the whole process down dramatically. Plus it was much harder to do. Plus no matter how careful I was mache still went where it should not!!

 I haven't put the windows in yet because I want to match them with the interior woodwork and I decided not to work on that part of the project at the moment. Once I start looking at the interior rooms I know I will get distracted by the fireplace, or the doors, or the cages..........

I am keeping to the master plan.

 I have had a lot of trouble getting this kit to fit properly and you can see here the gap here. No amount of sanding or tweaking has helped but the double quoin strip has helped disguise the flaw.

I have decided to move on and put up with it.

 I am trying to make all the roofs look different from each other so I have tried to slip these tiles a little as if the roof is suffering from dis-repair or low flying dragons!!

 These are Richard Stacey weathered tiles and are very varied which was perfect for my roof. At the moment they look a little to bright so they will be dirtied up when I age the whole exterior

 I will add lots of dirty paint to all the exterior walls to match it with the look of the other shops in the Alley.

 A peek through the top window into the dragon room.

The street paviors are also down and ready to be aged. I will leave the front door panel all in brick but I have still some moulding to add. The two strips meant for this panel have disappeared, have absolutely no idea where they are so I am in the middle of painting two more. Gremlins on the loose again!!!

 As one exterior comes to an end another one starts. I have put together the carcass of 'Flourish & Blotts'.  This a Sid Cooke County kit that I was lucky enough to win on Ebay for half the list price. It was untouched and still in all its original packaging. 

So here I am back to moulding painting!!

This will be my last shop for quite a while as I want to work on the interiors of the five I have started. There is all the lighting to be done and all the exteriors still need finishing off as well.

Plus I need to start emptying all the boxes of furniture and props I have lying around before my workroom explodes!!

Bricks Galore! Mr Mulpepper's Apothecary......

I decided that this Diagon Alley shop would be half and half. The top half exterior is cladded in Art Mache and waiting to be aged.

The bottom/ground floor is to be all brick. I had used Richard Stacey's brickslips on the exterior of The Leaky Cauldron so decided to stick with these to provide the link between the shops.

I like this product as they are reasonably light, which means the finished shop will not way a ton, plus they are very easy to cut, sand and glue.  

 I started with the side of the shop as I wanted to get into a rhythm before attempting the front which needed a bit of a think. I always apply the brickslips from the bottom up as I use the edge as my guide. A good layering of glue and you can slide the 'slips into place very easily. I pair of tweezers or a long darning needle are useful for this. 

I don't paint the carcass as I always grout after washing with a 50/50 mix of PVA and water. This washing is very important if you intend to grout.  

 I have learnt that a it is also best to use a very thin PVA glue, I use Elmer's Glue All, as the tiles/'slips will slide into place much more easily.

This not a quick job but I think the results are worth it. I even got a bit artistic and added a little pattern! Quite daring for a Boring Betty like me!

 I had to have a think about the front because of the window and door. I decided to add all the 'slips beneath the bottom window ledge first because I thought grouting these might be a bit too fiddly once the whole bay window was glued in place.

I have also decided to add all the wooden mouldings after gluing and grouting as I did not fancy trying to cut really small pieces of brick around the door way columns.

So now lots of grouting to do but nearly half finished, whoo hoo!!

By the by, anyone know of a UK stockist of Elmer's Glue All who do not want to charge 4 times its US price tag? 

Have a great weekend wherever you may be. 

The Leaky Caudron Exterior.......Tudor Style

After a lot of looking, thinking and trying to work out a plan of attack I began the first side of the exterior. I have done a Tudor type exterior before using polyfilla but this time I decided to use the texture paste I bought last week. The main reason for this was because I thought it would be quicker, far less messy and would take a wash better on completion.

 My plans were: glue the bricks on in random places, allow to dry; cut all the balsa beams and struts, distress, stain and oil; grout the firmly glued bricks, wash off and allow to dry; apply the texture paste all over the side and then while still wet glue on the balsa beams.

I was hoping that applying the beams while the texture paste was wet would allow me to squidge them into place.

 I applied the bricks free-hand, I wanted them to look a little bit out of kilter, the pencil marks show the final positioning of the beams. Marking out the beams was also necessary for cutting the right lengths too of course.

 The process worked well but I think the layer of texture paste is too thin and I will probably add another layer here and there. That means I will have to but another pot of the stuff which makes it slightly more expensive than polyfilla but I do like the overall stucco effect

 The balsa wood is 1/16th of an inch in depth, not very thick but easy to cut and it sits close to the wall hopefully looking like it is embedded in the paste.

Grouting the bricks was really easy, it is a task I had always avoided until my last project, although I forgot to coat the first ones with PVA before grouting, which meant they were harder to clean off. 

I will also have to rub down the paste around the bricks to stop the finish looking too frilly.

All in all quite pleased with this week's progress, time for the dreaded washings next but I have all my dirty water pots lined up and I have a new brush shaped like a fan which looks right for the job.

Oh but it is a scary thought!