Monday, December 31, 2012

Carpet Bookmarks

One of the vendors at Costume College (in 2011) had these carpet bookmarks. I'm not actually sure why they had them, but I happily picked up a few of the designs.


Below Germaine and Stephanie model some dresses on one of the carpets.




I decided at some point that I should put together a workbook of crocheted clothing for Sylvanian Family figures. These two dresses were probably the start of that idea. The plan is to have increasing levels of difficulty, from a fairly simple dress in size 10 crochet thread down to items in size 80 thread or single strands of floss. I have some of the patterns figured out, but I haven't gotten around to writing them up nicely yet. You can follow some of the progress on Ravelry: Workbook Test Dresses.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Mini Furniture From Daiso

I have a backlog of posts. I didn't even realize how long the backlog was until I acquired some new Sylvanian Families.

So, some time ago (in the spring or summer of 2011), I was wandering through Japantown and stopped by the Daiso store. They had a bunch of mini furniture at really cheap prices (like $1 or something in that range). So I grabbed one of each item I thought would be sized correctly for Sylvanian Families. Most of the furniture was too tall, but a few looked like I might be able to cut them a little shorter if necessary, so I picked a few of those as well.

Clarice Bamboo with a hexagonal end table. (Packaging for the furniture in the background.)



Edwin and Ella Ellwood behind a desk. Well, I think its a desk. It almost looks like a table except that there are low support bars between the legs on three of the four sides.



Clarice and Alexandra Bamboo beside a fancy self. This was my favorite of all the furniture I picked up. I was very tempted to make a trip back to the store to get some more of these shelves. (By the time I wandered through Japantown again, Daiso no longer had any of this furniture.)



This 'Country' set was one with items I thought would be too tall, but easy enough to cut down. Chair on the left is the original, and the one on the right had its legs partially cut off. I haven't decided yet if the cabinet needs to be trimmed down a little as well.



Below is Edwin relaxing on the chopped down chair. The new height seems pretty reasonable when compared to a standing figure.



I pulled out some of my other items, and set up a couple scenes with the new furniture. Below, Elliot gets a sewing lesson from Ella while Eliza takes a look at the knitting basket. Father Edwin is putting away the dishes in the cupboard.


Alexandra starts a sewing project while Bertram relaxes at the end of the day. My brother gave me the glass mushroom on the far right on the end table; he made some while taking a glass blowing class. (He also gave me a glass elf hat, that I still need to post a picture of at some point.)