Furniture and dipping a toe in 1/4 scale

First of all I want to say a huge welcome to all my new followers! Thank you for taking the time to stop by and look at my minis. I really appreciate your interest and your comments. I'm also thinking that maybe it's time I started to think about a giveaway for when I reach 50 followers - almost there!

It's been a pretty busy week this week on the minis front. I've been making lots of furniture for the manor house. If I'm going to paint the furniture that I make in 1/2 scale then I use mount board as I find it more stable and much easier to work with than very thin wood.

I made a toy box and a single bed for the children's room. The bed is made from two pieces of foam board stuck on top of each other with pieces of mount board stuck around the edges to make the divan base. The mattress is a piece of polystyrene covered in a used tumble drier fabric softener sheet and the top sheet is another piece of the fabric softener. Not only is this really soft and easily draped, but it also smells good. The bed head is mountboard again with a border of cereal packet card.

I also made an armchair for the study. As you can see from the photos below, the seat is again two pieces of foam board stuck together. I didn't have a pattern for the winged back - just guess work and trial and error and made from cereal packet. I stuck a bit of thin wadding on to the top part of the back and then covered it with imitation suede fabric, turning the edges over on to the back and then covered the raw edges with another piece of cereal packet cut slightly smaller than the back and also covered in the suede effect fabric.

I don't know whether you remember but the sitting room has green wall paper so the red velvet on this little bought settee didn't really look right so I've decided to re-cover it in this gold silk fabric. I prised off all the red fabric with the tip of my craft knife and will use the pieces as patterns to cut the silk material.

I'm also making a knoll settee for this room. Again, no pattern. The seat is yet again two pieces of foam board stuck together and I then used this for the measurements to make the back and side panels. I scored them just a fraction above the top of the seat so there is room to put cushions on the seat, and then stuck wadding onto the back and sides. This is also destined to be covered in gold silk.

It was our miniatures group meeting on Tuesday evening and a clever lady who always works in quarter scale or smaller taught the workshop. We made a quarter scale Tudor shop. It's the first time I've ever ventured into this scale but I have to say that I loved making it. I don't think I shall be doing more on such a small scale but we had a lot of fun and I'm quite pleased with the results. I shall be looking out for furniture and bits and pieces to fill it on Saturday at the Pudsey Miniatures Fair.