InchScaled

Natalia's Giveaway (even two!)

2011-09-16T11:02:00.001+04:00

Join Natalia's Fall Giveaway! The furniture is fantastic! Just click on the picture, it'll take you to the post.

But it's not the only one giveaway! I'm sure you'll love this one ( click on picture)

Art nouveau house

2011-08-24T18:38:00.001+04:00

Hi everyone!

I'm still in the progress of making cabinets for the sofa, well, to be honest, the parts are on the workbench, and I haven't touched them in weeks. The reason for it is quite good - I started building a house! :) At first, I was thinking about roombox, something small, something that would be good for the sofa. And it would be art nouveau again.
Somehow, I'm building the whole house, all in art nouveau style! Isn't it fantastic? I'm making it from scratch, the first plan in Sketchup looked like this:

And it's really huge, I'm using 18mm plywood, so the walls have realistic thickness. It has four rooms, and the size of it about 90cm long and 40cm deep. That's how it looks at its current stage:

And from the back:

I'm super excited, the whole project was started only because of the sofa I made :)
Also I'm practicing making plaster moldings:

I hope to use them for some rooms too. Besides, I tried carving on plaster, and was really inspired - you can work with tiny details, it's a very interesting material to work with. Also I'm working on lighting and chimneys now. Hope to show you the result pretty soon! :)

A bit of carving

2011-07-15T16:59:00.000+04:00

Yesterday I started planning and drawing the carving patterns for my two side cabinets. I'm using pear wood agaim, and it's perfect for tiny details. Here's what I made, I need to make another five! And then four more carved pieces, it's all about roses now:)

It's a little upgrade to my carving skills, I'm almost happy with the result.

Offtopic - yesterday my husband sent me invite to Google +, playing with it since then :) Who's in it too?

Art nouveau sofa.

2011-07-11T16:52:00.000+04:00

I've finished this sofa last week. It was a hard work, but I love the result. In fact, I need to make two side cabinets for it! :)
This project involved carving, marquetry, embroidery on silk :) 10 different types of veneer for marquetry, mahogany and pearwood for carving and a frame of the sofa. Aaand I had 3 options for upholstery - embroidered cotton fabric, velvet and silk. In the end, I used silk and Chinese silk threads for embroidery.
For cabinets - I'll make "stained glass" imitation and carving too.

Butterfly Pillow

2011-05-17T19:28:00.025+04:00

Just finished it! I'm so happy!
Several days ago I received a gift from Natalia (http://scarletsailsminiatures.blogspot.com/) - huuuge amount of silk gauze. The thing is you won't buy it in Russia, no one's selling it. And Natalia was very kind to send me some (no, lots and lots) . I couldn't express my feelings - it's like getting the best Christmas present ever:)
Sooo, I was lucky to have it! I started with 49 count silk gauze and Chinese silk threads I ordered earlier, here's the result (I have another pillow to finish, I'll show it later) :

I hope it's not really bad for the beginner (as I've never worked with silk gauze before) :) But this is huge inspiration for me. Thank you so much, Natalia! :)

Washstand

2011-04-20T13:50:00.000+04:00

I've finished it several days ago, it was very interesting project! I saw this washstand in one of the old Sotheby's catalogues and fell in love with it. It looks quite simple, but there are some details that I really liked.
So here it is:

The tiles with flowers are made of cardboard, I painted every tile separately, watercolor is great for it. Simple green tiles on the table are made of polymer clay.

I'm already working on the next project, also very art nouveau-ish.

Measured drawings

2011-04-01T10:18:00.000+04:00

I'm sooo excited, I bought this book yesterday, it's quite expensive and there are three more I need to buy one day (they are also not cheap - about 70$), but it's worth it.
This book called "European Furniture. Measured Drawings", originally they were published in 1940-50s in USSR and now reprinted. The main thing I'm happy about is that the authors used metric system ( to be honest, I still can't get used to inches, especially when I use projects from woodworking mags).

Anyway, the drawings are perfect - there are almost all periods you need - from viking's furniture :))) to art nouveau and 1970s furniture. There's an album with art nouveau drawings, I want it really bad, but decided against buying it for now, besides I've found four nouveau projects in my book.

I hope I'll start working on some new pieces from this book very soon.

Some new furniture, new roombox.

2011-03-22T04:12:00.000+03:00

Busy days, I've only managed to read some of the blogs - Elga's chair is gonna be stunning, and I loved the carpet, The Old Maid - your greenhouse is going to be just fabulous! Another inspiration for me - Natalia's fretwork shelf not to mention beautiful round footstools - I'm still struggling to finish my carpet for a new roombox, such beauty keeps me going!

In my last post I mentioned my Russian site and how it was important for me. It still is, of course, but sometimes I have second thoughts about it. I hate to admit it, but I have to, it's hard keep posting some howtos and pics in progress when you don't get feedback. I love my readers and everything, but there's one day when you want to post something and suddenly you think - "what's the point? who's gonna read it? ", and then the whole idea of the blog in Russian sounds kind of stupid to me. Well, maybe it's just me, besides, I love blogging, love sharing my thoughts, some information that might be useful. Anyway, thank you guys for your comments to my last post (esp. Karin and The Old Maid), I love Blogger, I don't want to leave it or anything, I still haven't decided if there's any need in posting "in progress" stuff (all my jigs seem so obvious to me). Oh, well, we'll see :)

Back to furniture - I've finished two pieces of furniture for my new roombox. I'm very excited about it! It's a new project I've started with my Mom. I won't go into details by now, you'll see everything very soon. :) The walls and a floor are not ready yet, but here are the finished pieces:

I've finished the first one some time ago, I've made the pattern for fabric too, it was very easy with textile pens. The fringe on both pieces is self made, macrame in miniature is fun! I used embroidery color threads.

Chaise lounge sofa was a bit of challenge, the frame was a bit hard to construct (I mean the back part). I've made several plans in Google Sketchup which helped me a lot! So now I'm a huge fan of this software.

I just love the colors!

And my cat does too!:)

I still need to finish decoration of the sofa, so I'll be back soon!:)))

Victorian Wardrobe

2011-03-03T12:14:00.000+03:00

It's been a long time since my last post, basically my blogging life moved to my site (inchscaled.com) and Facebook. Btw, I've added Translate button to my site, it appears at the end of each post and comment. I guess I should translate all those posts about jigs and shadowboxes I've made to English, but unfortunately I don't have much time these days. Besides, I feel that there's a lot of information about miniature woodworking in English and absolutely nothing in Russian, so it's kinda important for me to post about it more.

Anyway, I'm happy to share with you my new piece of furniture I've made. I've been working on this wardrobe for 2 weeks, maybe 3. It was very interesting project. I was inspired by couple of wardrobes I've found on one British antiques website.

I used mahogany and makore for it. I don't have good experience with marquetry ( I've made only 3 or 4 pieces with it), so it was a good chance for me to practice.

It is rather big, but I actually scaled it from life-size Victorian wardrobe.

Hope you liked it! Have a nice day!

New Year

2010-12-30T12:55:00.000+03:00

Today I'm busy with cooking for New Year celebration, hope it's going to be fine.
I'm showing you my last shadowbox I made for this time of year. I actually made three shadowboxes, all of them show one part of the old house - the old porch, old kitchen aaand this one:

It's already behind the glass, so I can't show all the details, unfortunately. I used the chair I made several months ago. The idea with shadowboxes was using only one piece of furniture and create the scene with it. It was fun, and I think I'll continue making these "the old house" shadowboxes, they are not that big, just about 15cm*20cm, and 10cm deep as far as I remember:)

That's it! I hope to show you the rest of the shadowboxes in January, Happy New Year!:)

Inlay table

2010-12-14T09:32:00.000+03:00

I made this table just after the first exhibition, it was fun! I was inspired by federal style furniture with this one:

I used pearwood and mahogany, a bit of basswood too.

Several months ago I bought these cute tiny casters, so it was a great chance to use them. :) The most tedious part was "inlaying" the sides of the table, the legs were easy to do. The ornament is tiny, the one on the leg is 2 mm thick.

The drawer was the easiest part:

The frame for the drawer:

Looks good with the chair:

Hope you liked it! Tomorrow - shadowbox.

Art Nouveau roombox.

2010-12-13T07:46:00.000+03:00

It's been such a long time since my last post, sooo many things had happened. These two months were very busy, I had no free time at all! I have 1000+ unread messages in my Google Reader, I'll be happy just to look through some of them.
I took part in two exhibitions in Moscow, the first one was "Art of the Doll" ( it was said it was the biggest doll exhibition in the world, hehe) - it was very, hm, unusual event. Lots and lots of beautiful dolls, only 2 or 3 stands with dollshouse miniature, and I was one of them.

On such kind of exhibition people there are for dolls, so some of them saw the miniature for the first time, they were asking if it was some kind of interior decoration or just a toy, why it's so expensive (actually, any price was too high for them :)). So we felt that were at the wrong place in the wrong time. The second exhibition in December was almost the same thing :)

Anyway, it's been fun to meet some very cool miniature enthusiasts who came just to see my furniture and roomboxes, so I can't be ungrateful. For these two events I've made several items.First of all, I've finished my art nouveau roombox, well, for me it's never finished, I just love adding new things from time to time:

I've changed the mirror, this one is more "art nouveau"-ish to me :) It was very simple to carve it, it's made of mahogany. I also changed the carpet:

I've added the painting, and couple more details:

The room looks very romantic to me, hope you'll like it. I'll show the new great piece of furniture tomorrow and 3 shadowboxes later:)

Couple of chairs

2010-10-22T20:43:00.000+04:00

Again, chairs, we loooove making them:)

All made of pear wood. I especially like the right one, love the cabriole legs and the arms, though I used a LOT of pear wood to make them.

Hope you liked the chairs!:)

New chairs

2010-10-21T20:53:00.001+04:00

I've finished two chairs for the sofa I made previously. I just love the whole set, I'll be showing it on the exhibition next week:

I'll show some new items tomorrow.

Again, new furniture:)

2010-10-01T16:49:00.000+04:00

Finally! I've finished it, a new sofa. I don't really like working with textile, you know. But this one looks pretty good, though I admit I need some practice.

I used pear wood for the legs. The base is maple.
Welcome to the new followers! Thank you for stopping by!:)

Butterflies

2010-09-22T17:00:00.000+04:00

It's been a while since my last post. I've finished the table, also I'm going to make the sofa and couple more items:

Aand another table:) It's very cute:

Butterfly net is included. For marquetry I used mahogany, cherry wood, etc. for legs - pear wood.

Among other news - there will be the I International Moscow Exhibition "Art of the doll" (their website is here), and I'm among exhibitors!:) I'm very excited - this is the first time I'm taking part in such events.I'll be showing my art nouveau roombox and my furniture, I have a small stand there.There's not much time left till 29th of October, so I'm trying hard to make all the items I was planning to. Hope to post about them soon!

Open dresser and something else... and my own website.

2010-09-01T20:47:00.000+04:00

It's a busy week, I've finished making an open dresser for the porcelain set, I wanted to make it a bit old, and I think it looks great:

The whole scene is like almost finished roombox. Someday I'll make it. Also, I was working on this chair:

It's cherry wood and mahogany.

Among other news - I have my own website now - http://inchscaled.com. It's all in Russian though:) I'll be updating this site more often, I hope. For now, I've posted some photos in process of the dresser, and I'm planning to post tutorials there concerning inch scale furniture. So I can promise lots of photos!:) You're all welcome!:)

The main idea of it - to help those who want to make miniature furniture but have difficulties with English. You'll be surprised but it's impossible to find the website with some good quality information about 1/12 miniature in Russian, so I'll try to work it out:)

Update to the previous post

2010-08-29T20:06:00.000+04:00

Karin, we've made the new jig for the router:

That's what you meant, right? Because it's working perfectly now, I just tried it out. Many thanks for your suggestion! I really appreciate it.

Happiness and one question.

2010-08-29T18:45:00.000+04:00

I have pretty good reason to be happy:) Now I have this very nice drill/mill system:

I'm sooo glad Denis bought me it, also there's a compound table, precision vise and drill/mill unit. At the store I had to choose between precision vise and clamps, so I've chosen the first one. Denis made the clamps out of the oak:

Aaand another jig, which can also be used as a clamp:

Now to the problem, we got this jig for routing with the compound table:

Pretty cool, I thought, because I had some kind of Dremel routing table before and I didn't really liked it. I thought that this jig would allow me to work with small size parts, but I was wrong. I can't make the router go lower than these plywood parts. I could cut them, but the metallic part in the middle would be as tall. Karin, George, anyone, please, is there any way to work it out? The jig Denis built is very good, but I'd still like to try this one too. I could take the metallic part away, but why is this Proxxon jig was made so large?

The Rockin' Chair

2010-08-22T23:22:00.000+04:00

Took about 2 days

...made of Cherry and Mahogany

...finished with shellac

...and yeah, it's rockin' ;)

Collection is growing.

2010-08-20T14:48:00.000+04:00

Yesterday I received wonderful gifts from my best friend Katya. It's just a huuuge porcelain set, everything's there - all kinds of plates, cups, even ravioli set! Everything you need to make the kitchen perfect!

Ravioli set above is absolutely gorgeous! Now I need my own mini kitchen :)

Slowly moving from roombox to the kitchen:)

Thank you, Katya!:))

Art Nouveau Table

2010-08-17T19:42:00.000+04:00

Finished this table today.

Again, I used the project from Popular Woodworking mag, also Gustav Stickley's adaptation, though I made some changes - the shelf was supposed to be just the same as the top. I thought that carving the flower would be more interesting and give it more elegant look. Here it is:

I just love this flower.
Also the legs weren't supposed to be carved. Well, I think the table looks great in the room, I used it for the bird cage.

Bridal chest.

2010-08-13T15:13:00.000+04:00

I saw this chest in Popular Woodworking old mag and just loved it, so I decided to make it in inch scale. It's an adaptation of Gustav Stickley piece from 1901. Don't know if I'm using it in my roombox, but I'm pleased with the result. I used mahogany, basswood and cherry wood for this project.

I also made a vase and some small stuff for roombox:

2010-08-11T14:05:00.000+04:00

Sorry for being away from blogging for such a long time. Some real life events kept me busy, thank you all for the kind words of support about the fires in Russia. To be honest, I wasn't going to post about it until I received today the comment from Karin Corbin - well, we get so many contradictory news and reports, I decided that it would be better to write about it. As usual, sorry for my English.
As you know I live in Moscow, for the last week we had terrible toxic smog. That's what you could see just a day ago:

      It was hard to be on the street, hard to breathe, you could hardly see the buildings just 300 meters away.You were going outside and it felt like it wasn't real, like it was some Silent Hill. People had to wear facemasks. The death rate in Moscow reached 700 a day (!). You can imagine what a nightmare it was - especially for people who had no air conditioning at home: you can't open the windows because of smog, and you can't keep them shut because of the heat: it was about 40 C outside. What made me mad and sad is that our Moscow mayor was not in the city, he was on holidays somewhere in Europe and had no intentions of coming back. He had no time for us, but found time to save his bees (He's a bee's keeper, apiarist).We were said that Moscow government opened several social centers for all who were suffering from such weather conditions, they promised air conditioning and food and everything, but in fact NONE of these centers had air conditioning, only few were open at all. Madness.
     It was even worse outside Moscow, still is. Not enough people to fight fire, not enough equipment, you won't read it in newspapers, just from russian bloggers -they write in their blogs that in some regions people don't even try to put out the fires. Only now our government admitted that some are out of control. You feel really helpless seeing that our prime minister or president have to go to the suffering regions themselves just to try to control the situation. But seems like they can't do it. So anger is growing, nobody can't stop it.
    My Mom came to visit me these days, and we basically had to stay at home. Thankfully, the smog has gone for now, but now the town I was born ( it's in Urals region) is suffering from smog.
      Here (official site of Prime Minister) you can see web cameras from the villages that were destroyed by the fires. They were installed to control the reconstruction and rebuilding. Somehow there's no such link in English version of the site.

Dressing table.

2010-07-26T20:01:00.000+04:00

This time it wasn't my design, I used one from Scale Cabinetmaker mag, but changed it a bit - got rid of the shelf that I didn't like. To be honest, I was puzzled by the drawing in the mag, the aprons on the front and the sides of the table are carved (that's ok), but they are just 1/32 inches thick.To me it's a bit thin:) But I did it anyway, though it's a bit hard to see the actual carving on the photos:)
So, basically, I'm done with the furniture for the roombox, and moving to the final stage.