Ok, I’ve been quiet the last week or so. I know. I’m still fighting this cold. But despite my total lack of energy, constant headache & coughing I was determined to work on something!! Those of you who are regular readers may recall an occasional comment about needing a student lounge/hang out area in the university dorms.  It’s the place were a lot of stuff happens without me needing to cobble together a classroom for it.

My plan on this varied (originally it was a huge room but it’s now been swapped). and it’s almost complete. It needs some further details & props but it’s definitely 2/3 of the way done as far as I’m concerned.

Points to bear in mind:

• The Student Lounge shares the same base  & walls as the Small Living Room set (aka the Friday Monologue room) & the Kitchen set & the Student Dorm Bedroom Set.
• The curtains need to be re-done & hung correctly.
• I need to paint the coffee table.
• I painted some uber-ugly paintings for the back wall (the wall behind the sofa) which I’ll hang the next time I take pics.
• I have decided I am going to remove the chain cords from the hanging lamps.  I was going for a certain look but they simply look too distracting.
• I’m proud of the tiny cork board I made. And yes, it’s real cork. It’s very small & very fine so it will look correct in scale for close up shots.

Ok soooo… Here are a few pics (I promise I’ll take more of them when I get back and can actually update the website/ Dioramas section).  These are just showing the roomset from a couple different angles–since I was trying to figure out how I wanted to do the room’s layout.

View from the front (window wall removed)

View from the back wall (removed)

Partial view from side wall (I was too beat to remove the walls at this point

Anyway I expect I’ll be back to finishing it up next sunday. Then after that it’s back to fireplace building & livingrooms & cafe making!

Yep!

I’m not sure if I mentioned it elsewhere on the blog in passing but I’ve started working on a new roomset.  I know, you folks are wondering why I’m bothering.  Suffice to say that it’s a break from the other stuff.  Sometimes when I feel pressured to get something done (the cafe) I’d rather just switch gears completely and come back to it after.  It helps to keep me from burning out so I go with it. The same applies to my dolls & figures too, if you were wondering. 

Anyway, for the curious among you, it’s going to be a living-room.

It’s being made on my largest roomset base (this is the one that the cafe and Yseult’s living room uses).  I had wanted it to be on the medium sized base but D’oh! I realized too late that I let Mark burn that base in our wood stove last month! *ah well, you know that’s how hindsight works, right???*

I started planning it last week.  The only thing I knew for certain then was that:

1. it was to be an apartment for my 2 actresses (Giselle & Charlotte (the tentative new name for  Kyori))
2. and that I wanted a fireplace in it.
3. I wanted the roomset to open into the kitchen & have 2 doors leading into the girls’ bedrooms. (the bathroom is off a hallway from the kitchen along with the 3rd room which is currently unoccupied–but probably will be soon!)

Lately I’ve been feeling sort of bored with just plain walls and I thought it would be a good architectural feature. (My experiment with wallpaper on the diorama walls was ok, but it just doesn’t put up w/ the wear and tear of moving around in my confined spaces) And I haven’t made one before so that’d be good.  Get some new skills & stuff you know? I’m starting by making 3 boxes to be the main body, the chimney breast and the inside of the fireplace (so it has real depth). Then I’m going to cut out with a fret saw all the stonework & stuff. It’s going to be a bitch, but quite possibly by the time I finish it (I’m aiming for Friday or Saturday) mark might have the windows & doors done and I can paint the roomset on Sunday & start using it!

(Plus he’s kind of motivated to make them since it means I’ll finally show people the bed & night tables he made me for x-mas last year (and that I got June of this year LOL!)

Anyway here’s how the floor-plan looks:

and for those curious about the rest of the apartment (and the rooms that exist or need to be built:

Since my birthday is this week, and since Mark “got” me Electra who since decided she is his cat….I felt kind of shortchanged on the birthday-present kind of thing.

I talked Mark into making the windows & doors (I’m reusing the archway from the kitchen so that’s just a hole cut in the MDF).  However he (not me!!) came up with the bright idea of using French Doors for the main bedroom because the room was looking sort of crap with just plain doors.  He also stated it would be a good test run to making them since he needs to work out how the doors will interlace (to close /open).

AFAIAC It’s all cake to me since it’s way better than I’d ever have the patience to do! *and hey, I’m not going to look a Gift-from Mark in the mouth either!*

So there you go. He’s making windows & doors–I’m making a fireplace, I’ll be doing the next sewing challenge this week too, and next week I’ll start making the furniture for the roomset (and after that the furniture for Charlotte/Kyori’s room) (although I still might name her Vonda instead of Charlotte. Gotta decide yet for certain!)