Mini SF sets

I saw some of the mini SF sets on BeHappy and decided to pick up a couple of sets just for fun. I'm amazed by how much I absolutely freaking love them! Now I'm kicking myself for not getting the older mini sets when BeHappy had them ages ago. And also the Willow Hall mini I saw on ebay recently for a good price. The minis up there now are too expensive for me to justify, even if I do love them.

I've been disliking the pictures I've taken lately, but since I haven't uploaded anything for such a long time, I just thought 'screw it' and uploaded them all anyway.

Size comparison of a regular SF sister bunny figure and the mini Sylvanian choco bunnies.



I love her fuzzy paws! I like how cute they look, gripping the chair. While I do like the JP flat hands better, the cupped UK hands come in handy when I have stuff for them to hold.



The mini Copper Beech Cottage. These kits come unassembled, so you have to put them together and apply the stickers yourself. I like doing that sort of thing. : ) I wish the cottage had a door.



The inside has stickers for the kitchen and a few bits of furniture. Looks just like its full sized counterpart minus the stove. I like the look of the full size cottage but I don't think I have enough space for it. Not with all my other stuff...



Miniature juice bar! One of the pictures I took had some flowers that were included in the set in it. The picture looked really weird, so I ended up removing them. The little basket that holds the jam jars in the original is too small in this set to actually do anything.




Not my favourite piece, but still cute. The mother rabbit has a lot of scratches on it, unfortunately. Came like that out of the package.



Couldn't resist a full frontal shot.




This bakery! I had so much fun assembling this bakery. It's so detailed and I think that the father Chocolate rabbit figure is the best one of the lot. He looks like he's standing instead of sitting. The wheel actually turns too.



This set comes with a number of loose bread items including three individual animal face breads, a croissant, a baguette, a loaf and a melon (I think) bread. There are so many pieces in this set, and the stickers are so detailed too. The inside window stickers actually depicts hills and grass.




One of the walls is actually different from the life-size version. Instead of having the water powered mixer, they have a number of shelves full of ingredients.



Ultimately, these sets give me much squee.

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Death, it fucking sucks

I haven't blogged for a while. Part of the reason is that my brother-in-law died recently, and I haven't been in the best frame of mind for the past few months. It's only now that I've become calm enough to write something about this on the blog.

He was just a few weeks short of turning 30. I wasn't close to my BIL, but he lived in the same house as me, and I considered him my bother. He suffered from diabetes, and went to sleep one day and never woke up. My husband and I drove him to the hospital when we realised that his sleep was not natural, and when we couldn't wake him up. Everything that followed was horrible and traumatic. I never want to sit in that little room where the man comes and talks you through the process of organ donation again. Fuck that.

He was a gamer, and a people person. He loved Magic the Gathering and had an enormous collection of cards (like a chest and several boxes full), loved games like Skyrim and Fallout, loved fantasy stories and movies. And Spongebob. My husband and I had been getting him Spongebob paraphernalia for the past few Christmases--it had become a kind of ongoing joke. He was also a devoted Christian who loved God and tried to do his best to be a good person.

We made nuka cola caps and bought chocolate gold coins for people to toss into his grave in addition to the usual flowers.

Anyway, sometimes shit things happen to good people. See ya, William.

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Stuff

Hope everyone had a good holiday! I haven't taken photos or blogged in far too long. Here's a little Sylvanian pic:



I've been working on a Vinyl Scratch custom for my husband. It was mean to be for Christmas, but I couldn't get it done on time. So, it'll be for his birthday on New Year's Eve. :) Maybe I should have chosen to do a Pinkamena for Christmas instead, might have been easier than Vinyl's hair.

It's nowhere near as nice as Otaku Squirrel's customs, but I don't think it's coming along too badly.

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Not dead, just a hiatus

Hi! Just wanted my readers to know that his blog is not dead, it's just on a hiatus until mid-December due to me taking up a new job. I won't have time for very much but the job for the next 10 weeks.

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Ducks

I've been pretty bad at updating this blog lately. It's not dead, I just haven't really had much to say. Recently I got the two SF duck families that I've been wanting for a while now; the Waddingtons and the Puddlefords. SF ducks are so cute. See:

Lookit all the widdle ducklings! SF ducklings are so cute, but they are not very poseable at all. Only their heads turn.

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Grand Mansion update

Thought I would update the progress on the Grand Mansion. I keep thinking that I would finish soon, but there's always another little thing that needs to be done, heh.



Here's the repainted front door. I think the it needs a door knocker or something, don't you?




This is the living room with a little printed rug. I looked for dollhouse rugs on ebay and I realised that most of the cheaper options were actually too big. Printing rugs is much cheaper and you can resize them to fit! There's at least one on every floor now. I'm also wondering if I should paint some gold edging on this side of the door too.



 Kitchen and dining room - The original floor is a pale colour with wood effects. Since I like darker floors (and I'd accidentally ripped up some of the floor when I was masking it earlier - oops) I found a dark wood texture and printed it out. The buildings are too wide for a single piece of A4 paper to completely cover so I printed out another one. The result was a very visible (to picky old me) seam that bothered me a lot. In the end I used some wood effect contact paper used to line shelves for the flooring. Much better! The contact paper is pasted onto some cardstock so I can remove the paper easily in the future if I ever want to change the flooring.



Bedroom - The wallpaper was not supposed to have that pinkish purple tinge. My printer was running out of yellow toner, so for a while everything I printed had this purple tinge. I thought that for a bedroom, the wallpaper looked all right with the pink-purple, so I left it.


Bathroom - As yet unfinished. I ran out of steam at this point. ^^;;



I also found some lamps to use for the front of the house. I think these were originally from the river boat or something. These resemble the original lamps enough that I'm satisfied. I'm just unsure whether I should leave them gold or spray them black like in the original version. The don't really fit into the tabs on the pillars, unfortunately. They keep falling off. I think that a bit of blu tac will solve the problem.


Currently the finished floors are fully furnished, I just need to reflock some chairs, find some picture frames to go on the walls, do up a few simple curtains and then I'll take some pics. Or should I just take pics and post them up now since I probably won't be working on the building for a few more weeks? I need to finish the little conservatory on the side too.

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Recently, I've been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. I love Aang, he's totes adorbs, guys. I never liked his character design until I actually watched the series. He's sooo cute I just want to squish his cheeks. Or ride Omashu's postal system with him. Maybe not, I think I would die.

I've just finished season 2 and things have definitely become more serious this round. Not as much random adventure type fillers this time.

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Flocking Sylvanians

After flocking that chair cushion, I found a little bootlegged sheep and thought it would be a great figure to experiment flocking on. I bought some flocking powder from BNA Model World ( I just chose the cheapest ones, the ones from The Parts Box) and used this tutorial. Flocking a figurine is a lot more time consuming and messy than flocking a flat cushion. Very messy. Anyway, I decided to create a little black sheep baby.
The bootlegged figurine. It's been lying forgotten in an unused handbag for about a year.

I removed the eyes and all the flocking with something called Orange Power. It's a glue remover, and it was very helpful. I'd been trying to scrape off the flocking with my fingernails and warm water before that, and Orange Power makes the glue just slide off.

I painted the sheep grey. In retrospect, I should have painted it black, but I didn't want the grey spot to end up looking too dark. Now I think black would have given a better effect.

And several days of glue applying, drying and getting dust everywhere, and probably breathing inb more flocking than is good for me (seriously, wear a mask folks) she's done! I think I will call her Emily. It's kind of close to Emma, and I want them to be cousins or something, heh.

I want to make a dress for her in the future, but this one will do for now. There are a few shiny spots on her leg and arm where I applied too much glue, but luckily with the dress on it's hard to see. I also should have painted on her nose instead of painting the flocking, I think it would have looked better. Also I'm just guessing at where the nose should be now as the flocking obscured so much of the fine detail.

Here's a picture comparing her to an original Sylvanian sheep baby.

The original has a fatter, cuter head mold IMHO. The bootleg has a head that looks weird and skinny. I'm tempted to get a standing baby to flock so I can have a black sheep baby with a fat head. Not anytime soon though, I'm pretty sick of flocking for now.

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