Post office update pics and paper punches

I've recently finished the post office shingles. (Done while marathoning Ghost Whisperer season 3 :p Watching that Bloody Mary episode alone in the middle of the night gave me a case of the heebie jeebies. Gah, mirrors! =_=)


I used sandpaper spray painted red and then inexpertly 'weathered' with acrylics. I'm not really sure of the look to be honest, but it sure looks a heck of a lot better with the shingles weathered a bit. It now looks less like paper chicken feathers. I don't know, the unpainted shingles reminded me of chicken feathers for some reason.



I'm now working on the sign and the awning. I've scanned in the original sign and traced it in photoshop. I'm trying to go for a vintage style sign, something with a bit of a Victorian flavour, maybe? I'm having a hard time coming up with something that looks nice, to be honest. Most of what I'm doing now is researching vintage shop signs and looking for photoshop tutorials that will help me do what I want. What I've done at the moment doesn't look any better than the old sign.

On to other news:



I bought these on ebay a week ago and they've just arrived! I've not felt so excited about a purchase for a while XD. They are just lovely. I thought I was going to get a number of repeats of the ones I already have, but upon closer inspection, the punches are actually quite different, they just have the same theme as the others. The new teddy bear punch in particular has wider paws and is larger.

The ebay listing for this set stated that they were about 10 years old, but they look brand new. Some of the punches are a little stiff, but loosen up after a few presses. I tested the bunny punch on some paper and it wasn't always easy to get it to punch through. It works fine on clay though, which is fine by me as that's all I wanted these punches for anyway. Look forward to seeing more cookies! Though, in a 1:12 scale these will be rather large cookies. They'll probably look good enough with Sylvanians though.

I'm really pleased the set included a mini circle shaped punch. I've been looking for a small circular punch for ages! I'm going to start making cupcake liners again, the last ones I did (for the Totoro cream puffs) I drew circles with a felt tipped pen cap and cut them out manually.



And just so they're not left out, here are the punches I got when I was in Brunei (except for the green double punch, I got that in Adelaide). They're what I've been using to make the cookies in my previous posts. I had to put some clear sticky tape across the top as the designs smear when you use the punches, as found out from that girl person punch. Not the best quality overall, but they do what I want.