Brand New Project - J.R. Art Gallery

Hello everyone,

How are you all? Hope you are all fine and enjoying your Summer. It has been a while since my last post. Took a short break and for good reasons. Have been busy with the last few details for the new home of my dolls house collection. It's finally at the end and so I think in just 2 weeks the dolls houses will start being sorted out. In the meantime I have been making  lots of new miniatures.

Finally I have started working on my new dolls house project called the J.R. Art Gallery.

I am really excited about this project. It is very sentimental and special to me and it is going to be part of my beloved Regent Street. Miss Leah is looking forward to see the new corner shop being fixed and taking shape.

At first I had quite a few ideas for it. I thought of making two shops on top of each other. I thought about a Cobblers shop and a clock maker. A few weeks ago everything changed, everything evaporated and the more I thought about the new idea that was planted, the more I wanted it and was eager to start. I started off  by dry building it. It is something I always do. I enjoy studying the building, having the feel of it,  to see what sort of shop I would do. I scraped the idea of two shops on top of each other. The art gallery situated in the ground floor and on top the quarters of the artist. 

The two part corner shop is another Dolls House Emporium kit. I was surprised with it's big size for just the two rooms. I took a few notes of what material I needed. Sketched a rough drawing with the colors of the outside. I knew from the start that there would be an alteration to the kit.

The first thing that I didn't like was that ridiculous staircase, especially the under space. A waste of space I would say and no character whatsoever. Being in kit form there is always room for improvement. 

As I started working on the shop. I have opened the wall below the stair case so a door can fit in and I have added another wall to the side of the staircase. Like always I have gave an undercoat of white paint to all the pieces.

I hate using paper for the outside of any dolls house. I have learnt the hard way and through my own experience they don't look realistic at all. I have painted part of the walls in grey especially the parts where the brick compound was going to cover. For this building I was going for a red brick using the stencil method.

After all walls were bricked and dried, I shaded a few of the bricks with pastel colors. I think they look more realistic.

Once those were done I painted the shop windows and door in forest green. Still I have to shade them with some dark color to make them look more weathered.  I have designed the shop sign and I really liked how it turned out.

When those were done. I moved on to the staircase. I have tried a door for the underneath and  fitted the new wall to the side. It looked good to me.

The staircase was going to present itself with a challenge of it's own. I wanted it to look realistic especially on the outside with a brick wall. The only thing I came up with is using wood plaster. It was the first time that I tried it on a staircase. This would only give the effect of a staircase being rough and uneven.

Once the staircase was plastered and dried I have painted it.

While I left the staircase to dry. I finished off the new side wall with bricks and I was quite pleased with the results. I still need to add more detail to walls, make them look more weathered and dirty especially with the style of the staircase. Most probably I will be doing that when the full building is ready. 

Finally I added the green trimmings around the outside walls of the shop and for the first part, I think it looks quite good.

This is all for today. Hopefully I will start working on the top floor before I start working on the inside. I can't wait to see it all done from the outside. So keep tuned for the next update of this new project. 

Take Care and See you Soon.

Hugs,

Rebecca xxx