Rock Hound

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Historic Roche Harbor Hotel

My blog has been quiet for a few days as I have been away from computers and the internet. I went on a short trip to the San Juan Islands here in Washington State, USA. My friends had a few tasks to do on a lovely home up on a mountain. From the house we could see right across the water to the lights of Victoria, British Columbia.

It has been almost a decade since I have visited San Juan Island. On my list of things to do while there was to find one of the old limestone quarries and bring back some rocks for my miniature projects. The lovely old Roche Harbor Hotel in the above photo is located right next to some of the old Lime Kilns.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Kilns for burning limestone located at Roche Harbor

My rocks came from an abandoned quarry in another location on the island. There were several small cliffs of stone left exposed, all I had to do was pick up small chunks of scree off the ground.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Cliff of limestone at the abandoned quarry

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

The photo above shows some of my  newly collected stone for the Coastal Cottage, I still have to break it up into 1:12 scale pieces. The color of the stone is going to be perfection, grey with a hint of blue and also some browns. It will blend nicely with the timber frame, stucco, floors, roof and landscaping. The stone will be used for foundation walls, the entry step, the exterior chimney above the roof and also bit and pieces in the landscaping.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Twenty minutes of work with a hammer, cold chisel and tile nippers and I have 1:12 scale real stone!

A tatlented stone sculptor from the Island, Tom Small, told me how to find the quarry. Tom's work can be seen on the internet by clicking HERE. I made sure to visit the sculpture garden at Roche Harbor as well as the local galleries on the island. The local Art Museum had a show of miniature sculptures including several of his pieces. Many of the items were of a scale that they could be used to create a miniature sculpture garden made of living small scaled plants.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Tom Small sculpture in the sculpture park at Roche Harbor, WA.

Beveling the Inset Door Panels

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

I am placing a slight bevel on the two panels that will insert into the lower half of the front door of the cottage. I have tilted my miniature table saw over to about 10 degrees. The exact degree within a few clicks or so is pretty much arbitrary on this project. What I am after is a beveled look to the panel that is not too wide and it creates a width at the panel edge that will slide into the slot I showed you yesterday that I put into the framing pieces.

Mostly what I want to show is one way to do this type of wood cutting task safely. Holding small parts so you can perform some kind of shaping operation on them without messing up your fingers or the part is always something you have to think about. However people rarely show just how they do this, mostly you see how it looks when it is all done.

I have taken the small panels I cut to size and applied double backed carpet tape to them. It the photo above you can see that I have place them right against each other while cutting. That is just to save time so I only have to make half as many passes on the saw instead of cutting one at a time. Then I have adhered them to a larger piece of wood I can easily hold onto and push through the saw. I rotate the panels around four times so I get all the sides beveled. The tape is strong enough for this holding task because and I emphasize this fact boldly here I AM NOT TAKING AGGRESSIVE CUTS. I am only taking a very small amount of wood off of the panels therefore the torque of the saw blade will not throw my pieces into the air or jam them down into the saw blade. There is also no danger of these thin panels slipping down and jamming into the slot next to the saw blade. I don't have to use a tall fence or feather boards to keep these tall, thin panels standing upright because they are stuck to that nice comfy to hang onto 2x2 board. A difficult cut is now very quick and easy to do.

I use double back tape a lot, it is very handy for work holding all kinds of things when a clamp or screw can't be used. I just ran out of tape  with this job so I will drag myself off to get my favorite kind, clear plastic, thin carpet tape from the "Do It Best" Hardware Store. That is a nation wide chain in the USA and they also carry K & S engineering metals as well as Northeastern Basswood in the stores in my part of the country.

To find out if there is a "Do It Best" Hardware Store near you, CLICK HERE

photo courtesy Do-it-Best Hardware

I like this particular tape because it holds firmly but it is not impossible to get your part unstuck. Any tape residue will clean off the unfinished wood with acetone.

I could have routed the bevels on the panels or sanded the bevels into the wood or filed them or even planed or carved them. There are many ways of doing this same task if you don't have a tilt arbor table saw and/or don't like using power tools.

Feeling Groovy

For both the doors and windows on my projects I first have to make the lumber that creates the frame pieces and then put grooves into those pieces to receive the glass or wood panels. This time around I am using poplar wood for the window and doors. Poplar is nice and hard and holds crisp details and best of all it is available at most any lumber yard. Sometimes the poplar pieces look green in color but that green will eventually go away and they will be the normal browns you see in most wood.

To cut the grooves into the edge of the lumber I use an 9/32" diameter, 1/8" shanked router bit. This bit cuts only on the sides, no cutting edges on the top of the bit. It cuts much like a blade on a table saw does.  The advantage of using a side cutting bit in a router table is you are not trying to balance an upright thin piece of wood over the top of a table saw. You will have more control with the router table. The bit I use was sold by Dremel as a #198, Dremel has now discontinued making this 9/32" bit but it is still available online from Widget Supply as Item: D-AL21.
Link Click: Groove Cutting Bit

You will need to make several passes to cut the grooves to full depth. The reason I like the #198 bit is the depth is always the same, you go as deep as the 1/8" diameter shaft allows. When you hit the shaft you can cut no deeper. Another huge bonus of this bit is you can make arched windows by following along the edge of the curved window frame using the shank of the router bit as a pattern follower. The depth of the groove is just enough to hold a piece of glass securely and hide any minor chips on the edge of the glass. The width of the groove can be adjusted by doing a flip cut.

To determine the height from the router table to the top of the router bit first figure out the width of the groove. Now subtract that dimension from the thickness of your framing member. Divide that number in half and subtract it from the thickness of your framing member.  Now set the height of the top of the bit to that calculation. I use a digital caliper to check the height of the bit. If you are using standard window glass or art glass you will need to flip the framing piece over and cut again to get the full width of the groove as the bit is not thick enough. With this method the groove will be perfectly centered in your framing member.

My lumber thickness is determined by the thickness of the glass I am using as is the width of the groove. I am not using micro thin glass this is window glass meant for real houses. Using this glass does push my pieces just above true scale dimensions as to the thickness of the door but it is not something viewers pickup on. The illusion is still there and that is what really matters. When I first began to make structures I was all worried about exact precision of dimensions for doors and windows. What else would you expect from a woman who for many years created aircraft parts where the tolerance of parts was measured in thousandths of an inch? But I learned to loosen up my thinking and my miniature work and instead of worrying about exact dimension I create that which is believably realistic and that which works visually with the project I am making and the materials I am using.

Creating that which is believable requires that you educate yourself by putting thousands of images of the real thing into your brain. Seattle is a long ways from the old buildings in Europe so I still start and end most days by looking at images of old buildings as well as reading about the history of the design and building of them. My bookshelves are located right next to my bed and there is always a stack of books by the table where I take meals and I take books along in my car as well for times when I sit waiting for a bridge to open or want something to read at dinner or lunch while out running errands. Many days of the week I browse the internet collecting images for the reference files I keep on my computer. Twenty years of this daily habit of ingesting images has been a real education in  architecture and structural details. My mind now knows what feels just right and I can design original buildings in the style of old buildings from many areas of the world and from many eras.

Windows and Door

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2007

The photo above is the entry door to the Acorn Cottage, is is a plank door with cross banding. The owl is a brass finding I bought. The door handle I made from a strip of brass I textured and bent then solder onto it etched brass leaves. I purchased the sheet of photo etched leaves at a miniature show. I also used the leaves on the light fixtures for this woodland cottage.

It is time to start making windows and the door for my new coastal cottage. That requires a lot of research and quite a few decisions before I can begin to cut the wood pieces.

I am going to create a few outward opening casement windows. They need the shashes and trim moldings cut to shed the rain away from the opening. These windows are also a good opportunity to add some small scale detailing to draw in and capture the viewers eye and give them a change from the larger textures and shapes of timbers and stucco. The visual animation of hinged opening windows and doors helps to break up the plane of the exterior wall surface. An outward opening casement also allows me to place a table right against the window. Objects on the table will help the viewer transition their interest into the inside of the cottage with a little sneak preview. The photo below shows a real life example with the type of detailing I will make.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2008

The window style above with the dolls in it is what I will be using for the coastal cottage.
The drip edge at the bottom of white window frame will be a challenge to create. Love the French blue color of the sill below the window.


I have roughly imagined a build date for my projects framing of around mid 1600s to late 1700s but the time frame for the dollhouse as it stands will be 1900. Now that gives at least a couple of hundred years of remodeling changes and wear and tear on the building. A lot of things happened to home design during that time span, chimneys and fireplaces changed and windows, doors and hardware changed too.

When you look at the really old buildings you often notice changes in the framing around door and window openings, maybe they were added or enlarged or made smaller or even closed up areas that used to have windows and doors.

I plan to have a few small windows from an earlier era on the sides as well as the casement windows. My centuries of fisherman owners were into salvaging and scrounging for some of their improvements and left other things intact from previous generations. Sometimes the sea washes up lumber for home improvements.

This is a scratch building job, you can't walk into a dollhouse store and buy an odd assortment of windows spanning several centuries that are going to fit into a custom design. Over the years I have made dollhouse windows several different ways and I have a few new ideas for making windows I want to try out on this project. This time around my front door will have window panes in the top half as I want some extra light coming into the interior.

The glass I will be using for my dollhouse windows is clear with little waves and bubbles in it. It was mouth blown in France. Up until about 1930 or so most window glass was made by these methods. Picture windows are a modern invention, old windows are made from small panes because that is the only aviable size the glass came in. If you click on the link below you will see a video showing how the glass I am using was made and why window panes were always rather small.
Mouth Blown Glass Video


Update I have finished the door and windows since this blog was first posted. You will see it showing up now and again on more recent posts.

Rope Twist

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

I have finished carving the two rope twist supports for the fireplace. I will not be elected as master stone carver anytime soon but they look age and wear appropriate for the structure I am going to put them into. The areas where there is a little crumbling from inclusions in the stone is something I like, it adds texture and interest as well as making the stone look older. I think I might have made the ropes a little narrower but I am out of material so there will be no rework.  Don says they are too big to be ropes in 1:12 scale, they are hawsers, big lines for mooring a boat.

The color of the soapstone is a nice blend with the floor that is going to be in the room.

Now I have more soapstone support pieces to make for the fireplace as well as a mantel piece.

Update to this posting you can link ahead to see these pieces in place. Just click on the line below.
Finished Fireplace

Practicing Rope Tricks

I found some soapstone to use for the fireplace. I want to carve a rope twist detail on a couple of the upright  pieces of the fireplace. You are looking at my practice rope twist carving scrap with all the flaws I made. It is sitting next to one of the pieces I will carve for the fireplace. I love the soft, grey and cream colors and that is how I will use it. If I put an oil finish on the soapstone it is dark grey, green, black, brown and yellow. What a Chameleon this stone is!

I show my practice pieces because I want everyone to realize you don't start out as a master the first time you try something. I expect my practice pieces to look pretty bad overall. But I know what I have learned and if I have gotten enough of a clue to do it right the next time.

I have never carved soapstone before so I grabbed a scrap piece and started practicing. Oh boy do I have room for improvement. Problem one, it is not that easy to get the segments marked out nice and even and then maintain that spacing. Problem two, dust immediately covers over what I am carving and that sure makes it tricky to see what is happening. Problem three, it is  hard to carve perfect rope curves with tools that don't have concave curves. Problem four, no teacher around so this is a slower learning curve. The online instructions I found were of no use for making miniatures.

You can't learn how to do something just by reading a blog although it will give you some pointers in the right direction. If you want to do something you have never done before get out some scrap material, grab some tools and have at it. You will quickly figure out what does not work, that is the easy part. Finding out what does work and then being able to repeat those motions is real the trick.

I am truly enjoying working with soapstone. It cuts with a hand saw, band saw, scroll saw or table saw. It sands nicely too. You can detail it quickly with swiss needle files. That feels more like erasing material than carving stone. Using carving knives is tricky as you can flake off chips you do not want to remove. The needle files give better control for fine detail. A final sanding can be done with diamond coated needle files or wet sandpaper. I find it easier to carve soapstone than it is to carve wood so be sure to try it sometime. Fireplaces, fountains, stone sinks, miniature sculptures, bathtubs, doorsteps, stairways, counter tops, tables, benches, you can make any of these in real stone with just a few basic tools.

After measuring a few real ropes I realized that the lines are placed at 45 degrees and the width of the individual diagonal twist section  is very close to half the width of a three strand rope.

Old floorboards

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

There is some parallax in the photo above from my older digital camera that did not have correction for that. The boards are actually straight without curve to them.

I did say this was going to be an old, rustic, coastal cottage. I think a fisherman lives in it. Not sure if he has a wife.

What a worn and somewhat grungy floor. It takes at least 4 times more work to make this kind of floor than to make a pretty, nicely stained and laid floor with no wear and tear.

Every board had to be hand planed to make them look hand cut and also to make them uneven as if there were a little warping going on. I needed to create small gaps here and there between my nice straight boards. Then scratches were added and a few dings of course. There are the hand shaped trenails pegging the boards down.

The finish is done with many layers of stains, golden oak first then pickled oak and on the top layer I brushed in some dark walnut. It is done with a wet in wet glazing method. Then I rubbed down the floor with rottenstone which helps reduce gloss and adds an authentic ground in dirty look. Top with a final pickled oak wash.

If you ever need to put piles of dusty grey dirt into a miniature scene such as an old shed or basement just grab a box of rottenstone from the hardware store. No bugs or critters in it to worry about. Just good clean dirt, actually it is limestone that has turned into powder and surprisingly it is used to polish things.

That worn old floor started life as lovely Sitka Spruce planks meant to be used for the backs and tops of guitars. They were factory seconds that had been tossed in the firewood pile. I have quite a big stash of this wood, love it because the grain is so tight. In the photo below you see some of the floor board strips and also a plank below them that has not yet been cut. The floor board strips in the photo are just under 3/4" wide. If you enlarge the photo you can see the amazingly tight growth rings in the board, perfect for making miniatures.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Brickology Part 4

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Would you look at those miniature bricks in the photo above! WOW I am so thrilled, I actually managed to achieve the look I was after. No way would anyone think these started out as a package of terra cotta, colored paper mache clay, the Plus brand from Activa, from the local hobby shop. They might even think they are real bricks. A few hundred more bricks and I will get to be an expert at making the chipped edges. Right now the chips are too similar looking. Picky, picky I am so particular I will drive myself nuts. You can't see the difference without a 10 megapixel camera aimed in as a magnifier.

So today it is time to describe how to take the bricks you made in the previous tutorial segment, using the food processor, and cut out on the board and get them to look even more realistic.

The first step is to take your scalpel and clean off any rough edges from the cutting process. Then take the scalpel and make some chips in the edges of the brick. You can chip off a corner by putting the knife against the side edge and pushing it in a bit while pulling up towards the top of the brick. A lot of the bricks are not truly straight edge so you can create a little curve by carving away some of the edge of the brick. If you want to round over the edge to soften a few here and there use some fine sandpaper. Also you might want to add a few more voids and chips into the top surface of the brick. The scalpel is also the tool for that as are fingernails.

So that is it, sandpaper, scalpel and fingernails to refine the shapes and the most important thing is to have good reference photos of real bricks. Don't go looking at my miniature bricks when you make yours or you will be making a copy of a copy and they won't look nearly as realistic as they could.

You have started out with a batch of miniature bricks that was a fairly uniform color. The color change is done with good quality water colors. You will need black, raw siena, burnt siena, yellow ochre, and white. If I had some blue on hand I would have used it to modify the black here and there, some of the burnt areas on the real bricks had a blue and purple cast to them. Next time I head to the art supply store I will pick up a tube of blue.

Looking at photos of real bricks try to copy as best you can the color variations. Water colors will blend into each other and soften the edges of color bands and that is fine. Don't forget to carry the watercolor down onto the side edges of the brick. You don't know if the grout will completely cover that edge or not. Hopefully some of your bricks are of slightly different thickness or even warped a little. On a real wall bricks are not perfectly laid with absolutely flush surfaces or even in perfectly level rows and spacing. Slight variations in your project are essential, cartoon like giant, variations will make the project look clumsy.

Next you will need to seal the bricks to keep the colors from running when you grout the wall. I have used a stone sealer on mine, it adds no gloss to my miniature bricks. The sealer I used is by Aqua Mix, Sealer's Choice 15 gold. I purchased it at either Home Depot or Lowes, sorry I don't remember which store it was. This is a water thin liquid in a bottle, you can brush it on or even air brush it on.

I have detail carved, painted and sealed my bricks as individual pieces held in hand so I had something to show you on the blog. Normally though I would first glue the bricks to the dollhouse surface and then do those tasks. It is also much faster to do these tasks when the bricks are installed than trying to hold, pick up and put down individual pieces. This method is slow enough without that!

Brickology Part 3

This Brickology lesson is for making handmade, antique style, miniature sized bricks using paper mache/clay air drying products.

The clay I am using today is Plus by Activa, their Acitv Clay formula works too. I have tried the Das brand of clay but did not like the results, it has too many paper fibers to give a clean cut. All of these clays are made from earth minerals which are the clay part and for strength they add paper fibers along with a few other ingrediants. I started with a terra cotta colored formula. If you let this product dry it won't look like terracotta, it will be a pale pink which is sad because it means more work to get the right look.

Right out of the package the Activa Plus clay is too wet to roll out with a pasta roller. If you simply take it out of the packackage and immediately roll it out with a rolling pin the surface will be very smooth and that won't look like hand made brick. So I started messing around with the clay to see if I could dry them out, improve the color and achieve the textures of hand made bricks.

The idea for the ability to make the  clay behave differently and get a different surface texture on it is based on my experiences of making the perfect pie crust. The idea there is to create crumbs and then add just enough moisture to get it to stick together. The dough has to be handled gently so you keep the crumbs, which are fat coated with flour, intact enough to create flaky layers. Too much water and it turns to mush, too little and guess what the crust is not smooth it cracks and flakes. So that is how I approached making bricks that have texture with cracks. But I will tell you up front that getting the mix just right can be frustrating and there is a learning curve to it.

I do the mixing in a small food processor. I tried it in a full sized machine and it did not work for this method, too much volume to get the clay to crumb. I got a very nice small Kitchen Aide machine that was on sale for $30.00. You don't need a high powered machine. The only speed button this machine has is for pulse.

Because the clay is too wet to start with you need to do something to dry it out. You could pinch it into lots of little pieces and let them stand for a while to evaporate some of the moisture. I added in some powdered earth pigment which soaked up the excess liquid. I also added in some PVA glue for extra strength. Adding more PVA helps moisten the clay if you get too dry of a mix. The ingredient I added to increase the strength of the color is tinting medium which I purchase at a local paint store by the ounce. I put in a terracotta color. Even with the added color the bricks will dry too light but you can paint on toning colors after they dry.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

I make up lots of smaller sized batches. If I get a batch that is too dry or too wet I set some of it aside in a lidded storage container. Those not quite right batches can be used to adjust other batches that don't have the right moisture content. Also you start to get many color variations which is perfect for a hand made brick wall.

In the photo below the clay mache has had powerded earth pigment, glue and tinting medium added to it. It is nicely crumbed but it is too dry to roll into bricks. I do try to get my mix to this stage as it is easy to add more moisture to get it to begin clumping. Be sure to set aside in a covered container some of these too dry crumbs in case you need to adjust a mix that becomes too wet.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

The photo below shows a batch that is just about right, a little more moisture is OK but not any more dry than this image shows. To the crumbs I have now added more PVA glue and also some water. Adding glue only will make the clay much too sticky to go through the rollers, it needs to be a little slick to pass through. You can tell you are at the right stage because the crumbs start to clump together, just like that pie crust making method. A perfect mix is the instant when the clay suddenly becomes a ball but it is easy to make it too wet so I stopped just before that point. A spray bottle of water is an easy way to add just a little bit of water without going too far. So it is pulse, check to see if it clumps, if not then spray some water, check again and keep going until the mix starts to bond together. My mix turned out to be a little too dry for perfection but it still worked out OK.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Now that you hope you have a workable mix you need to see if it will go through a pasta rolling machine. I am using an Atlas machine I found at a thrift shop. You can now purchase these pasta rollers for using with Fimo type clays. As seen in the two photos below first make a clay burger patty.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Now cover the patty with a piece of flexible cutting mat and take it down to about 1/4 inch or so in thickness. That will allow you to run it through the pasta machine. I am using the #3 setting on my machine. How thick you want to make your bricks is your choice, there is no rule to this game. All that matters is getting the look you want for your miniature building.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Now run the clay sheet through the pasta rollers. The sheet should just hold together. If it does not hold together and come out as a sheet because it is too dry put it back in the food processor and add more water. If it is too wet and sticks to the rollers then put it back in the food processor and mix in some of the reserved dry crumbs. The rolled clay sheet might come out pretty rough looking and it might even have long pieces flaking off the surface (or it might look perfect). Both those factors are great, you want this, you don't want a perfectly smooth surface. Mine came out pretty darned rough with a few holes, I was in doubt it would be good enough to use. Look at the photo below,I catch the dough as it comes out on that extra piece of flexible cutting board.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

In the photo below I have just trimmed off the dough into a rough rectangle and I have patched up the holes. Then I slid the clay dough onto my cutting board placing the flex mat on top for the next step.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Take the rolling pin and using it over the top of the flexible mat smooth out some of that rough texture that came out of the pasta roller. Your piece should look something like the photo below. Maybe it has more cracks and rough spots, maybe it is smoother. The point of making small batches is that you will need a lot of variations in textures to make a good looking brick wall. No two batches will roll out the same and that is good.
My friend Don noticed something in my finished brick samples. There was a trend for the details to run from right to left on the same direction of diagonal. Don has an incredible eye for detail, I sure did not pick up on it. This was caused because I always rolled the pin from right to left on a slight diagonal; be sure to vary the direction you do the final, smoothing with the rolling pin on each of your small batches so you get random details on the surface of your bricks.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Now things get much easier, all you have to do is make the cut lines. You need very thin blades for this, thick blades mess up the edges. So there are two tools of choice a scalpel and one of the very thin, long razor blades made for slicing Fimo type clays. The scalpel works good for the long lines and the blade is good for the short cross cuts. I find using the scalpel for the second cut leaves little pulled out of shape hooks of clay. Those can be trimmed off later if all you have is a scalpel. I tried using the long blade for the long cuts and it is hard to get it to line up if not long enough for a row. I am using a steel ruler and lining it up with the marks on the grid sheet under the cutting mat. My ruler was cork backed so I put the cork side up to keep it out of the sticky clay. Steel washes better than cork. Take any leftover scraps from around the edges and toss them back into your covered container of mix, you can add them into the next batch.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Now let your bricks dry. If I place my boards in front of a fan the air movement dries the bricks to leather hard in 10 to 15 minutes. I can then transfer them onto a baking sheet and finish the drying job in a few more minutes at low temperature, 150 degrees in my convection oven. But that is the hurry up way, you can be green and let them dry for a day or so. The sun makes a great, quick energy source for drying but that is in limited supply at the moment. If the bricks start to warp cover them with another cutting board, flex mat side down or the spare sheet of flex mat and a magazine. Let them breath once in a while to evaporate the moisture off.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

The next part of the lesson will be cleaning up the bricks, adding more texture and painting them. The long tutorial is almost over!

Brickology Part 2

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

This Brickology tutorial segment is about making the cutting boards you will be needing. While each brick will be unique there still has to be a way to control the size of the brick.

Knowing what era your dollhouse was built or remodeled is the first step in making bricks for the project. I can't tell you what size to make your bricks because depending on the date, the geographical location and sometimes the architect the standard sizes of bricks varied. During Queen Elizabeth's rein the size standard was different than the size during the rein of Charles I. These sizes were controlled by laws. Early American bricks were influenced by the British standards as the brick makers were immigrants. The modern standards in place now are created by builders associations. Tax rates were also an influence, structures might have had a per brick tax, that meant the bricks got larger so the tax would be smaller. While that brick tax was going on in England there were some really large brick sizes used on new buildings.

So do your research and find out what size the real life brick would be and then divide 12 if you are making a 1:12 project. Don't worry about rounding up to the nearest fraction, the decimal answer is better to use. The next step is to cut a brick to that dimension and find out how much it is going to shrink. Yes these clay materials always shrink so you must increase the size of your miniature brick pattern to compensate. You will only find out by experimenting what dimension you have to start with. As there is more material lengthwise in a brick it will shrink more in that dimension. Next use a program that will allow you to duplicate lines across the printed page. That creates your cutting guide.

You will need to make layout pages for the lengthwise bricks and if you want to also make them for the header courses of bricks. Header courses are where the length of the brick goes back into the wall instead of across the face. This provides greater strength for walls. So this is yet another wall detail you need to decide on, are you going to have header courses and how often will they occur? Some brick wall patterns have a lot of headers in them. There might also be decorative soldier courses. You will also see these long edges of the brick exposed in arches over windows and doors. Just running bricks lengthwise over these opening is not architecturally correct. Those are load bearing areas on a real building, the wall above the door or window would collapse into the opening if they are not properly engineered. Don't forget window sills, they too have a special pattern. Search out images and web pages that show how to build brick walls. Look closely at photos of real brick buildings from the era of your dollhouse.

Because this is a small batch method of brick making due to the width of the pasta roller machine I have made a number of cutting boards. My boards are made using some leftover plywood, I could have used pieces of melamine coated bookshelves. I adhere my guide lines to the board with 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. Next I put on the top surface also using the spray adhesive. That surface is a clear, flexible plastic cutting mat. You can find these at grocery stores or in the kitchen section of a department store, hardware store or kitchen store. I got the big ones and cut them in half. They came two per pack so that made 3 project boards. Only 3 because you will also need a piece of cutting mat that is not attached to a board. I will show you why you need it in another segment of the tutorial.

If you buy two packs you can create more cutting boards with a different grid size on the backside of the brick cutting board. I have a roof tile grid on one side of my board and a brick grid on the other side. I also have a long brick grid on one side and the header brick size on the other side of the board.

The cutting board is also the drying board.

1st sample real clay brick

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

I just rolled out and cut my first trial sample from the real clay I purchased. After they dry I will fire them in the kiln. I want to make several batches in different thickness to see what works best. Some bricks will be thin to use as a brick veneer over the plywood or other dollhouse shell materials, others will be 1:12 scale full dimensioned bricks. I also want to try making veneer corner bricks.

I loved working with this regular clay a lot more than I did working with the Das, Plus and other brands of clay/paper-mache mixes. It cuts nicer and the color is much better. The variation in color you see in the photo above is that some of the bricks are close to being dry as they were near the halogen lamp and other bricks are still pretty wet. The clay is not a bad bargain at $10.00 for 20 pounds. Of course the real expense is in the firing and the cost of the labor. But cost aside I can't purchase this product and there are no tutorials on it so I am teaching myself the skill.

So far I feel I am on a good track towards achieving a realistic texture to match that of old handmade bricks. There are definitely a few tricks up my sleeve that makes that texture happen but nothing too complex.

Brickology Part 1

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Today I started walking the immediate neighborhood taking photos of bricks on old buildings. I started making miniature bricks last night. My new dollhouse has a raised hearth fireplace, wood storage underneath, built in spice cupboard to the side. I have not gotten as much of the construction done as I hoped as I had to design the fireplace. It is not looking promising to make a 30 day completion goal but I am having a lot of fun so I don't really mind. There is a Seattle dollhouse show in March.

My roof tile method is what I will be using to make the brickwork on the hearth. This blog is a bit of a teaser in that it only contains reference photos of bricks that I took at lunch today. The how-to blog is coming later when I have the hearth finished and ready to photograph.

I am going out on a limb here and state my opinion that egg cartons do not make realistic looking bricks on dollhouses. The closest it comes to reality is where the hard kiln fired face of a brick has broken off and the soft clay inside is eroding away. Mushy rounded over edges on paperclay bricks don't work either.

Having stated that strong opinion I will soften it by saying that not all dollhouses have to be photo realistic looking, they are fun and they are a form of folk art where photo realism is not the point. The dollhouses I create are a blend of folk art and realism. So you keep right on doing what you love best because it is good and great. But if you want to try for something closer to the real thing then go and look at the real thing, look very closely, touch it, feel the surfaces, absorb the experience into your memory banks. Use a camera and record the experience to take back to your studio. Pick up a fallen brick from an old wall to use as a door stop or to weigh down something being glued together.

The photos that follow are the record I made of a late 1800's structure in the neighborhood that was built with local, hand made bricks. The color variations come from the position the bricks were stacked in the kiln. The smoke and heat creates a kind of glaze. Some of the striped color variations are from where an adjacent brick was stacked thus protecting the brick from the heat in that spot. Heat also creates cracks and spalling. Because the clay is hand packed into the molds there are often fissures in the layers of clay. The clay itself has grit and other inclusions in it and there are variation in color from the earth. When the mold is removed from the wet clay it can distort the shape of the brick. Moving the newly formed clay to the drying shelf can distort it and the person moving it might leave visible prints of their fingers. while the bricks are of similar size and the clay material is dug from the same pit there are absolutely no identical bricks unlike modern manufactured brick where they all look the same.

These brick photos do create a kind of abstract art where you look at things in detail. Don thinks I should do a gallery show of the images at a local coffee shop and sell people the prints. Who knows maybe I will give it a try sometime. I will need to shoot at the golden hour of intense sunlight from the west when there are long shadows.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Timber framing for a dollhouse

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

Lumber for the new timber framed dollhouse.


I am not going to be creating a real mortise and tenon frame for my dollhouse. That can be done but I have chosen a different method, one of overlaying timbers onto a plywood substrate.

The first task after the basic design is to choose the wood for the timbers. I am using Western Red Cedar. It is technically not a cedar tree, it is a member of the cypress family, thuja plicata is the proper nomenclature for this species. This is a plentiful, tree farm grown, local tree in the Pacific Northwest.

I was fortunate to find some fine grained timbers at the local home supply store. I was hand selecting for fine grain with a little curve running through the boards. They must have fine grain on both the top and side surfaces. My goal is to have it look as if the structure was framed with in-scale trees. You can't use branches for this kind of work, they might be the right width but they don't have enough growth rings to look authentic. The pieces I have just cut have between 25 to 35 growth rings per inch. That is fairly good for imitating old oak timbers, there could be more rings but that is very difficult to find without cutting down an old growth forest.

I started with 3/4" X 1-1/2" pieces and have split them on my table saw. That was the size of lumber I found that day with the right grain. Sometimes I am lucky enough to find 2X4 lumber. If I am going to have the timbers show on both the inside and outside walls of the house I will tape the split halves together before taking them to the bandsaw for further sizing. That way the inside and outside of the piece will be a match.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2009

In the photo above you can see the way the grain curves within the piece of wood. I use a pair of dividers set to the width I want for my timber and follow along the natural grain lines. Then I take the piece to the bandsaw and cut on those lines. The next step in the process will be texturing the wood. I don't have to worry about table saw or band saw marks showing up as those will be removed in the texturing step.

If I want a straight beam I choose a piece of wood with straight grain. But all the beams being perfectly straight means that my dollhouse would not have a realistic look for the style of structure I am trying to create. See the photo below for an example of using narrow trees on a old structure.

photo copyright Karin Corbin 2008

Tile batch show

A sample section of the tiles I have been working on. They are just loosely laid out in rows on a board. I have made no calibrated attempt to get the rows even. You know how it is, you just can't wait to see how it is all going to look someday in the future. Of course they will look different when the dollhouse roof is finished. There will be more darker tiles in the mix, I have not made any of those "kiln burnt" batches yet with the black in them. There is no moss, mildew, dirt or bird droppings on this sample either. They do have some water color washes on them bringing up various shades of the terra cotta color range.

As a side note it takes about 720 tiles to cover one square foot of dollhouse roof. I will need somewhere around 2,000 tiles for my project. One reason it takes so many is there is a required triple overlap to this kind of roof covering. That means only the bottom one third of each tile is left exposed.

Now I have to quit having fun and get back to organizing the chaos that reorganizing creates. I swear that I make a bigger mess than ever when I make changes to the workshop space and it seems like I will never reach the goal.

Roof tile progress

The first batch of weathered roof tile keepers.

I am starting to achieve the look I want for the tiles my roof, another dozen batches and I might be satisfied. I threw out the first experimental batch as the color, shape and texture were not up to my expectations. The batch in the photo above is representative of the aged and cracked end of the spectrum. I made some adjustments to my mixing and rolling methods as also added more color to the mix. I am not adding premixed paint, I am adding in the tints they put into paint cans to make it the color of your dreams. That avoids adding in excess liquid. Put in some PVA glue to give the tiles a little more strength and some powered earth pigments to keep the clay dry enough to run through a pasta roller. Whirled it up in small batches in a mini food processor, kneaded it together, rolled it with a pin to flatten the piece enough to get it go into the pasta machine.

Some of the tiles for my dollhouse roof will be worn and cracked, others will have far less texture with a much smoother surface. Different areas of a roof get different amounts of sun, wind and rain all of which damage the tiles. Remember each of the tiles on a real roof was hand made, not machine made, so each is unique. This batch has more of the weathered look, other batches will have more of the smooth tiles. That look is dependent on the variables of what I mix into the batch. More or less liquid is one factor, this batch was on the dry side. It is also dependent on how smooth I decide to roll it out, I left this one on the more highly textured side. A scale of 10 with 1 being smooth and 10 being rough this batch ranges in examples of a fairly smooth 4 through a 10 with its ragged broken edges. The cracks in the tile are not from the clay shrinking and splitting, they are created along the outside edges when it goes through the pasta machine.

But mixing and rolling is just the start, the tiles have to be cut to size without pushing the edges down leaving a rounded surface. Miniatures loose character if you loose all the crisp sharp edges that are supposed to be there, they no longer look believable.

Tiles for the roof

A lovely old building in a beautiful public garden in Cambremer, France. Great place for lunch too, they serve crepes at those tables. I went back twice and took many photos of the restored timber framed buildings on the estate. But what I am posting this photo for is the view of the charming red tile roof that covers the structure.

Tired of dealing with making timbers and sawdust today I turned to another task I need to accomplish for the new dollhouse, making roof tiles.

I had experimented with achieving the look I wanted a few years back when I first started this project so today I got out the box of materials to get back to working on achieving the perfect, flat, terracotta roof tile (tuile plate).

One thing to figure out was the dimensions of the tiles. I needed to know the height, width and thickness. For that I searched around and found some places on the internet selling antique, salvaged tiles, they listed the dimensions. Naturally there was some variation of size between lots of tiles on different web sites. These materials were not ordered from the big box stores, they were locally made products, hand crafted.

Colors vary a lot from tile to tile even on the same roof. There might have been a different batch of clay dug from another section of the pit.They might have been fired in a different section of the kiln. They could have been fired on different days at differing temperatures.

All that color variation means I can't open up a package of terracotta air dry clay, roll it out, cut to size and glue it on the roof. I have to make small batches of a wide range of terracotta colors. I am using the Plus brand of air dry clay from the Activa company. I will vary the color with universal tinting mediums from the paint store as well as natural powdered earth pigment. I make small batches of the clay and mix them in a small food processor.  I run it through a pasta roller a few times to blend it some more. If the mix does not feed through the pasta roller easily adjust the mix with more liquid or add more clay or earth pigment. It takes trial and error until you get used to the feel of what a good mix is for rolling. A little color streaking is a treasure to be enjoyed and very authentic.

After it comes out of the pasta machine I place the rolled piece between two pieces of flexible cutting board and roll it with just a little bit of pressure using a regular rolling pin. Then I cut it into tiles using a straight edge and a scalpel. The thin, very sharp scalpel leaves nice sharp edges on the tiles without rounding over the edge.

A hundred small batches of a thousand tiles and the job will still not be done. Further color variations will be added with watercolor washes. The paper-mache clays do tint nicely with watercolors. Then I will have hundreds of subtle shades of tiles on my dollhouse roof. You can understand why I have to get an early start on it, I will be making roof tiles for many weeks to come. This is a very labor intensive process but the results are totally worth it.

The next two photos show authentically aged roofs. These are photos I took on my trip to Normandy. Now if I can just achieve something even close to being as interesting. Try not to turn to other peoples dollhouses so much for your inspiration, instead do image research and try to achieve on your dollhouse a feeling of reality from life. There are thousands of these inspirational old buildings still standing in Europe although it does look like that building won't be around for long if the roof is not patched up. The sign in the dormer window say "a vendre", that means the place is for sale, what a fixer!