New gold to old gold

Painted another light fitting this morning to change it from shiny gold to an aged look, using cheap acrylic paint (Chromacryl brand), mostly gold with bit of burnt umber mixed in. Because the metal resists the water based paint it ends up looking a bit streaky but when you want an aged look that's not a bad thing. If necessary maybe you could avoid this perhaps by spraying first with Rustoleum primer and then painting with the acrylic mix but that's just a guess, I haven't tried it myself. If you want a nice smooth finish a paint that the metal will take much better than the acrylic is the enamel in the little pots such as Humbrol. In a few places I added an extra layer that had a bit more brown in it than the original mix. The shades already had the gold edging.

I'm thinking now about how to age and 'dirty' the white shades a little, because they're so smooth I'm not sure dry brushing will work. If you have any suggestions please share!

UPDATE - check out the comments section for suggestions made by fabulous miniaturists!

The gold standard

It seems that almost all dollhouse light fittings are gold which is often very nice, but not always. I don't want gold fittings in my French hallways so I got busy with my favourite spray paint, Rust-oleum x2, and I now have two pretty white lights ready to install.

In Australia Bunnings stock Rustoleum paint, some other hardware stores may also.

A different perspective

This isn't the most attractive view of the Brocante and two floor apartment but it does put the building as a whole into perspective. Today's job is to drill the holes and make wiring grooves for the lighting in the middle floor hallway, living room, kitchen and dining space and then do the same for the top floor. Theoretically the interior should all come together quite quickly once that's done. 

Some of the bits and pieces from the kitchen shelves came loose 'in transit' and are now in a box waiting to be glued in shortly. 

The cream upper hallway door mentioned in the previous post has now been more or less restored to how it looked before I added the offending coat of pale grey glaze and I'm definitely not touching it again!

Not all change is good!

There have been a lot of life changes since my last post. Both of us are now retired, we've moved out of our Sydney apartment, disposed of all of our furniture and so on, put personal belongings in storage and are now full-time house/petsitting.  Of course most people who live this type of nomadic lifestyle don't have to move a three level dollhouse and mini-making equipment with them so that aspect is a little challenging but otherwise we're enjoying the experience. 

In regard to my many many boxes of mini stuff working out what to store and what to take was a bit of a challenge and I did make a few mistakes (like forgetting the box of door handles) but mostly I have with me what I need for the moment. I'm concentrating on finalising lighting decisions and finishing the walls and floors on the third floor (hallway, bathroom and double width bedroom). 

Below left is a mock-up of the bedroom interior. The grey door has had more coats of paint on it than most of us have had hot dinners! It was previously green on both sides (with multiple shades and coats involved in that too) but I decided to change to grey on the bedroom side. Quite liked the result (left) after a few coats, washes and sanding but decided this morning to give it a final coat of 50/50 pale grey paint and matte glaze to soften it, result on the right. 

I think it still needs just a hint of dry brushing with a little bit of green on the lower panels so that it looks like the grey has worn and allowed a little of a previous coat of paint to show through, but otherwise I'm pleased with the softer look and will try to resist playing with it again.

However, sometimes change is not a good thing and I really should leave well enough alone!! I don't know why I thought for even a second that it was a good idea to put a coat of the light grey 50/50 glaze on the cream hallway side of the door as well, but I did. Now, keeping in mind that it took me AGES to get this side of the door (which was also green) to pretty much match the cupboard door which was done months and months ago, this is clearly one of the stupidest and logic defying changes I've ever made. Honestly, sometimes I should be supervised!!

Given the number of times I do and redo, and redo again (and again!) it's no wonder it takes me so long to complete a project!