Off-Topic Project Journals

I went to Project Journals to start a thread, but it's not a doll project. It's a doll room project, and that seemed better suited for Brigadoon.
So - a Brigadoon Project thread? Anyone else want to join? (please?)

Here's my doll room project (room one of two): my home office. It's my workspace, but I'm redoing it to have the Wall of Doll. I used a free online room planner to draft out the general dimensions:

The small blue circle is the trash can, by the way.

Currently using a massive desk gifted to me by Spouse's friend, but it's way too big for this room. It's going to be moved into Craftorama room, and I'm swapping out for this:


Behind the wall of shelves, aka the Wall of Doll, I'm getting this peel-and-stick wallpaper mural:


Then I used Ikea's room planner to completely fill the Wall of Doll with shelves:


Was a little shocked at the price, and then I laughed at myself, cuz, uh, I've definitely bought dolls that cost more...

So right now, I need to:
1. Empty most of the room (but I still work in here, so that's going to be entertaining)
2. Order the things.
3. Paint the other three walls - I have no idea what color. Suggestions?
4. Install curtains (these I have)
5. Swap desks (on days off).
6. Install shelves (ditto)
Oh, and 7. I have another bookshelf in a box (bottom of office picture by door) that needs assembled, but iz BIG. So, that's last on the list.

If you are interested in helping:
What color would you paint the other walls?
What on earth do I do with that massive empty space in the center?
What do I put in the bottom corner circle?
Should I get an organizer to hang on the back of the door? What would you recommend?

 

@Brightfires - I'm actually thing (and maybe this is crazy) of a deep purple (I like purple) for the wall where the door is, and a paler, complimentary shade on the other two walls.

@Rosslyn - Oooh. Care to share pictures, or the link to your own Brigadoon project thread?

@Mu Shu I have so many questions. I hope you don't mind - your experience is exactly what I was hoping for.
How do you keep the shelves clean?
What kind of risers do you use?
I was afraid that the wallpaper mural would be a miserable process. Any tips or pointers?

For the moment, my updates are... kinda boring. The blue trashcan circle up top is going to be a chair for my Dollmore Elysia. In the bottom corner, I'm thinking of a slim chair for Iris (my 6-foot-tall BJD). So she can scare people during video calls... heh heh heh.

But for now, I'm still in the painfully boring process of removing stuff. Someone on Tumblr made the amazing recommendation to use cling film to cover the windows, and there is some gorgeous stuff out there, so I'm rethinking the curtain idea.

 

@Mu Shu this was so helpful. Like, I can't put into words how helpful this is. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this up.

 

I like the way you think.
@DollyKim and @Brightfires - thank you both! I very much appreciate the recommendations, and I definitely want to review all options before making final purchases.

 

Even though I haven't been here in a while, Wall of Doll and Craftorama room cleaning continues apace. (Cross-posted from the Doll No-Buy buddies thread)
Effective techniques:
One thing every day: pick one thing to move/clean/throw away every day. Some days, I get ALL THE CLEANING done. And others, it's literally find tiny piece of trash, throw away trash, job done. But it is making a huge difference. It's so much cleaner.
Don't leave empty-handed: whenever I leave a room or enter a room, take something with me. Something that doesn't belong in its current room but does belong in the room I'm heading to.
Even after I injured myself and got stuck on a walking restriction, I am still able to do one little thing here or there.

Update for Craftorama room: Spouse discovered these honeycomb 3D-printed organizers, and I'm telling you, Ikea must be kicking themselves for not thinking of it first. It's a grid of honeycomb-shaped openings, and then you print little inserts to pop into the grid to hold your stuff. There's all sorts of stuff you can put in there - cup holders, tool holders, cellphone holders (the most popular), etc. Spouse is printing a ton of them for him and for me. Each of us is going to get a grid (or 20) to organize our stuff. V. important to organize your crafty stuff! Video if you want to see what I'm talking about:

And because I like to have 5000000 projects going at once, I've decided I simply can NOT wait for Craftorama room to be completed before I start sewing. Dining room is now the ad hoc sewing room.

Off to clean and sew!
What are y'all doing?

 

Staycation is right around the corner, so I'm back to update my doll room project journal thread.
Office furniture has been swapped out, and the office currently looks something like this:


For staycation, the plan of action is to move into our master bedroom and put together craftorama room.
This means fully emptying, cleaning, and painting two full rooms, moving furniture, and then moving all my craft supplies/stuff into craftorama room. This is going to be an undertaking.

One more thing to do before we start moving stuff - I want to measure our current bedroom and plan where my stations are going to be in craftorama room. I want to figure out how many tables we have floating around (it's a big house), and which of them are suitable for my plans. Like, those folding card tables are nice and cheap, but they are basically worthless for any crafts that require stability (wobble, wobble, wobble).

I want a sewing station (big former office desk), a face-up, painting, modding, and sculpting station (the "messy craft" station) using the current desk in the basement, a picture corner for my 1/3 scale diorama using ???, and, ummm... a dollhouse area.

Because I don't have enough crafts in my life, I picked up a dollhouse. Or three. cough

And then in the center, I want open space and a rug for kitty play time. I believe the room is big enough that I can do all of this.

 

Oh, that's a really good point - plus I could put those window beds on the windows and have kitty company.
Dollhouses are 1/6 (Barbie houses. They're Barbie houses) and 1/12 scale. 1/12 scale is going to be for my little blind box BJDs, lol.

 

Update: cleaning sucks. It's always, "I'm going to clean this area," which turns into - oh, that needs done too. Hey, I've been meaning to get to that for months.
A quick project turns into a four-hour event.

I started a mock-up for Craftorama room, which is 11.5 feet by 11.5 feet square (3.5x3.5 meters).


The large table on the left is just a place-holder. I don't know what I'm actually going to put there, table-wise. I just know that's going to be my dedicated "messy" crafting station. I discovered "stickers" in Microsoft 3D paint, which is delightful.

There are two windows in the room. I'm thinking of getting more catsills for supurrvisors.

I'm also thinking that the walls are going to be a pastel blue, so they can work as a backdrop for pictures. Initially, I thought I would do some sort of picture table, but now? Nah. Floor is fine.

OK. Break over. Back to cleaning.
I hate cleaning.

 

@Kaerra - you immediately zeroed in on something I have been studiously avoiding thinking about: how am I going to organize/store this stuff?
Since it's a bedroom that's being converted to a craft room, I do have a closet, and I plan to make full use of it. But, uh... I have no idea.

 

Update #whatever - cleaning still sucks. I am on hands and knees scrubbing floors, and I am OLD. So it's 5 minutes of work, followed by an hour break while my knees remind me loudly that I am not a spring chicken anymore. Also scrubbing walls, cuz I'm obsessive like that.

The master bedroom is empty and spackled. Apparently, I found a paint color I liked and taped it to the wall. While cleaning yesterday, I looked at it and said, "Oh, I really like that color!"
Spouse: "Good thing, cuz you picked it out."

Out of sight, out of mind, I'm telling you.

So the master bedroom is almost ready for us to start slapping primer on the walls. Woo hoo! This Friday (payday), I'm off to the dollar store to get cheap clear plastic bins per @DollyKim's and @Kaerra's recommendations. (Thank you!!!) Next up: folding fabric swatches to store.

Fun fact: I just realized that I have five doll house kits. Goodwill has an online auction website, and I've found the occasional affordable (less than $15) doll house kit. I bought them and stored them in the master bedroom in anticipation of Craftorama room. But see "out of sight, out of mind" above. I have a collection.
Oops.

 

Bless you for sending me down another rabbit hole, and I mean that sincerely.
So - in my house currently (due to remodeling), I have plaster of Paris and joint compound. Hadn't heard of modeling paste before, so off to Google I went.
I learned:

• Plaster of Paris is cheapest and easy to work with - comes in a powder that you mix with water, applies thinly, works best in layers, dries slow, but you can NOT sand it once dry. It dries hard and is great for structural support work.
• Joint compound (aka spackle, made of gypsum) is mid-range, pricewise. It's sandable once dried and best for filling holes (which is what we're using it for right now), not as hard as Plaster of Paris and therefore not as good for structural work. It's a drier consistency than modeling paste, so it has a tendency to apply chunky (something we have most definitely noticed). It is water-soluble, thank goodness, cuz Spouse keeps dropping blobs on the floor. Cue me rushing in behind him to wipe said blobs up. It dries either gray or white, depending upon what you buy. There's a popular brand that applies pink and dries white. We have a big ol' tub that dries a pale gray.
• Modeling paste is acrylic-based and water-soluble. It can be mixed with paint or applied directly. It applies more thinly and smoothly than joint compound. It's also more expensive.

I was planning to use joint compound - if we have any left, heh. I can pick up modeling paste locally for what I think is a reasonable price ($5-$10) if we use the joint compound up.
There's a YouTuber called Bentley House Minis who did a 50-50 mix of joint compound and white glue (school glue, or Elmer's - same stuff I use to attach doll eyelashes) and applied it to cardboard to DIY a dollhouse, so that's another application option.

I love the idea of flipping a sold dollhouse, too. I have nieces who love dollhouses, so one could be a holiday gift for them.
And now I'm going to copy/paste this novella into a document for future reference.

 

Anyone who has read anything I ever posted on DOA will be completely unsurprised to learn that I found several decent, quality, unused plastic bins in various places around the house that I'd forgotten I owned, or that had stuff in them I no longer want/need/remember that I had.

Trip to place-that-sells-plastic-bins store has been put on hold while I take inventory of what I already have. Two plastic bins already filled with fabric (folded, natch). So that's nice. I am once again annoyed with myself for all of these out of sight, out of mind purchases, but not too annoyed, cuz I'm repurposing them (and saving money).

Master bedroom is mudded/spackled, sanded, and the walls all have a nice layer of primer. I was planning to go to the local smaller hardware store and get $45 per gallon paint without primer. Then I browsed the big box hardware store, and they have multiple types of paint for less than half the price, and all of them include primer. Yay for wasting time. Well, at least we don't have to worry about putting a second layer of primer on the walls. I am a tad irritated that all big box hardware store paints require two coats, but when a gallon is less than half the cost of smaller hardware store paint, I can buy two I guess.

Considering that it took a fight with Spouse (including some shouting) to get master bedroom to its current state, I have zero expectations that Craftorama room will be ready before vacation ends. I am disappointed and sad cuz my living room is seriously a mess. I'll just have to work on it slowly on my own time after work.

 

Final update: Craftorama room is (basically) done! We have moved into the master bedroom, which is practically a sanctuary now. It's so much bigger - it's about one a half times the size of the other bedroom. And it's cleeeeeeean. I told Spouse - no messes in this room. The rest of the house can be a nightmare, but this room is my sanctuary of order and cleanliness.

Craftorama room: skipped painting the walls. The color is boring but fine, and I was too anxious to move in.
It started with one lonely table (this was in my tiny office and took up the whole freaking room - so glad it's out and here now):

Craftorama room evolution
by Maleficient MrsofallEvil, on Flickr

Virtual tour under the spoiler:

Spoiler: Craftorama virtual tour

On the website Printables is a 3D storage solution called honey comb storage, and there are thousands of "remixes" or different accessories that other 3D sculptors have made to work with it. Some good, some not so good. We started with one wall:

Craftorama room evolution
by Maleficient MrsofallEvil, on Flickr

and then we started adding accessories:

Craftorama room evolution
by Maleficient MrsofallEvil, on Flickr

And then I went crazy, cuz it's just so useful.

Craftorama room evolution
by Maleficient MrsofallEvil, on Flickr

So... the tour: start with the "messy" crafting station, which is a six foot (180 cm) by 29 inches (74 cm) folding table:

Craftorama room evolution
by Maleficient MrsofallEvil, on Flickr

Hrrrrrnnnnngggggh tools.

5 dollhouses and plastic drawers for doll clothes (already need bigger ones):

Craftorama room evolution
by Maleficient MrsofallEvil, on Flickr

Back of the door storage for needs to be handy, but not in my face:

Craftorama room evolution
by Maleficient MrsofallEvil, on Flickr

Bookshelves for dolls and books on sewing, knitting, crochet, crafting, and pattern design:

Craftorama room evolution
by Maleficient MrsofallEvil, on Flickr

Guardians of: (1) doll parts in plastic organizers and one doll box, (2) heads in mug protectors, (3) wigs and elastic cord in sock organizers, and (4) BJD jewelry in human jewelry boxes. Yarn in giant suitcase. And more tooooools:

Craftorama room evolution
by Maleficient MrsofallEvil, on Flickr

And we finish the tour at my sewing station, with a big ol TV so I can watch YouTube tutorials while I learn to sew:

Craftorama room evolution
by Maleficient MrsofallEvil, on Flickr

Tools. I love tools.

 

@Kaerra - aw, thank you! Yes, @DollyKim read my mind. The first thing I thought was, "Oops. I need cat beds in here."

 

I'm back. I have a mock-up of DV Rita, but then I saw this YouTube video by Rachel Maksy, and I want to decorate Craftorama room now...


Also, Craftorama room is getting increasingly crowded, so choices must be made. And it finally occurred to me that having airbrush paint spraying in the same room as fabric is probably not the smartest idea?

So, new plans:
1. Massive Barbie house is going to nieces. Need to pull out and clean tonight, pack up in my car, and take to kiddo birthday party tomorrow. Plus some furniture.
2. Take all the airbrush stuff back downstairs (arrrrrgh)
3. I printed more thread spool organizers. I want my thread spools organized by type and color. I love organizing.
4. Clear my sewing table and prepare for sewing!
5. Decorate. With what? No idea. I have plenty of stuff, though.