Trimble's is still standing !

 

Well , where did the time go ? I can hardly believe its been so long since my last post in December 2012.   I was very busy in 2013 , but really there is just no excuse for not posting ..... things have got to change !

Most of 2013 was spent doll making, and barely any of it was spent enjoying my hobby.

One of my new years resolutions for 2014 was that this was going to change.

I am still very busy doll making, but have plans to finally get to grips with the unfinished rooms above the toyshop this year and post my progress here .

 

 

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of progress made yet, but I did re arrange the shop window displays as I was making plans and they are looking lovely . 

 

 

I am still filling the toy shop shelves, I think it will take a few years before it is full . I am always looking out for special and unusual toys and my collection gives me a lot of pleasure.

I bought some lovely new toys in 2013 and also received some wonderful gifts of special pieces for my toy shop. I will write a post featuring some of the new additions to the shop soon.

First though I wanted to show off some very special miniature toys.

These aren't all mine, I only have one of them, but I am happy to show them as they have been made by my beautiful and talented daughter Katie !

Uncle Mort would be happy to have all of these three on display in the shop

 

I don't know which of these tiny jack in the boxes is my favourite, they are all so lovely and colourful !

 

 

 

Katie also makes wonderfully tiny puppets ( you can just glimpse one hanging in the first photo of my shop window ) and other tiny toys.

I hope you've enjoyed another peek inside the toyshop and sorry to have kept you waiting so long ......  I hope to be posting here a lot more regularly this year.

 

Julie xxx

 

Mortimer trimble takes up residence in the toy shop

It has been some time since my last blog post. 
There have been lots of things happening in Trimbles Toy Emporium !
As you can see the Toy Shop doesnt really look very different ...............................

The street light is still lit at the side of the building and the old Saint Bernard dog is still waiting outside , harnessed to the carriage..............

 

The shop window still has the wonderful dummy board of Belle sitting astride her trusty rocking horse, but things have changed a little here, a beautiful doll by artisan Lea Frisoni  is there to tempt you into peeking inside, and some precious old wooden toys by the sadly missed artisan Chris Sturgess Leif.
The biggest change however is standing behind the shop counter, take a peek through the open doors............ I do believe Mr. Mortimer Trimble himself is now in residence and waiting for you to enter his wonderful Emporium !

 

As most of you know I am a doll maker, my miniature houses are my hobby but doll making is my passion. When I built this toyshop I already had in mind the old fellow who owned the shop . It has taken me some time to actually get round to making him but to my delight he turned out exactly as I had imagined .

Let me introduce Mortimer Trimble, proprietor of Trimble's Toy Emporium and inventor of wonderful and magical toys !

 

Mr. Trimble is delighted to make your acquaintance and hopes you will enjoy your visit to his Emporium.

 

The shop is now beginning to fill up nicely with beautiful toys, although there is room for lots more !
I have also been working on the rooms upstairs and will post more photos soon as there have been a few changes and I have a special project in store for the attic .
julie xx

All change for Trimbles Toy Emporium

Once again it has been some since my last post. Life has been busy and the toy shops doors have been mostly closed. This week however I found time to work on some ideas i have had and finally I have trimbles exactly how I want it and ready to fill with lovely things !
You can see I now have the shop counter in. This needs a till and the toy shop shelves need filling but there will be no more changes to the layout now.
You might have noticed it all looks slightly different.....

I blocked the doorway from the shop to the house with a wall and then placed shelving in front of the wall. The door was never used but I felt the need to leave a clear path to it as you would in real life , so space was wasted.

Now I have lots more shelves and the view in from the side window is lovely . I will be stacking that toybox high with toys and really love the way it all looks now :0)

This little room is a new addition ! I have always been unhappy with the deep rooms in the roof.

The rooms above the shop both have doors in the back leading to the landing. Upstairs there had been a stairwell in one bedroom which had a door leading to the other bedroom..... a most impossible arrangement ! I tried to solve this by hiding the stairwell and making a built in bed in Uncle Morts room, but it really did not please me and I couldnt live with it.

So I have blocked the doorway between the two rooms and added a wall in the back of each room with a doorway leading to extra rooms and an imaginary passageway !

Belles room looks so sweet with her little writing / dressing room !

Uncle Morts room will have a bathroom in the tiny room. I think the house needed one and I am left with a lovely sized room ready to fill with the furniture of my choice for Uncle Morts bedroom.

The trunk is just biding time in there until I get my bathroom furniture :0)

It all looks right to me now and authentic to the rest of the building, and I am very much looking forward to filling it up !

Hope you like the way it is turning out,

julie x

A new year and finally some progress !

I was shocked but not entirely surprised to find it has been 7 months since my last post here.
It has been busy and I didnt find a lot of time for my hobby last year but this year one of my resolutions was to find time to do the things I love and this I have done :0)
So finally we have a little progress on the living quarters above the shop and as I have thought more about the characters who will live here i have changed things round a little and probably will do again before things are completed !
So here is the parlour, I think I will have a sideboard on the wall behind the sofa and definitely a picture or mirror above it but for now although not complete it is at least pleasing me .
The thing that is pleasing me the most is my baby house !
I bought this in bare wood and have painted it cream with grey accents. The inside I have decorated with silk fabrics , I wasnt too particular here as I want it to look very much like the antique baby houses I have seen in museums and not brand spanking new.
In my stories this has been built for Belle by Uncle Mort and decorated by the young Belle.
However it takes pride of place in the parlour !
I am gradually filling it with 144th scale furniture :0)

Finally we have curtains throughout the house. I have added windowsills and sat some tiny ornaments and a doll on this one.

I bought a lovely chair which I distressed and added a throw . I then covered the seat of the sofa with the same fabric as the throw and will be making some cushions for this soon as it is still to bare for my liking.

You can see the little west highland terrier here too, to remind me of our dear suzie who we no longer have. This one is a boy though called Barney !

I have also been working on the bedrooms , I will be posting again very soon .........

julie x

The Grand Bedroom Botch - up begins !

I have been working hard on my plans for Uncle Morts bedroom , as mentioned in my last post.
Here you can see where I have taken out the bannisters around the stairwell. This was dead space in the bedroom as the gap either side of the bannisters was too small to put anything into .
I wanted to make a built in bed with drapes to free up space in the rest of the room that would otherwise have been mostly filled with bed !


As in all the best botch ups I just got stuck right in and made a framework over the stairwell with square balsa wood strips. I then set in a small door which matches the rest of the doors in the house. I filled the gap above the door with various strips of spare wood I had in my "useful " drawer ! Then I replaced the skirting board, notice my antique cooking weights holding it in place till it dries, they have been a great help building this dolls house !

Here you can see the bed. I simply glued a frame around the wall to support the thin balsa strip I used to make the bed. Because there is hollow space under the bed and over the stairwell you are still able to look up the stairs from the lower floor without the top of the stairs looking blocked.

When you look though the new doorway in the bedroom you can just see the top stair and it looks as if you can easily walk down the stairs ! it is of course just an optical illusion but it will do for me .

The bed is now almost ready to dress. I still have to attach a piece of trim to the left hand inner side and then refit the cornice around the top. There is a space behind the upper wood strip (which I have now wallpapered ) to attach the drapes .

I wasnt able to remove the wall light as its wiring is covered in brickwork on the back of the house, but I think it works effectively where it is , lighting up the bed side beautifully.

I'm very excited now to dress the bed !

More photos soon ..........

julie xx

Inspiration in Chicago

I was in Chicago this April exhibiting my dolls at the Chicago International Show. While there I couldnt resist visiting the wonderful Thorne Rooms exhibition at the Chicago Art Institute. These photos are just some of the miniature rooms there. They are all behind glass so it wasnt easy taking good photos so please excuse the quality.
This first photo in particular really inspired me......... more of that later first here are some of the miniature rooms I liked best.

You would be forgiven for thinking this was a stately home ! The miniatures on display were really beautiful and the needlework in the rugs was amazing .

I loved this kitchen, the wood work was beautifully carved, very simple and oh so realistic.

I loved the way the rooms all had windows with light streaming through and open doors where you could peeek into imaginary rooms beyond !

Now back to Trimbles Toy Emporium .

I am a bit of a stickler for detail in a dolls house. I like to know that my dolls can actually walk up the stairs, open the doors and get about the house in a logical fashion if they so wished !

Sometimes though we have to use illusion and I am going to be doing this in Uncle Morts bedroom.

Uncle Morts room is up the stairs and there is a bannister in the room taking up a lot of space.

Belle's room is accessed by walking up the stairs and right through Uncle Morts room where there is a door to her room.

I really dont like this arrangement and have been dithering about how to overcome it.
However the first of the Thorne room photos shows a really lovely built in bed with curtains and a door leading to steps going up.

My cunning plan is to adapt this idea ( my room is much smaller than the one in the photo ) so that Uncle Mort has a built in bed over the stair well and a door next to it leading to the stairs.

he can then draw the curtains on his bed for privacy as Belle has to pass through his room to get to hers.

It also frees up tons of space in his room for all my other cunning plans !!

I hope to start work on this tonight and will post pictures as I go.................watch this space !

julie xx

The Thorne Rooms Exhibition at Chicago Art Institute

Belle's Bedroom, work has begun !

First of all thank you for your patience, its been a long time between posts !

I have been so busy with my dollmaking I havent had a lot of hobby time this year . After exhibiting at Kensington Dollshouse festival this weekend I will finally be able to step off the treadmill and find some of that elusive time to work on my Emporium .

I have done a little work though, and this is Belle's bedroom so far. Belle is 12 years old and although she works very hard helping her Uncle she is still a child and one of the perks of living above a toyshop with a toymaker uncle is having wonderful toys.

There will be some quite magical toys in Belle's bedroom although right now it is fairly empty.

I dressed her bed , it is a phoenix kit I painted and assembled, very simple to do and it looks wonderful. I spent ages dressing the bed to make it look slightly shabby yet still pretty and cosy.

The room needs curtains, a chest of drawers for Belles clothes or possibly a small writing desk.

Decisions, decisions !

I am looking forward to finishing this room.

The room next door belongs to Uncle Mort who is rather a strange fellow and will fittingly have rather a strange room.............. I am planning some minor adjustments to the structure of the room and will post more when I get time to try out my plans.

Welcome to my new followers, I hope I wont keep you waiting quite so long for another post :0)

julie xxx

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A wee bit of progress....

I havent posted for a while, but this doesnt mean I havent made a wee bit of progress on Trimbles.

I am slowly starting to furnish the rooms and was able to spend some time over the holidays making up a few kits and doing a little internet shopping !

First the kitchen. I am awaiting a phoenix kit range which will fit nicely inside my fireplace . I had planned to make a fireplace but came across this Dolls House Emporium one which was reasonably priced and exactly what I had in mind !

I printed the rug onto cottonand fringed the edges. The kitchen chair is a Chrysenbon kit which I painted cream and the lovely basket of blackberries on the chair isby the lovely Mags of Mags-nificent Miniatures.

I need to make curtains but the kitchen is shaping upjust as I imagined it would.

I then made a small start on the parlour. This roomis still quite empty but as it is going to take some time to fill it up I thought I would show it progressing.

First I tried to make a fireplace ! Of course being me I just bashed it up out of bits of balsa and painted, then stencilled it.

it is probably more suited toa bedroom but again being me I glued it into place before realising this ! For now it will stay there as I am sure Iwill be making a few changes as I go along.

The lovely chaise is exactly what I wanted. With some cushions it will be perfect !

The painting and chinoiserie cabinet were internet finds fromthe USA, I love the cabinet manufactured by Hanson and will be filling it with dolls in keeping with the toyshop !

The mirror was an ebay find and the rest of the furniture I made up from kits

As you can see I still have a lot of work to do in the parlour , but you can see the character of the room forming and I am certainly enjoying looking out for special pieces to go into it.

julie x

A Xmas tree for Trimbles !

Christmas is almost here, so like all good toy shops Trimble's has marked the occasion with a festive window display !
This year has been a very hectic one for me both personally and for Bellabelle Dolls. I am putting the finishing touches to the last of the xmas doll orders and looking forward to a little hobby time.
Not a lot has changed at Trimbles since our last visit. Maybe there are a few more toys on the shelves,we will see on the next visit !
The elusive Uncle Mort and his spirited young niece Belle have yet to appear ............
There are empty rooms waiting to take shape and a workroom waiting for work to be done..........
But from the outside all is well and Christmas has arrived courtesy of Sue Newstead from Pastmastery !
Sue is sadly no longer making her wonderful dummy boards so I was eager to visit her stand while exhibiting at Kensington Dolls house Festival last weekend.
I bought the most wonderful Christmas tree to stand in my shop window and a delightful young lady who will stand at the doorway to encourage passing children to stop to see if she is real !
Doesnt she look perfect standing here looking so wistful ?
Sue is also making me a basket of kittens for the inside of the shop.
I hope on our next visit to Trimbles we can go inside and see some developments. I am working on Belle's bedroom now,a very pretty girls room where Belle has some very special toys to keep her company .........
In the mean time Merry Christmas to all from both myself and Trimble's Toy Emporium !
julie xx

Tiny zoo animals painted by my talented son

I had to show two photos of these little animals. They are cast metal miniatures and my wonderfully talented son has painted them for me with so much detail you would be forgiven for thinking they were much larger than they are on the first photo !

My son is a warhammer enthusiast so used to painting tiny figures. He doesnt even use a magnifying glass !
I'm so pleased with these and have more still in progress including a gorilla and an elephant :0)

They will look wonderful on Trimble's shelves :0)

julie xxx

A miniature train set for Trimble's Toy Emporium !

Firstly ,its a long time since I posted here. Thank you to allmy followers for being so patient and not jumping ship !
My Toy Emporium is madein my "hobby " time and this year I have had very little time to spare. I have been working so hard for the miniatures shows , but at the last one, Miniatura last weekend, my friend Jax from www.ceynix.co.uk was there with the little train set I had asked her to make for me . These littletrains are just lovely.They have a socket at the back for a battery pack or adapter and the train chuggs around the track beautifully !

Here is my train set after I decorated it. I used my Valerie Anne Casson toy castle as a centre piece and added some scenic grass scatter . I also made a few trees with tiny twigs from my garden ! The track comes with spaces to fit legs, so I added legs and a tablecloth to match the shop curtains.

I am delighted with the effect .
Here it is inthe shop,which as you can see still has very empty shelves which I hope tostart filling soon. It really is a wonderful centrepiece for the shop and I can pile lots of toys around it.
I am now eager to get on with the Emporium so really hope I can find the time and that my next post wont be so long arriving !

julie xxx

Welcome to Trimble's Toy Emporium

Welcome to Trimble's Toy Emporium . Established in 1880 by proprietor Mortimer P. Trimble !

Finally I have finished work on the outside of my shop and the finishing touch was the shop sign.
"Trimble's Toy Emporium ? " you may well ask , "isn't the toy shop called Belle's Emporium ?"
Well that is the name for the stories I am writing set in this very special old Toy Shop.
Belle lives there with old Uncle Mortimer , but of course Uncle Mortimer has owned this shop for many years and it is his name above the shop.
But, more of that later .
For now lets talk about the building itself.
My cunning plan to disguise the wiring worked............eventually !
I've never kept it secret that I am a bit of a bodger. Things usually come right in the end but through sheer luck rather than miniature building skills. I do learn from my mistakes and you might too, I certainly made enough of them this week !


Here we have the first step of the cunning plan. I decided that foam board would be the best material for the back panel which would hide the wiring of the house . I cut it to shape with a stanley knife and pebble dashed the top to match the rest of the house.
So far, so good !



I glued the out house in place on the foam board and cut a hole out for the wiring to come through inside.

I then taped all the wiring in place ready for me to glue the panel on.

While the foam board was flat on the table I glued on the brick slips and left it to dry over night.
Problem one soon made itself known. The glue had warped the foam board which dried with a definite curve.

Not one to be beaten I glued the back of the panel as planned ( pulling the wires through the hole in it and into the outhouse) and attached it to the back of the house. I had some very small nails and knocked those in round the edges and magically all warping dissappeared and I ended up with this rather perfectly fitting back panel.

I was thrilled and left it to dry.

This is when problem two reared its ugly head.

Now when I was taping my wiring down I checked every one to see that the lights and sockets all worked.

Yet now when I plugged them in nothing at all worked !!!

I couldnt figure it out . Then I unplugged them all and plugged in just one and that worked.

I tested every one in this way until I got to the wire leading from the kitchen light. There was a blue flash and everything went off again.

I unplugged it and everything worked . I knew right away what I must have done, I must have knocked one of those nails though the kitchen light wire !!

Of course now the panel was now glued firmly in place . I have had to remove the kitchen light and now need to replace it.

However I have a cunning plan to hide the wire when I finally get one sorted out ..............

To cheer myself up I did a little work inside the work shop. It is still quite bare but taking shape and I am very happy with it so far. I have a huge list of things that must go in here but for now this is how it looks.

I used a piece of balsa wood tomake a tool rack for the back wall.

There will be an old stool at the table where Uncle Mort sits to paint the toys.

This is the shop now completed from the front. I love the shop sign. Its slightly wonky, and a bit distressed and exactly what I wanted ! I simply used word art in my microsoft word programme and some free clip art then printed it out on linen paper . I glues this to the sign board and then stippled on a little burnt umber paint with a dry brushing technique to age it up.

Here you can see the street light is working ! I need to hide the base of this with some greenery as I dont like it but the rest of it is just right.

You can also see here my lovely St. Bernard pulling a buggy. This is from Roberson's and I fell in love with it when I saw it at Scottish Miniatura so had to buy it .

Finaly here is the back of the house with the grouting in place and the roof tiled. I have just glued on the moss and it needs to be brushed off a bit when dry sowont be quite as obvious as this when I am finished.

The bricks , tiles and grout were from http://www.minaco-uk.com/ really lovely products to work with at a reasonable price and Graham who runs it is very helpful.

Just a few finishing touches now to the interior decor and the Emporium is ready to be filled up !

julie xxxx