Mini Yarn

I confess that I do not have the patience for embroidery.  But I did want to use the embroidery thread that I found at the kickoff.

So I decided to make miniature yarn balls, using more beads from the necklace.  I stitched around the beads as shown:

Then I cut up the table of contents from one of the books to make labels.  The Tommy Tiptop book was perfect for this, as all of the chapters started with "Tommy":

I am still pondering the display, but for now the yarn fits well in the small wooden box from my inventory.

Incidentally, the chapter names made me curious about Tommy Tiptop and his adventures.  I read the Great Show last night - quite amusing!

Mini Gumball Machine

When I was in middle school, I had to take an industrial arts class where we learned to make things from wood, plastic, and metal.  I liked the class, but I had trouble using the jigsaw.  When we reached the plastics unit, we were allowed to make a project of our choice.  I went to the scrap pile and found a small green piece of polyethylene that was already shaped like a seal.  I drilled a hole in it and called it a key chain.

And thus is the story of my next Goreyosity Shop installment: a miniature gumball machine! 

During the kickoff I was happy to find two wooden necklaces with many different shapes of beads.  These will convert nicely to miniature items.

I also found a small clear jar of hooks, which I chose for its size.

I later decided that the jar would work well as a gumball machine.

I cut up the necklaces, and Devon painted some of the smaller beads to make gumballs. (Thank you, Devon!)  She also painted one of the toy blocks for the base.

Then I glued one of the wire hooks to the base to make the coin slot.  Results are below.

The scale is a bit large for gumballs, so they can also double as superballs.

More beads next!

Mini Posters

I was once a part-time poster artist. So for nostalgic reasons, when I make a miniature scene I usually start with the wall art.

During the kickoff, I intentionally searched for old paper items to convert to framed pictures.  I came back with four books and one box of Monkey Brand Black Tooth Powder.

I was happy with the possibilities:

I ordered some simple frames from eBay, and applied to the illustrations as shown.

Then I added light color to some to match the litho paper on the storefront.

Results are below! I hung the Tooth Powder immediately to cover a hole in the wall. (I used temporary miniature wax to affix so the wall is preserved.)  I will wait to hang the others to see where they best fit.  

Goreyosity Shop

Okay, back to my project.

For reasons which should now be clear, I've decided to assemble a miniature scene from my Gorey items. Specifically, I will make a small Goreyosity Shop.  The pieces I chose will fit well in this setting.

As a back drop, I found an antique wood/paper litho toy store from Ruby Lane. It was described as circa 1870, which seems right, but I did not have it authenticated.

The store arrived filthy, but in good condition for its age.



The wood was mostly bare, and part of me wanted to paint the walls bright, fun colors.  But instead I made a conscious decision to keep the original finish. First, I was terrified of destroying something so old, and second, it seemed an appropriate way to display Gorey's things.  When we visited the Gorey House, the tour guide explained that Gorey had deliberately left the original unrestored stenciling on his living room walls, shown below.

So I removed the filth with water and dish soap.  Then Megan helped me apply a protective layer of clear (and removable) Minwax.  (Thank you, Megan!)  The result is below:

It looks like the walls were once red, and the color came through nicely.  The litho paper is also well preserved:

For the base, I chose a plain piece of wood from Home Depot.  We stained it red to bring out the color of the walls.  (Thank you, Megan!)

The hard part now is waiting for everything to dry. Then I can start composing the scene!

A Prize in Every Box!

Cracker Jack boxes included prizes from 1912 to 2016.  I collect the earlier prizes, circa 1912 - 1939.  My favorites are the tin litho toys designed by Carey Cloud.

I like the early premiums because they were made to be useful.  Some of the toys were compatible with the Marx-scale dollhouses:

Others fit the one-inch scale houses.

They also made charms for bracelets, which doubled as game pieces.

I have incorporated Cracker Jack miniatures into several of my houses.  Examples are below.  The animal charms also make nice nursery toys for 1:12 scale scenes.

Dunham's Cocoanut Dollhouse

This house deserves a post of its own.

Dunham's Cocoanut distributed these dollhouses as packing crates for their product in the 1890s. When the coconut was sold, grocers gave away the empty crates as advertising premiums.

The houses were 1:12 scale, made from wood with lithographed wallpapers.  They also came with cardboard furniture, but the furniture is hard to find.

My Dunham's house is below.  I filled it with a mixture of antique miniatures  and cardboard furniture that we made ourselves.  I used a vintage coin bank for the stove, which seemed appropriate for an advertising premium.

My favorite room is the second floor - please see the below closeups of the fish tank and moose.  But  my photographs do not do this house proper justice.  Please see here for a better view.

 

Marx Hometown Series

Marx made the Hometown series in the 1930s.  These were similar to the Newlywed rooms, but featured stores and town buildings.  There were eight scenes total, including a department store, drug store, grocery store, bank, meat market, police station, fire station, and movie theater.  I do not own the fire station or theater, but the rest are shown below.  The walls and floors are beautifully detailed. You will probably notice that not all of my furniture pieces are original.

I display these with the Newlywed rooms in our Ikea CD tower.  Since we live in Queens, I decided to make an apartment building.

Up next: my Dunham's Cocoanut house!

Marx Newlywed Series

Antique dollhouses are my fancy.

One of my favorite dollhouse sets is the Marx Newlywed Series from the 1920s.  These were small-scale sheet-steel lithographed rooms, sold either individually or as a set.  There were six rooms total,  but they were designed to sit in a carboard house which held four at a time.  The rooms came fully furnished, and were compatible with some of the tin-litho Cracker Jack premiums of the same era.  (More about that later.)

My Newlywed rooms are shown below.  I love the detail of the walls:

Library 

Parlor

Bedroom

Kitchen

Dining Room

Bathroom

I also added several Cracker Jack prizes for the furniture.  I placed the grandfather clock in the library, and the chair in the bedroom.

I have not been able to find an original cardboard house, but the rooms display nicely in an Ikea CD holder.