COOK OF THE HOUSE (Part One & Two)

"NO MATTER WHERE I SERVE MY GUESTS, THEY SEEM TO LIKE MY KITCHEN BEST

CAUSE I'M THE COOK OF THE HOUSE"

( Paul Mc Cartney and Wings)

Last Sunday, Fatima  and I drove down to Seattle, Washington and attended a Fabulous miniature show and sale.
We both had sooooo much fun!:D

Most of what I bought was with the kitchen of
Green Dolphin Street in mind.  When I was getting it all out to take the photos, I began adding some of the other mini kitchen treasures that are also in waiting for the kitchen's completion.  The results are that you are going to see what is new and what is old, what is on hand but that may never make it in because of lack of space or changing plans.  I know that I have much more than will actually fit into that  teeny tiny kitchen of the Arthur doll's house, but for this posting I am going to pretend that All of it will.
cause
 I AM
 The Cook of the House!
:D

some of my collection for the kitchen

 left:  a new white chipped, kitchen scale from the Seattle show which is  holding one of Beauxminis  yummy deli roll; ( high in FAT'S, of course heehee )  The bottle of red wine is from a former dollar store fridge magnet.
 at right:  from the U.K is Janet Brownhill's pickled tomatoes and onions ( yay, Seattle Show) I  love these and I have lusted for them for years and years.  They are shown with a bowl of air dry clay Mushrooms and an empty tin can by Twin heart Miniatures.   This artist makes wonderful air dry clay fruits and vegetables and Orchids that are as thin as paper and Magnificent!!! 
 I bought one for Fatima who had her birthday in February.  
 A HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY MY DEAR FRIEND! :-D

Another friend of mine from years ago,  PEARL JOHNSTON, made the celery and very small white button mushrooms.  
 The brown mushrooms, by me.
The pepper grinder, was removed from a Hallmark Christmas Ornament.  Perfect for my mini kitchen.

In the white bowl are more of Twin Heart's Fabulous air clay mushrooms .
The kitchen cleaver is home- made from an old, broken Exacto blade.
Rather than toss the blade out, I recycled it and made a knife handle for it so that I could have a chef's knife for when slicing and dicing a la "Julia Child" in the movie "Julie and Julia"

Here are some additional TWIN HEART  Veggies.  The leaf lettuce, the ice berg, and the red cabbage are all by her.  The basket of green beans was in a rummage box of "everything/ $2 each".  
Two bucks?
 What a Steal of a Deal!!!
(When I got them home, I gave them a bit of extra dimension by adding a touch of Oak glaze to the edges of the beans so they were not all so visually flat mat green. )
 I'm very happy with my 2 dollar bean basket!!

The tomatoes are foam balls of an artificial plant from craft store, which I painted with glass paints and then glued bits of plastic foliage to the top.  The brown mushrooms are also the stamens from artificial flowers that I re-painted and re-purposed. Since this posting is quite lengthy, I will follow it up Right Away with a
TUTORIAL ON HOW I MADE THEM.

These red onions are some that I purchased from the Seattle Show way back in the 1990's.
They are ceramic.  I love the way all of the mini vegetables are of different mediums.
The faux wood knife block was part of a  Halmark Christmas piece that was removed from its original ornament.  I repainted the knife handles with black nail enamel.

This cabbage is also ceramic  but the spring onions are by me and are the stamens from  artificial flowers.  Personally, I am still not happy with the stems as they look like the texture of asparagus spears.  The color is off as well , but the bulbs are pretty good.  Half good and half bad. Needs more work
Oh well....
Back to the Cutting Board!
:[

 In Seattle, I bought another rooster!
I have an identical one in "GOTHICA" and I love it!   I should have bought  2!
The kitchen baskets were from TWIN HEART MINIATURES
the carrots are by PEARL JOHNSTON and also from part of Mexican Souvenir that I purchased from a thrift store.  I repainted the clay carrots with orange fabric paint to gloss them up because prior to that they just looked like dull sticks of "Ugly"that NO ONE would want to eat.

I made these potatoes using a great Tutorial from VICTORIA MINILAND.   I have found that making potatoes is not as easy as it looks.  These took me a long time to do because the colors of the chalk was not transferring onto the fimo potato like I wanted.  I was mixing it either too red or too brown, too light or too dark.  I eventually gave up trying to color them with the chalks and used my transparent gel stains which worked better for me.  Anyway, here they are, in a cheap basket that also use to be a part of the Mexican Souvenir from the thrift store.

Something's Fishy?
Don't pay any attention to the ice cubes because they stink!  They are from a bag of  pre- chopped acrylic rods that I bought quite a while back. They look artificial.  I viewed a tutorial  that chopped up suction cups that looked far more realistic, but this is will have to do for now.
The fish came from the Sporting Goods section of Canadian Tire, a national hardware/ home improvement  chain.  They were fishing lures and I had to very carefully detach the dangerous hook from their insides, hence the slice in the belly. 

                                                         The fish scales are iridescent.
                        The bodies are made of a type of flexible latex so they wiggle and wobble.
Way Cool!

Just before I leave this little kitchen, I would like to show you my resurfaced copper stock pot originally from my tutorial
"What's for Dinner?"
It is painted with Porcelain Touch Up paint that I bought at LOWE'S.  I painted it inside and out and then I aged the heck out of it, with a variety of gel stains.
The grater is from my tutorial " A Grater Love" and the tall jar of pasta is from my "Spaghetti" tutorial.
Lastly, the bottle of Olive Oil is a piece from a Japanese Re-Ment kitchen collection.


*****
You have just finished the Grand Tour . 
 But now I would like to show you a quick and easy method of 
"growing" your own mushrooms
in
 COOK OF THE HOUSE
  PART TWO

I found some plastic flower stamens that I thought looked like like Mushrooms.
They had a lot of excess flashing on them which I trimmed away with some scissors.

Now Ready to paint

 I Used an off white acrylic paint as the base coat

Used a 50/50 mix of this mat gel medium mixed with the acrylic paint
which helps it to stick to the plastic and doesn't dilute the original color.   

The base color and the gel medium

Mix together and paint onto the stamens

I used a blow dryer to speed up the drying time
then I added a mushroom color to my paint pallet

I mixed the mushroom colored paint in with some of the off-white and then painted it onto the heads of the stamens

Again I used a blow dryer to hurry things along

Added a drop of Burnt Sienna acrylic paint to the pallet 

The dark brown was used to detail around the edge of the mushroom caps and to spot the stems
dried with the blow dryer and then I snipped the mushrooms off of the plastic stems
and touched up the ends with more brown paint 

Using some Oak gel stain that has a golden color, I added some to the tops of the caps for added interest and to break up the flatness of them.
The final results are what you see below.
Other than the tiny white mushrooms and the ones in the white bowl, all of the ones pictured are made by me from plastic flower stems
YUM!

BON APPETITE!

elizabeth