A Tiny Career Change

I have not posted in a while because I have been VERY busy. As you know, I love building little houses. However, recently my day job as a corporate environmental lawyer just has not been cutting it or making me happy. Because of this, two months ago I quit my job and enrolled to study architecture at university. Im really poor now, but Im happy! 

Below are some pictures of our first major project. The purpose of the assignment was to teach us about structural framing. It was a bit of a challenge to build a whole house from technical plans (as opposed to dollhouses where walls are solid) but it was fun. 

These are some projects from our first year design subject, so much balsa wood!

Look forward to some more miniatures which will (hopefully) now be better informed and more interesting thanks to all the new skills I will be picking up!

North Melbourne in Miniature - Another 1:144 House

I decided to make another little 1:144 house this week. There is a pretty white terrace house on my street and I decided to copy it. 

I bought some fittings online this time from Grantline to give some more realism. 

I printed off wallpaper in the same way as last time. In the comments on my last post I was asked what type of printer I used. I used a standard large commercial office printer, the type they have in copy/office supply shops. It isn't the best finish (a little shiny), but the detail is good enough.

I completed each of the rooms before I slotted them into the card shell. That is I folder and cut the wallpaper, made the fireplace and did the architraves. It just gets too difficult to work inside a tiny room with these details.

I used some plastic hobby strips for the architraves and fireplaces, cut them to size and painted them brown. This looks more real than brown cardboard. I made the rest of the house from 1.5mm white card and grey paper (for the blue stone bottom half and sides). 

For the urns on the parapet I searched for an appropriate shaped object, and found earring backings. They were perfect for the purpose so I glued them on and painted them white.

Im still waiting on some shutters to finish it off (which I have ordered) but here is a  compare picture in the mean time.