The City Street Corner Kit

by miniatures.com

I was part of the buying frenzy that started when I found out that miniatures.com was going out of business.  This was one of those back burner projects that I had planned to buy later. I bought a "few" other things too. 😏  I am happy there will be new owners taking over the company 😍! 

I created this as a prop for the Bird Lady Doll. It will be an extension of the walls I made years ago. https://jocelynsdollhouse.blogspot.com/2017/06/mini-tribute-to-mary-poppins.html 

I know in the movie she sits on the cathedral's steps but the park scene is more practical for me and plus it's my favorite background scene. The assembly was very straight forward, I dry fitted the whole thing before gluing it together. I separated the wall from the base until I had everything assembled and painted.

I added the finial caps to the posts to match the park walls I built earlier and glued them to the squares and painted them sky grey. Then I used stone texture spray paint from Home Depot to cover the walls. I used flat black spray paint for the street and "worn penny" metallic acrylic paint on the grates. I used brown pastel chalk and scenic material along the bottom of the wall for weeds. I plan to add some larger realistic looking pigeons and squirrels that I ordered from ScaleGrail on Etsy. 

I will use tacky wax so my birds will not look ☠️ 

I painted the sidewalk base grey and added a light spray of stone texture and used a Prismacolor Marker to draw the lines and more chalk pastels for added textures. 

I used a square wood block as a base to make a crate for her to sit. I cut and glued wood coffee stirrers to the block to give it more dimension. I used Prismacolor Markers and color pencils to added wood grain lines. Then covered the crate  with an oak gel stain to unify everything. 

I bought the tree years ago from Micheals, it was part of the fairy landscapes. I used the foam base that was part of the packaging and painted it brown and covered it with static grass. I used wood strips to make a square and created a planter box. I painted the box grey and added circle paper clips spray painted black to use as fencing around the top. I used black spray paint on the iron fence included with the kit.

 

I glued the tree to the foam but I left it unattached to the planter box and the sidewalk base for flexibility in changing the scenery. 

I made the bags of bird seed from recycled packing paper. I used foam beads mixed with acrylic paint  to make the bread crumbs on the sidewalk.

My goal was to get this done in a day! I have more details that I want to add along with more birds and squirrels, but I will update the post later with those changes. 

Mini Tribute to Mary Poppins

my birds fell over, not dead

 I love Mary Poppins! When I bought the Mary Poppins Doll, I immediately designed a room for her in the Painted Lady Dollhouse. Just like in the movie, I gave it the address "17 Cherry Tree Lane". I imagine this is where the wind blew her after she left Jane and Michael Banks. 

But it wasn't until I discovered the perfect "Bert" chimney sweep doll, that I was inspired to make the mini display of my favorite characters and scenes from the original movie. I thought that the wall outside the park would be a great backdrop for the dolls and scenes.

I love how his mouth is open like he is singing

I commissioned the same artist that made the "Chimney Sweep" doll, to make a "Bird Woman Doll". I purchased the pigeons on eBay.

The park bench and basket, I already had and I made the bags for the scene, Feed The Birds.

I made the "kites" from scrapbook paper, cloth covered floral wire and mini dowels, to represent the scene, Let's Go Fly A Kite.
The "chalk drawings", I drew with colored pencils to simulate the drawings on the pavement in that part of the movie.

The "landscape", I created using trees I purchased on sale from Michaels and a grass mat from HobbyLobby.

The "fenced wall", I used scraps of MDF, wood rectangles, doll bases and large finial caps. I had not planned to use the wall in front of the house and had made only half a wall to display on a small table but when I placed it there to dry, I liked how it looked in front of the house and create the extended wall.


I made a frame from wood strips to hold the plastic fence in place in the wall. Then I used black hammer texture spray paint on the fence and Venetian Gold metallic acrylic paint as accent. I sprayed the wall with a grey primer and stone texture spray paints.

scrap pieces for the base

rectangle, doll base, finial cap for the top

3 pieces: wall, pillar, sidewalk

rear view

side view

frame glued to fence

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dry fit without glue

 black hammer texture spray paint and gold metallic acrylic