More about the street and the buckets

Do you reckon it's difficult to think of a suitable title every time you blog?  I do, but.... I'm not really breaking my head over it though. ;-)

Well, this is just a follow up of what I was working on before.  First the street scene.  I have finished the cobble stones and grouted them.  I'm not overly happy, but it will have to do.  The part I'm not happy with is that the clay shrunk more than I had anticipated and the grout was still a bit to white, eventhough I had added some parchment and burnt sienna colours to darken it.  Not enough though after it had dried up.  Wonder if I can still do something with a wash....

To wash in the grout I had to varnish the cobble stones first. This made them darker and a bit too shiny eventhough I used matt varnish. It's not too bad though. We can pretend it had just been raining. :-) Yes, I know, you can see the grout on the pavers' edges. Will have to paint that again. Never a dull day for a miniaturist!


The buckets are finished too now.  Unfortunately they ended up a bit bigger than the one I already had and also I couldn't match the colour, since I didn't paint the smaller one at home.  It's not too bad though.  I might just use the four new ones outside.  I sprayed them silver at first, but that appeared to be too shiny.  Silver Folk Art paint didn't do it for me either, so I went out and bought an expensive spray can for a galvanised zink effect.  I am happier now, but I am still wondering how to get that real 'used' and 'old' effect of zink.  I own a few items myself and when I compare the buckets just don't look right.  Anybody has an idea????

The one in the front is the older one, that I made a few years ago.  The one on the far right has been sprayed with 'zink', the other two are still plain 'silver'.

I have been in search of all the items I could use to decorate and fill my shop and luckily I had quite a few.  First there is this huge bouquet which gets pride of place in the bay window.  An eye catcher for the customers I reckon, and also this beautiful Hibiscus that I am putting out on the pavement:

And that's my update for today.  All I need to do now is to welcome yet another follower.  She's from Finland and her name is Ultsu.  Ultsu likes dreaming, like most of us, and she does it (and more) on: Mini Dreams. I hope you'll enjoy visiting my blog Ultsu and a warm welcome to you.