Meta tags:
description=A blog about making dollhouse miniatures and miniature woodworking.;

Headings (most frequently used words):

the, 2014, 2013, tuesday, 23, june, saturday, may, to, this, blog, george, miniguy, september, monday, 21, 25, 14, friday, february, 22, visits, site, about, me, followers, search, archive, blue, ribbons, at, iowa, state, fair, what, should, go, see, why, have, been, away, so, long, planning, project, it, little, details, that, ll, get, ya, sometimes, plan, isn, thoroughly, thought, through, porch, continues, evolve, measure, twice, cut, once,

Text of the page (most frequently used words):
the (188), and (72), that (36), was (28), for (27), this (25), you (18), project (17), had (16), with (15), about (15), some (15), all (13), from (13), her (12), she (12), george (12), have (12), porch (12), they (11), one (11), them (10), then (10), #miniguy (10), see (10), been (9), miniatures (9), which (9), not (9), comments (9), but (9), will (9), out (9), blog (8), when (8), miniature (8), posted (8), set (8), thought (8), room (7), can (7), what (7), are (7), time (7), last (7), were (6), how (6), help (6), just (6), put (6), little (6), like (6), our (6), club (6), members (6), flaw (6), cabinets (6), who (6), may (5), june (5), 2013 (5), years (5), since (5), share (5), board (5), also (5), roof (5), front (5), side (5), boards (5), even (5), cut (5), shingles (5), their (5), would (5), back (5), work (5), think (5), get (5), office (5), those (5), february (4), december (4), blue (4), iowa (4), state (4), 2014 (4), making (4), year (4), next (4), began (4), could (4), make (4), well (4), most (4), your (4), home (4), right (4), should (4), section (4), need (4), got (4), loved (4), saw (4), into (4), before (4), might (4), made (4), only (4), problem (4), person (4), his (4), him (4), point (4), don (4), new (4), away (4), life (4), has (4), two (4), july (3), august (3), september (3), ribbons (3), fair (3), view (3), old (3), pam (3), kit (3), going (3), fun (3), doing (3), built (3), box (3), discovered (3), build (3), dollhouse (3), pieces (3), boxes (3), pictures (3), know (3), many (3), other (3), wood (3), getting (3), perfectly (3), times (3), full (3), top (3), take (3), left (3), fit (3), added (3), houses (3), once (3), too (3), through (3), table (3), created (3), house (3), above (3), noticeable (3), overall (3), ceiling (3), now (3), swing (3), saturday (3), different (3), than (3), until (3), friends (3), why (3), look (3), easy (3), walls (3), installed (3), details (3), realize (3), long (3), teacher (3), students (3), europe (3), fruit (3), grampa (3), door (3), march (2), april (2), november (2), january (2), complete (2), six (2), parents (2), gave (2), circus (2), each (2), tall (2), ever (2), wife (2), found (2), shelf (2), after (2), rooms (2), standard (2), decided (2), such (2), victorian (2), building (2), dollhouses (2), thanks (2), posts (2), told (2), measurements (2), tell (2), off (2), inch (2), gaping (2), hole (2), frame (2), crooked (2), bottom (2), start (2), again (2), under (2), instead (2), hide (2), any (2), install (2), steps (2), post (2), sale (2), thick (2), thinner (2), gluing (2), slats (2), enough (2), visual (2), close (2), picture (2), caused (2), siding (2), often (2), couple (2), mine (2), floor (2), amazing (2), completed (2), finished (2), together (2), hung (2), number (2), finishing (2), big (2), tuesday (2), come (2), layer (2), fascia (2), another (2), didn (2), though (2), myself (2), really (2), came (2), very (2), mistake (2), mistakes (2), looked (2), fix (2), hidden (2), far (2), read (2), tiny (2), while (2), item (2), story (2), maybe (2), pretty (2), idea (2), needed (2), wall (2), first (2), instructions (2), creating (2), cart (2), latest (2), notes (2), finish (2), down (2), wainscoting (2), law (2), almost (2), step (2), care (2), turned (2), followed (2), heart (2), amyloidosis (2), mom (2), daughter (2), knew (2), always (2), second (2), graders (2), best (2), trip (2), include (2), hand (2), won (2), below (2), sign (2), desk (2), bananas (2), skip (2), october, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, archive, search, followers, profile, tin, tent, characters, animals, figures, hooked, ago, book, purchased, tools, realife, sat, asked, anything, replied, sheepishly, probably, did, shortly, store, nutshell, news, thorne, aspire, process, pricey, result, learned, minis, carved, furniture, designing, hope, knowledge, current, projects, fyi, click, larger, size, enjoy, please, anyone, reading, visitor, counter, visits, site, subscribe, atom, older, hardest, things, difficult, workers, angles, everything, fits, begin, fraction, leads, somewhere, worst, job, measuring, recall, assembling, display, edge, where, needless, say, apart, over, replace, parts, because, nail, holes, imagine, nervous, tension, assemble, slid, prepared, add, brick, column, wow, ultimately, columns, flaws, baseboards, trim, around, windows, doors, scale, measure, twice, friday, glue, paint, railings, flowers, window, shades, estate, taste, texture, ran, jig, glaring, oopsies, encountered, shingling, triangular, mini, blades, barely, peeked, surface, groove, deep, stability, endangered, sorry, distortion, taking, apparently, curving, lines, used, photograph, ordered, pre, individual, etched, car, craftsman, style, homes, own, here, somewhat, incredible, detail, belong, brought, linda, took, feet, woman, dress, relation, tried, height, obviously, sculptor, adhered, weekend, beneath, week, painted, there, yet, being, done, least, gather, variety, items, seasons, decorate, according, cedar, rapids, met, touches, tackle, end, everyone, moving, speeds, constantly, trying, catch, stay, continues, evolve, much, planned, various, forgot, consider, easily, farther, wanted, regret, protruded, further, sanded, thin, overlapped, depth, recessed, doesn, seem, protruding, beyond, face, surrounding, photo, meeting, worrying, haven, thinking, flawless, easier, others, errors, sure, good, brings, mind, article, recently, woodworker, shared, none, noticed, occurred, working, piece, complimented, couldn, immediately, average, never, notice, common, courtesy, generally, cause, withhold, comment, buyer, scrutinizing, every, identified, course, becomes, bargaining, argument, reduce, asking, price, sell, sometimes, plan, isn, thoroughly, straight, forward, visualize, plunge, way, wallpaper, remember, yeah, wire, electricity, remembered, doorway, hall, oops, throw, hands, air, walk, days, weeks, try, write, caught, moment, creative, excitement, proverbial, horse, chuckling, jotted, area, eventually, materials, several, approach, four, dare, gotten, stage, example, dry, walling, son, real, works, promised, basement, slopes, length, sadly, realized, short, engineering, demolition, leveled, prior, adequately, incorporated, plans, written, detailed, wouldn, forget, key, progressed, spite, construction, planning, apologize, disappearance, blogosphere, serious, health, problems, late, congestive, failure, multiple, myeloma, relatively, rare, condition, called, passed, complications, wonderful, extremely, caring, dedicated, gifted, daughters, helicopter, rescuing, girls, whenever, commuted, des, moines, months, grandson, helping, worked, master, degree, smiled, bright, challenge, smartest, struggling, requested, child, giving, receiving, hugs, former, same, losing, friend, advisor, spiritual, guide, irrepressible, presence, interested, supportive, involvement, pastime, journeys, germany, holland, belgium, denmark, italy, switzerland, france, thing, want, discover, miles, place, existed, truly, appreciate, input, sized, recommend, must, places, living, monday, month, honored, tales, free, satisfaction, guaranteed, shaves, haircuts, familiar, finally, angle, hoping, win, show, people, choice, award, neither, unfortunately, delighted, earn, ribbon, anyway, cash, register, says, roombox, apple, crate, totally, appropriate, representation, father, vegetable, business, younger, enlisted, high, school, turn, nice, present, indeed, alicia, crates, comptometer, typewriter, typing, stand, behind, scene, virtual, depiction, lists, magnetically, attached, filing, cabinet, silver, replica, banana, red, tag, indicated, gassed, ethylene, glycol, gas, ripen, faster, enter, ripened, more, miniaturist, 1978, decorated, three, doll, scratch, serve, lamps, addition, showcasing, sidebar, main,

Text of the page (random words):
george the miniguy skip to main skip to sidebar george the miniguy george has been a miniaturist ever since he was six years old he began building dollhouses in 1978 he has built and decorated three doll houses two from scratch and one from a kit he also has created a number of room boxes some serve also as lamps in addition to showcasing miniatures tuesday september 23 2014 blue ribbons at the iowa state fair my miniatures won two blue ribbons at the iowa state fair last month below are the two room boxes that were honored this roombox was created in an apple crate which is totally appropriate since it was the representation of my father in law s fruit and vegetable fruit house business my younger daughter came up with the idea for this project and enlisted my help in creating the box she was in high school at the time and her grampa was going to turn 80 she thought this would be a nice present for him and indeed it was alicia made all of the crates and the fruit i built the hand cart the comptometer on the desk and the typewriter which you can t see it s on a typing stand behind the desk the office on the right side of the scene was a virtual depiction of grampa s office down to the lists magnetically attached to the side of the filing cabinet and the pictures on the wall the silver door on the left is a replica of one of the banana rooms the red tag on the door indicated that the bananas had been gassed with ethylene glycol gas to get them to ripen faster once grampa hung up the sign on the door no one was to enter until the bananas had ripened a little more this room should look familiar to those of you who have followed this blog for some time i finally finished it below is another angle on the room i was hoping this would win the best of show or people s choice award but it won neither unfortunately oh well i was delighted to earn a blue ribbon for it anyway the sign on the cash register says haircuts 1 25 shaves 1 00 tall tales free satisfaction guaranteed posted by george the miniguy at 10 26 pm 8 comments monday june 23 2014 what should i go see friends i am making two journeys to europe in the next year one trip will include germany holland belgium and denmark the other trip will include italy switzerland and france for those of you living in europe and those of you who know europe like the back of your hand what are the must see places full sized or miniature that you would recommend i go and see the last thing i want to do is to get home and then discover that i was only x miles away from some amazing place and didn t even know it existed i truly appreciate your input on this thanks george posted by george the miniguy at 8 26 pm 6 comments saturday june 21 2014 why i have been away so long it s been a long time since i last posted to this blog and for those of you who have followed my blog i apologize for my disappearance from the blogosphere about this time last year my wife of 42 years began to have some serious health problems we discovered far too late that what we thought was congestive heart failure turned out to be multiple myeloma and a relatively rare condition called amyloidosis she passed away from heart complications caused by the amyloidosis on december 12 2013 pam was a wonderful person extremely well read caring dedicated mom and gifted teacher our daughters thought of her as a helicopter mom rescuing the girls whenever they needed help she commuted to des moines for about the first 8 months of our grandson s life helping to care for him while our daughter worked on getting her master s degree from iowa state her students knew her as the teacher who always smiled she was also very bright and knew how to challenge the smartest of her students and how to help those who were struggling parents loved her and often requested that she be their child s teacher she loved almost all of her students and loved giving and receiving hugs from her second graders and former second graders life for me has not been the same since losing my best friend my advisor and spiritual guide and an irrepressible presence in my home and my life she was the person who got me interested in doing dollhouse miniatures and was always supportive of my involvement in this pastime posted by george the miniguy at 8 28 am 19 comments planning the project it s the little details that ll get ya you might think that a miniature project is pretty straight forward come up with the idea visualize what you think it will look like and then plunge into the work to make it the problem for me is when i go about a project in that way it s so easy to put the wallpaper on the walls before i remember oh yeah i needed to wire that wall for electricity first or i installed all of the walls to the dollhouse before i remembered i was going to cut a new doorway to the hall oops it s the little details like this that really set a project back if it s a big enough mistake it s easy to throw my hands in the air and walk away from the project for days weeks or maybe even years that s why i try to write up instructions for my project as if i were creating a new kit it s so easy to get caught up in the moment of creative excitement only to realize that i have just put the proverbial cart before the horse miniature club members were chuckling at my latest project when they saw i had jotted notes to myself on the frame of the house an area that will eventually be hidden by the finishing materials several times i ve looked at the project and thought i need to finish the other side of the roof and just as i approach the project i look down to see four different notes then i realize i don t dare finish the roof until i have gotten my club members to this stage with their houses an example of all this is my latest project which is dry walling then wainscoting my son in law s new office not in miniature in real life he works from home and i promised him i d install wainscoting and cabinets in his office i got the cabinets all installed only to realize that the floor in his office a basement room slopes almost 1 1 2 in the 7 of length of the cabinets sadly i got the cabinets all installed when i realized this problem long story short i had to do some re engineering and a little demolition work to get the cabinets leveled prior to that problem which i had not adequately incorporated into my plans i had written out detailed step by step instructions so that i wouldn t forget to take care of key details as the work progressed all in all in spite of my set back with the construction the walls and cabinets are turned out pretty well i think don t you posted by george the miniguy at 8 03 am 2 comments saturday may 25 2013 sometimes the plan isn t thoroughly thought through as much as i planned and thought through how the various pieces would come together i forgot to consider the layer build up of the shingles on the fascia above the ceiling i could have set the board in that section back another 1 8 easily i could even have set it back farther than that if i had wanted but i didn t and now i regret it once i added the shingles they protruded further to the front than i had thought they might even though i had cut and sanded them myself i made them 1 32 thick really thin but when overlapped the overall depth of the shingles came out to about 3 32 i set the fascia board so that it was recessed only 1 16 that doesn t seem like a problem until you see the top layer of shingles protruding beyond the face of the surrounding boards it s not very noticeable in the photo at left but in person it s noticeable at our last meeting one of our members was worrying that she might have made a mistake in her work i told her if you think i haven t made any mistakes in doing this project think again she was thinking mine looked so flawless some mistakes are easier than others to fix or hide i ve hidden most of my errors so far i m not sure if i have a good fix for this one but i ll work on it this brings to mind an article i read recently by a woodworker he had completed a project and shared it with his friends none of his friends noticed a tiny flaw that had occurred while he was working on the piece when they complimented him though he couldn t help but point out the flaw and immediately they all saw it most of the time if we don t point out the flaw the average person will take in the overall view of the item and will never notice the flaw if they do most times common courtesy should generally cause them to withhold a comment in which they point it out if you re making your miniatures for sale that s a different story then the buyer will be scrutinizing the item for every tiny flaw that they might see each identified flaw of course becomes a new bargaining point for their argument to reduce the asking price maybe that s why i don t sell my miniatures posted by george the miniguy at 11 20 am 5 comments tuesday may 14 2013 the porch continues to evolve the cedar rapids miniature club met last saturday and i added a number of finishing touches to the front porch project when club members tackle a big project like this we end up with everyone moving at different speeds and so i m constantly trying to help members catch up or stay up with the project there are some steps i need to do yet but it s getting close to being done for now at least i ll need to gather a variety of items for all of the seasons so that i can decorate the porch according to the time of year it is as you can see from the picture the siding is completed last weekend i finished with gluing up the slats that fit beneath the porch the week before that i put together the porch swing painted it and then hung it from the porch ceiling now here s a fun and somewhat incredible detail about this the couple are not mine they belong to one of our club members when i brought the porch to miniature club linda took out this little couple we set them in the swing and their feet and the woman s dress fit just perfectly in relation to the floor it was amazing i had tried to set the swing at what i thought would be about 16 in height and obviously the sculptor adhered to that standard too what fun at right is a photograph of the ceiling of the front porch i could have ordered pre cut wood with the individual boards etched into it like the car siding we so often see in many old craftsman and victorian style homes i decided instead to make my own i used the thinner one of my mini table saw blades and set it so that it barely peeked out above the table surface i cut about 1 32 from the 3 32 board enough to put a noticeable groove into the boards but not so deep that the overall stability of the boards was endangered sorry about the visual distortion taking such a close up picture apparently caused some curving of the visual lines in my next post i will share about the jig i created for gluing up the slats for under the porch i also will share with you one of the glaring oopsies i encountered with shingling the front of the house in the triangular section above the porch then i ll need to do a post about the window shades and the roof the shingles i got from an estate sale were just too thick for my taste but i loved their texture so i ran them through my table saw one at a time to make them thinner i ll tell you all about it and share some pictures next steps glue on the roof paint the railings and install them and then start making flowers posted by george the miniguy at 9 06 pm 6 comments friday february 22 2013 measure twice cut once one of the hardest things for me and i ve been told it s difficult for many other wood workers is getting measurements and angles just right so that everything fits perfectly i can t begin to tell you how many times i ve been off by some fraction of an inch which leads to a gaping hole somewhere in the project the worst job of measuring i can recall was assembling the frame of a display box and i put a shelf in crooked not just a little crooked it was off by a full 3 4 of an inch i put the bottom edge of the board where the top of the board should have been needless to say i had to take it apart and start over again i also had to replace some of the wood parts because of the nail holes so imagine my nervous tension as i began to assemble my roof section for the front porch and then slid the porch posts under that section i was prepared to see a gaping hole instead on the left side it fit perfectly and on the right side i had to add 1 16 to the bottom of my brick column wow i ultimately added some pieces at the top of the columns to hide any flaws in the measurements after all that s what baseboards and trim boards around windows and doors are all about even in full scale houses posted by george the miniguy at 10 04 pm 8 comments older posts home subscribe to comments atom visits to this site visitor counter about me george the miniguy when i was six years old my parents gave me a miniature circus complete with a tin tent circus characters and animals each of the figures were about 2 tall i ve been hooked on miniatures ever since years ago my wife pam found a book about making miniatures we purchased some tools and a realife miniatures kit which sat on a shelf for a year i asked her if she was going to do anything with them she replied sheepishly probably not so i did and i had fun doing it shortly after that we found a miniature store and nutshell news i built a room box then i discovered the thorne rooms which gave me a standard to which i aspire next i began to build pam s dollhouse in the process i discovered how pricey miniatures can be and decided i could build some of the pieces as a result i ve learned how to make minis such as victorian carved furniture to designing and building dollhouses and room boxes in this blog i hope to share some of my knowledge with you as well as current projects fyi you can click on most of the pictures in this blog and view them in larger size enjoy and please share your comments they help me know if anyone s reading this blog thanks view my complete profile followers search this blog blog archive 2014 4 september 1 blue ribbons at the iowa state fair june 3 2013 6 may 2 february 4 2012 2 august 1 july 1 2011 4 december 2 january 2 2010 35 december 1 november 1 september 2 august 1 july 3 june 3 may 6 april 2 march 4 february 9 january 3 2009 65 december 2 november 5 october 4 august 4 july 2 june 3 may 9 april 12 march 18 february 6