Joanne's Minis: Dollhouse Miniature Stove Kit part 3

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Dollhouse Miniature Stove Kit part 3

This week we finish up the stove kit that I bought at the mini show. I am really happy with how it turned out.

After the stove was assembled I spray painted it with a light coat of Satin finish Black spray paint. This is totally optional but I think it went a long way in making this kit look less like it was made of plastic and more like it was metal. If you can't spray paint yours I would skip this because I don't think a brushed on coat of paint would give nearly as nice of a finish. I also gave the “chrome” pieces a light coat of aluminum spray paint to help rid them of that high gloss plastic look.

I also needed to apply the water slide decal to the stove board, I am probably the last person you should listen to about do decals but I did get through it.

At this point I glued on the “chrome” pieces to the stove. I had debated with myself if I should glue them on now or after the next step but in the end decided to glue them on now so that the next step could kind of blend them together and make both of them look more like metal.

The last step I decided to do was to apply a finish of Perfect Pearls. These are pearlescent pigment powders according to the package. I got the complete kit which comes with 4 colors of the powder, 2 brushes and the “perfect medium” pad, regular price on the kit was $18 but I had a half off coupon so it brought the price down. I had never worked with these before and they looked interesting. The label on the package says it will create a faux metal look and that is what I wanted to do so I took the plunge. My kit came with the pewter color we used on this kit, a really pretty blue, a green and a gold. After using these on this project I am pretty sure I will be buying more and using them on other projects, they are a lot of fun to work with and give beautiful results.

Since I had no idea how to work with these I got some advice on the Facebook page and they went over to YouTube to find videos on them too. I played around a bit with some ideas on the back and bottom of the stove and came up with my game plan.

I found for this kit using a make-up sponge was the easiest way to apply the medium that goes under the pigments. Then just use the soft brushes from the kit to brush a tiny bit of the powder on the area you are working on. And I mean a tiny bit, a little goes a long, long way. As I went along I used a soft powder brush to buff the excess pigment off the stove. After I was through applying the pigment to the entire stove I used some of the cotton safety swaps to buff the finish to a nice glow.

I had thought I was going to spray the completed stove with some clear sealer in a satin finish but decided at the last moment to just use the water mist like the manufacturer recommends. My stove won't be handled much and I didn't want to disturb the lovely glow by getting it too wet with the spray finish. What I did was to mist the water in the air over the stove and let the dampness fall onto the stove. I tested this on a piece of the extra plastic from the kit and it seemed to seal just fine.

If you are interested in learning more about the product you can find out more at Ranger here

So here are some pictures of the stove both with just the spray paint finish on and then with the Perfect Pearls.