Creme & Freya's Christmas Trip to town.

Creme & Freya's Christmas Trip to Town.

Story by Terra Jackson, photo by Chill82.

This story was sent to me during a Christmas Ornament swap on the Sylvanian Families forum. 

Thank you so very much Terra!

New-to-me figures

My apologies for not blogging in a while. Life gets busy with 5 children, 2 cats, & a dog!

I’m still collecting, but lately I’ve been buying second hand older figures off eBay.
I’m quite excited this week as I now finally have a complete original Snow-Warren white rabbit family! (I have most of the Celebration family too)

And now my Bramble pony is joined by Ivy the pony & Strawberry the Foal!!

More of the new JP Town series.

Here are some photos of the new town series. 

New JP Sylvanian Families Town series

My apologies for not updating this blog in quite a while. My life has become unexpectedly busy & although I love my SF there has not been as much time to write about them.

I'm here now to give a few updates.

My new Japanese Sylvanian Families items arrived a few weeks ago.

I received the Department store, Delicious Restaurant & my daughter now has the Gelato Shoppe.

Here they are all pictured together.

While it may look like it takes up quite a bit of room, it's actually no bigger than 2 Beechwood halls together.

The ornate detail on these items is exquisite! I haven't taken close up photos yet, but I hope to do so in the near future. Also I have ordered the JP Collectors club exclusive brown/chocolate buildings from Kobee-japan on ebay. They should be here in a few weeks & I hope to show them to you soon too. 

Australian Plangon Doll fair

Today my daughter & I went to a Doll fair, it's the second that we have gone this year & we have enjoyed both of them. This one was hosted by the Australian Plangon Doll Collectors Club (http://plangon.webs.com/)

We enjoyed it immensely! here are some photos of the exhibits & displays

Including a huge Sylvanian Families display (which I have uploaded a video of on YouTube    https://youtu.be/Z7gaDDFSZUE )

(can you see my sneaky little Teddy Bear story girl in this photo)  

Building Neptune Island

The past few weekends I have been working on a rocky outcrop for my lighthouse. Unfortunately I don;t have photos of the whole process, but I will describe what I did & then show what photos I do have.

1.Cardboard frame. Glue sturdy cardboard (mine is a recycled box) into the frame shape you want. I used a glue gun, but you can use PVA glue if that what you have.

2. Build sides. I scrunched up pages of newspaper into balls & glued them on to the side of the frame, I made the layers thicker at the bottom as I wanted a hill shape. Then I glued a couple of flat newpaper pages over the top of the whole lot.

3. Paste. I mixed a paste of : 1 cup wheat flour,  1 cup water, a pinch of salt. You can use papermache paste of you like. I spread this in a moderately thick layer over the top of the newspaper until all of it was covered & damp. You must let this dry fully, which would be at least 24 hours, longer is better. If you have paste left over place it in an airtight container & save it for the next step.

4. Cover. For this next layer I used a type of butchers paper (moderately thin, & wide pieces) I saved these pieces from my last batch of chips from the Fish & Chip shop. Place them over the top of your frame & then paste using the same method as before. Let it dry fully once again. If you don't have a single piece big enough to fully cover your structure, use multiple pieces, but let them each dry before putting the next one on.  Repeat this step as necessary.

5. Paint. Using your chosen colours paint your structure. As then is a rocky island I used a grey water based paint & brushed over it lightly allowing some of the paste to show through for effect. Be careful using the water based paint though as too much will cause your paste to loosen. I had to allow this to dry for over 24 hours to be sure the paste & paint both were dry & stable. 

Using this method you can create many structures like hills, rocks, a burrow for rabbits or moles, or even a hobbit hole I guess.

Sylvanian Town building comparison to cosy cottage & room set up

In my last post I forgot to add the dimensions of the building. Well here they are!

It is 26cm long, 15cm high & 10cm deep.

not very big at all.

It is about half as high as the current cosy/starter cottage

but as you can see it is still the same width

& it looks about half the depth

Also I had some people ask about the furniture set up, which is quite tricky!

Here are some of my photos of different ways of setting it up

The first is my favourite.

As you can see the sofa is a bit big for this little room & you have to get creative otherwise it blocks the door. When it is used for a child that wouldn't be so much of a problem, but for us adult collectors who want realism it is a bit of a put off.

Edit: In late 2017 Epoch/Sylvanian Families JP made a cartoon TV miniseries of 12 episodes., including one based in the Designer Studio/Apartment. I love the way they have furnished this room & I wish the rest of the decor was available to buy!