Dog vignette — first steps

When I ordered my miniature dogs from Lucy Francis, I sent her reference photos and measurements for Daisy (as best I was able to get them on a wiggly puppy, without Geoff’s help) and some I had for Rosy from when my sister knit her a sweater years ago.

The dogs’ sizes came out good relative to each other, but they seemed a bit bigger than 1:12. Here they are on a 1:12 sofa:

Compared to real life:

And with 1:12 figures:

Compared to me:

I didn’t have any Barbie dolls to check them with, but they seemed closer to 1:6 scale. I mentioned this to Lucy and she actually offered to redo them, but I somehow missed the email until it was too late. But that’s okay! Since I was planning to build the fireplace from scratch, I could fudge the scale.

Last year I bought this vintage Treasure View roombox intending to use it for this scene.

The dimensions of the display area are 8″ high x 10″ wide x 4″ deep. My real life ceiling is 8′, so the size would have been perfect for 1:12, but now that I was planning to go bigger than 1:12, I needed a taller ceiling.

I thought about leaving out the drawer (which I didn’t have a use for anyway), but I would have had to fill in the dado, which would look sloppy on the front edges. Also, for the plexiglass (which slides into grooves at the front of the box) to be removable, the box top would also need to be removable, interfering with the ceiling lights I wanted to add. And the wood was warped, so I doubted my ability to assemble it neatly. Normally I would get Geoff’s help with something like this…

I turned to Etsy for shadow box alternatives. I really liked these from Wicked Good Decor, but they have a removable back. This would again cause problems with electricity, since I was planning to run the wires down the wall behind the fireplace.

After spending a fair amount of time and brainpower trying to come up with a solution that would work with a removable back, I went back to Etsy. This time I ended up at PinkSeagullDesign, which sells front-opening shadow boxes. I got an extra deep one with inside dimensions of 12″ x 12″ x 5 5/16″.

I wanted to buy a painted shadow box to save myself some time, but none of the paint options matched the blue/gray I was seeing in my head, so I bought an unfinished box.

Next I built the platform. This was in October, and it wasn’t cold enough yet to use the fireplace, so the real platform was in storage in the garage in a spot that requires climbing a ladder. I didn’t want to go up there myself and once again couldn’t ask Geoff for help without arousing suspicion.

I put this picture of Rosy on my iPad and brought it into the workshop for reference.

I started with a piece of wood that looked about right.

I zoomed the picture on my iPad so Rosy and top of the platform matched up with the Rosy model and my piece of wood, and built the rest of it using the photo as a guide.

Our hearth (four rows of bricks) is about 12″ tall, and the platform is the same height. This would translate to 1″ tall in 1:12 scale. I made the platform 1.5″ tall, which seemed about right for Daisy’s height next to it and established the scale of the roombox as halfway between 1:12 and 1:6.

The legs are too thick. I realized this as I was building it, but I decided to stay the course. I only had bits of time here and there to work on this that 1) Geoff wouldn’t walk in and see what I was doing, and 2) Daisy, who’s still a puppy, could be left alone, so there are parts of this project where my desire to meet the Christmas deadline won out over my intrinsic perfectionism.

I found a piece of tan microfiber fabric in my stash similar to the mat Rosy was lying on in the picture. (It’s a Restoration Hardware fabric swatch — you can order these for free from their website!) I spread anti-fray glue on the edges, just a light amount since it tends to discolor the fabric.

With the platform finished, I glued together two pieces of 3/4″ strip wood to create the front of the hearth. Our fireplace is about 70″ wide, but rather than do the math, I eyeballed the width based on the size of the platform and the overall width of the box and ended up with a 7.5″ hearth. This leaves 2.25″ on each side of the fireplace — just enough space for Daisy’s sploot.

Coming up next time… prepping the box!