Twilight porch vignette in half scale

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Years ago, I started a half scale porch vignette and never finished it. In the interest of finishing up some smaller projects before I dig in on the Little Belle, I completed it over the summer but neglected to post a blog about it until now. Time flies.

Here’s more or less what the porch looked like when I put it aside.

I had also stained some 1:12 siding strips and cut them up to begin shingling the roof.

I put the project aside because I was having a really hard time deciding on a color scheme. Unhappy after several attempts, I went to Home Depot and found two shades of purple that complemented the very light gray siding. Since my windows and doors were caked with many layers of paint by this point, I bought new ones and started over.

Even with the new paint colors in hand, I was indecisive about which should be the main trim color and which the accent color. I started with the lighter purple for the main trim, then promptly changed my mind. I also decided to rip out the skinny stick flooring and redo it with the same gray stain I used for the shingles.

My dad had commented that the windows looked like they were missing pediments. This didn’t bother me at first but the more I looked at it, the more I agreed, so I made pediments out of wood. I started with a block of wood slightly less than the depth of the window.

Then I wrapped cornice around the block, mitering the corners.

Here’s how it looks on top of the window.

Next I finished redoing the porch flooring and painted the foundation black in anticipation of adding lattice.

I had a few lattice scraps left over from the Gull Bay — probably not enough to do a full house, but plenty for this small vignette. This is plastic needlepoint canvas turned on a diagonal.

I covered the porch base with a grass sheet, then added trim around the lattice.

On to landscaping! I’d recently bought a jar of Halloween themed potpourri at Tuesday Morning because it had some of those little seeds that look like pumpkins in it, which I wanted to stock up the Little House in the Big Woods cabin for winter. I dug through it to see what else I might be able to use.

These orange prickly things make good bushes when covered with greenery.

I then added a few blooms off a fake flower.

The rest of the plants are also made from fake flower pieces, stuck in clay bases covered with sprinkle grass. This post describes the process in more detail.

The wicker porch swing, made by Lelani Warling, was an eBay purchase.

I added brackets to the porch roof, using a trim scrap to make sure they lined up. I also added gingerbread trim (there are some better pics of this farther down).

I made window curtains from a piece of lace.

This mailbox was another eBay buy. I think it’s a Lemax or Dept 56 piece. I expected it to be plastic but it’s metal, which is nice because the mailbox looks realistic, but a little harder to modify than plastic would have been.

I managed to sand off some of the front and sanded a notch into the back, so it would fit snugly up against the foundation and not hang off the base.

I painted the post with the darker trim color, and painted the base (which is supposed to be a snow mound) green.

Then I glued grass onto the mailbox base to match the plants.

Finally, I covered all the exposed edges with trim, and glued in the plants. Once the plants were glued in I filled in the gaps between them with the sprinkle grass. The color isn’t exactly the same as the sheet of grass on the base, but they blend together well.

Here’s the finished porch! The porch swing was tough to hang and I should have done that before I glued on the gingerbread, because I ended up breaking it and had to buy more.

I’m calling this the “twilight porch” because the shades of purple and gray cast a twilight-y vibe. Even the squirrel in the garden (Dept 56 piece) has a purple tint.

Top view, to show the shingles.

I covered the back of the vignette with gray suede scrapbook paper that has a black back that shows through the windows, so it looks like a darkened room inside.

I cross-stitched this mat from a design in the June Grigg pamphlet Country Collectibles for Miniatures. The sleeping black lab seems fitting for twilight.

I’d like to add an elderly couple sitting on the porch swing but so far haven’t found exactly what I’m looking for, so it’ll stay empty for now.