2019 - Kathy Novak

For a brief bio of this Camper, please CLICK HERE.

2019 - Kitchen in an armoire

I finally finished my Kitchen Cupboard. It is a “collection” of memories of my mom’s and aunt’s kitchens from my younger (after all, I am NOT old!) years. And because they remain very fresh memories, I purposely did not do any aging.

I made the kitchen stove (except for the burners which I found on Etsy) using the parts from the kit that would have been in that spot and covered them with that foam stuff for crafting. While it doesn’t open, it is lit and inside the oven is a batch of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. 

A fresh plate of cookies is on the table next to a pretty accurate replica of my Aunt Hattie's strawberry cookie jar that she had for years and I remember well. BTW, I made the cookie jar from Model Magic rather than Fimo.  My friend, Linda, and I discovered it through our miniature club at the first meeting Linda and I attended. It’s soft, easy to mold, air dries, and is paintable. The project that night was cinnamon buns, and Linda made then in bakery  boxes for tidbits the next year.

I also recreated my Mom’s 1946 Betty Crocker cookbook, a cookie book, and our church cookbook. The pages are blank, but the covers are recognizable to our family.

 Every Christmas, my Aunt expected someone to give her a calendar towel to hang on a door in the kitchen. This one is from 1957. I found it on eBay, photographed it down to scale, and printed it on fabric computer paper.

The sink full of dishes started as a restaurant peanut butter container. I used Triple Thick and microbeads for the dishwater and stuffed dishes & silverware  in while it was setting up. The countertop is needlepoint canvas painted red and glued to the counter. I found chrome detail tape on line for the counter’s edge.

Inside the under-sink curtain are yellow gloves tucked in a pail and ‘50s-era Rinso and bars of soap. Kitchen towels are in the drawers underneath. To the left of the drawer is a mouse enjoying a banana. Left of that is a Kitchenmaid mixer and below that, a potato bin with potatoes from Liz’s table [Liz Dieleman of Grandpa's Dollhouse]. The tall sliding cupboard has cleaning supplies and wine. The cannisters above the sink were spray painted to look like the ones we had when I was about 10. The sign on the left door says, appropriately, “Oh my God, my mother was right about everything!"

All the upper cabinets are lit with LEDs. At Camp, Wayne [Dieleman] raised the base for me to accommodate a battery box that slides underneath and holds 8 AA  batteries to power the cabinet lights. The oven is on a separate coin battery gizmo.  

The backsplash and floor are  individually-laid real ceramic tiles from a site I found online. If you look closely, in front of the “leg” of the table is a doorstop. One of the last gifts my mom gave me before she passed away was a heavy, foot-wide doorstop. I photographed it, reduced it down to a little over an inch, printed several of the pictures on cardstock, cut and glued layers of the houses to give them the same 3-D depth as the original. The “street” in front is also made from Model Magic.

The very toughest and frustrating part for me was the hinges, but I got there. While the table is hinged, it is also glued to never fold up! The separate table at the left was a strawberry jam canning workshop I took at a Tom Bishop show in Chicago in the early ‘90s. 

All together now......

Next — I’m going to finish the 1/2 scale Fairy House from 2018!!! - - but, for me, it’s a witch’s house!

 - Kathy N.