Welcome to my life . . . .

This is a blog about my passion: dollhouses and miniatures. This particular blog was started to follow my miniature dream: to create a Victorian Mansion. But work on my Mansion is slow. Very slow. Sloth slow. Ice Age glacier movement slow. Why? Because I am easily distracted by other personal miniature projects (I have 50+ roomboxes and 15 dollhouses in various stages of incompletion) and because I work for a miniature shop and am often up to my elbows in miniature projects that aren't mine! So, I thought, some artists work in a particular medium (woods, watercolors, clay, oils, etc.), I work in progress . . . .

Thursday, October 4, 2018

2 Year Water Anniversary!

Can you believe it's been 2 years since my water experiment? (First blog post on water effects)

So it's time to check in....and I'm happy (bored?) to report: absolutely nothing!  They appear to be exactly the same after 2 years!  I lightly dusted them with a wet rag (had to dab on the Scenic Water one as it is a gel consistency as opposed to the others which have a solid surface).  And inspected them.  And I didn't see any significant change in two products, and only a minor change in the other one.

Here they are (Then and Now photos):
THEN: First few days of the water effects

NOW: Water effects as of today...looks pretty much the same.

THEN: Day 1 of EnviroTex Pour-On in Painted Bowl
NOW: EnviroTex Pour-On in Painted Bowl is the same

THEN: First few days of EnviroTex Pour-On
NOW: EnviroTex Pour-On is basically the same as it was 2 years ago...

THEN: Day 1 of Solid Water, cloudy issues starting at bottom
NOW: Solid Water did seem to react some more with birdbath color/material or it has yellowed a bit.
THEN: First few days of Scenic Water
NOW: Scenic Water still there, bubbles and all...

NOW: Noticed pock marks in the surface but I can't recall if they were there before.
Solid water had a noticeable, yet still minor, change this time.  Two years ago, Solid Water had an immediate reaction (to either the paint or material the birdbath was made out of) and the "water" has either continued to get cloudier or the "water" has begun to yellow.  It is hard to say which/what is happening, but there is definitely a difference with this product.  And Scenic Water has pock marks on the surface; but I suspect they may have been there before and I just didn't notice them as clearly until now.  EnviroTex Pour-On continues to be the front runner with no noticeable changes after 2 years!

In fact, I had made a pond that took 3 different pourings of EnviroTex to get the depth I needed (as you can only pour roughly 1/8" or so at one application).  After 1-1/2 years of sitting, no cracks have formed, no pulling away from the edges, no issues whatsoever!  So even my deep water example is good (except for all the bubbles that were in it as I poured it)!

My little pond, complete with fish and bubbles...

...so many bubbles.  Bubbles!  BUBBLES!  My bubbles. (It's a "Finding Nemo" reference for those of you who aren't crazy like me.)

From a distance and without direct light on it, you don't really see the bubbles though.
So we will continue to wait and monitor the progression of the water effects...check back next year and we'll see where they are at!

And for those of you that have made it this far into the blog post: Yes, it's been several months since my last post.  Things got stressful over the summer and I spent more time at the doctors than I would have liked, but I'm back and fairly healthy, so I'm attacking my miniature projects again!  However, the many summer weeks with more mental energy than physical energy did add two more personal projects to my mental list of projects I want to do and I will be working on them this winter!

Meanwhile, I still have my Mansion to work on!  Mansion is currently flipped upside down so I can paint and install the Ballroom Ceiling (sneak peek pic below).  Need to get the ceiling finished and flip the house right side up again so that I can then finish the exterior of the addition!
I have a lot of these little bits on the Ballroom Ceiling to paint in the next few weeks.
And I have 5 customer houses in right now that I should be working on as well as 3 other small projects I want/need to do by Nov. 8th for a friend's birthday!  Busy month ahead!