Let there be light..... !

Phew!

It's been a whirlwind few weeks, but we battled through a blizzard on Monday to post the the penultimate batch of Christmas orders....

The final batch are now finished and will be posted out tomorrow (Thursday 14 Dec), from which point I'm officially on holiday.

Yayyyy!

Of course you can still order from the website, but I can't guarantee pre-Christmas delivery.  Plus I'll be in Suffolk for a few days from Monday, but if you're planning on placing an order, and can do it in the next 24 hours, I'll make a special post run on Friday and we'll hope for the best.  Delivery within the UK should be fine,  but the last posting dates for most international air mail have now passed.

So.  Having finished the parcel packaging earlier, I quickly tidied up in the workroom and perused my Twixmas project.

Twixmas is that languid period between Christmas festivities and New Year frivolity.  It's a time for lounging about in front of the fire, finishing off the chocolate and mince pies and generally enjoying a few quiet, relaxing days.

It is also traditionally the time when I get stuck into a new project, freed from the pressures of work and having to be creative.

This Twixmas, I shall be building, lighting, decorating and furnishing a little 1/24th cottage, which I've had for a few months already.  Although my tiny dolls are 1/24th scale, I've never made a 1/24th house before so it will be a bit of a challenge.  However, as it's so much smaller it should be quicker... at least to paint and decorate.

I think I may have gone a bit overboard on the lighting though....

Think Blackpool Illuminations.....

I've never worked with 1/24th lighting before either, so I thought I'd just check out one of the wall lights to see how fiddly they were.  I have two 12v transformers, so disconnected one of them from La Mignonette and connected it to one of the tiny plug socket strips.

So far so good.

Then I unpackaged one of the twin wall lights, plugged it into the socket strip and.... zilch.

*sigh*

I thought that perhaps I'd need a special smaller voltage transformer, but it said 12V on the packaging, and a quick Google showed that a normal 12V transformer would be fine.
Perhaps it was the transformer..... so I disconnected the other one from my day nursery and tried it too.

Still nothing.
Flummoxed.

Then I wondered if the tiny light bulbs might not be screwed in properly, so took off the lampshades to check.

And immediately discovered why they wouldn't work.

There were no bulbs installed.  What I thought was a miniscule packet of SPARE bulbs, turned out to be the only bulbs.

Not only that.... they weren't screw-in bulbs, like most 1/12th lights.  Instead there were two tiny prongs, much thinner than any human hair, which had to be inserted into two equally tiny holes in the candle fitting.... almost too small to see with the naked eye.

It was at this point that I regretted thinking that 1/24th was going to be quicker and easier.

With the aid of my magnifying lamp, I managed to finagle the bulbs into the candles, and again plugged the fitting into the socket.

Tah Dah!!!!!!

Finally... there was light.  After almost an hour of faffing about, but nevertheless...

So my next task is to plan where each of the lights will go, then, before assembling the house, drill holes for lighting runs and cut channels to recess the wires.

As with every house I've ever built, I will be kit-bashing it, to change the staircases, move doors etc.  I might even cut some additional windows in the side walls.  Plus I need to make a baseboard with a little front garden.  Plans and ideas keep forming and coalescing so the next few weeks before Twixmas I'll be busy with pencil, notepad and ruler.

Plus I'll blog my progress here.  Sounds like a plan....