Going round in circles......

Determined to crack on with filling the shop, I spent several hours today cutting out tiny circles in order to make a selection of silk ribbon spools for Emilie's workroom.

I managed to find a rather fabulous printie kit on the internet which has loads of things suitable for a sewing room and even better, all the labels and cards are in French.  

How serendipitous is that?!

Cutting out tiny circles is tedious.  I thought I'd have a paper punch in the correct size but I was wrong.  And in any case, having tried it, it's well nigh impossible to get the punch in the right position over the circle.  So I'm having to do them all with scissors.

As only the paper printies were included in the kit I had to rummage through my extensive collection of wooden dowels in order to find two as near as possible to the diameter of the circles for the ends of the spools, then cut them all to length using my circular saw. 

This is tricky to say the least as my fingers had to be worryingly close to the blade, but thus far at least I still have my full complement of digits.

Each wooden spool then had to be carefully sanded around the top and bottom edges, before glueing the labels on each end (taking care to get them both lined up in the same direction..... OCD?  Moi?!)

Finally I glued a length of  silk ribbon around the wooden spool.

It's one of those miniature jobs which I start with a great deal of enthusiasm, especially if I've been doing a lot of inventive stuff.  It's lovely to sit down and just methodically work through a series of steps which require precision but not much in the way of creative thought.

However, after a short while, the enormity of the task begins to dawn on me and I begin to lose heart.  So far I've made just 16, over a period of a few hours.  Granted that included setting up the saw and cutting the dowel to length but it's still slow going.

16 down and 41 still to go!  And because I started off with the bigger spools, I still have to tackle the smaller ones, which will require cutting the dowel into 4mm lengths.  If I don't lose a finger doing those I'll be amazed!

And that's just the ribbon spools.  Next on the list are cards of narrow lace and trims, which will take just as long.  I think I need to put aside one full hour each day to just work through them all.  Maybe I'll schedule that hour to coincide with The Archers followed by the Afternoon Play on Radio 4..... 

In other news, I've received the tall display units for the downstairs shop and they balance the whole thing beautifully.

Aside from a special collection of dolls in the shop, I'll have to fill those tall display cabinets, plus 7 individual counter displays, like the ones in the fuzzy foreground above.

Trying to decide on what will go in all of those is proving to be difficult.  For example I will definitely want one for toy baby doll accessories and accoutrements.  Another for wigs and hair accessories.  Maybe another for doll costume accessories.... buttons, bows, jewellery etc

My problem is I can't decide on a definitive list.  As soon as I think I've reach a final decision, I get another idea and my list flies out of the window.

However, one thing I do know, I'm going to have to make an awful lot of tiny things to fill all those cabinets......