More mini's- making stuff and scales

So I just made a post that had a ton of pics of stuff I've been making lately. I touched on a bit of rant about cost of things and scales... Because by george a lot of mini's can be expensive, and not right on the scale.
I have pretty much never paid full price for any of my village stuff. Michaels, Joanns, and Menards are usually the only regular stores that carry village stuff, though sometimes I've found things at the local Rite Aid and Walgreens, lol. But I wait till the stuff goes on sale, or I got the good coupons- or best is when I got both going on :) I've gotten a lot of stuff from thrift and resale shops too, a lot of good stuff. And sometimes in the process, I've had to revamp stuff, or fix broken stuff... and that's led into making stuff. Because eff that if I'm gonna pay 5 bucks on sale for something I can make myself for way less. And well, I like making stuff like this. Sooner or later maybe someone will want to buy stuff I make :)

So then scale- I have a bit of range of scale in Fortunes Turning. With American villages in general like Lemax and Dept 56, the buildings are actually small for the figures and details that are sold with the buildings. The buildings are around 1:48-1:64 scale range, people are 1:24-1:32 scale range. While figures tend to be about 2 1/2" tall, doorways tend to be about 2" tall. So there's already some fudging around with the scale there village collectors have to deal with.
When doing the details... 1:6 scale is HUGE- this is often called re-ment size or Barbie Doll size. 1:12 scale is tooo big, that's the scale for regular dollhouses. 1:16 scale is popular among tabletop players- but like all gaming stuff, stupidly expensive for pretty much anything. 1:24 scale can be harder to find and much more expensive than 1:12 stuff is.

What does all of this mean then? Some photos...

I had ordered a couple cheap sets of dishes off Ebay- white plastic, 33 pieces for 99 cents, some gold kettles and clear glasses were similar deals. I wanted to get a feel for what all the range in size stuff was when figuring all this out. I was gifted with a lovely brass set from my sis and mom, bought one of the standard silver mini sets from Michaels, and use various jewelry findings here. Keep in mind all this is laid out on about a 5 inch wide space, with items ranging from Barbie doll size down to the size of the standard figure and table from my village. Sister Mercy is my regular model.

Same setup, different angle. The multi compartment round dish and gold kettle are the regular Barbie size pieces, meant to be a regular big kettle and serving tray. They will end up be parts of street scenes, something like giant soup kettle and dim sum dish, or something.. The rest of the white dishes give scale, note the stacked bowls- the biggest ones are regular Barbie bowls, while the tiny brass one is a regular bowl on the scale I use. The glasses range from the giant beer glass down to little jewelry findings serving as small mugs. In the foreground is a variety of jewelry findings and one of the 1" cutting boards I make.

Utensils. On the left- the gold ones are part of the kettle set, the spoons are Barbie spoons, and the other two are a couple of little jewelry charms. On the right are things, I've made- the spoons are actually little ball bails. I can get 100 spoons for the price of the 4 on the left, heh. On the right are knives I've done with foil and fimo, and pounded wire tiny knives. On the bottom are pounded wire handles- not all dishes need the bottom of the utensil showing, just the handle sticking out. Easy and cheap to make.

A bit more simple now. On the top of the table are the stack of dishes and their right scale spoons. On the seat is an empty finding and two finished platters. On the bottom is an empty board, and two finished boards. If you notice, the white dish on the top is Barbie sized, and the platter on the bottom is only a little larger and holds a whole scene.

A closeup for scale. Same sized bread pieces. On the left is the Barbie sized plate and spoon, in the middle is dollhouse scale, and on the right is Sister Mercy's dish scale. The bread is cut on half to fit on her plate nicely.

Pulling it together...

Standard street scene. You don't really notice how much the people outscale the buildings.

And the difference between night and day-

A random food pic- this shows the scale of the regular food I can get online, vs the scale I actually need...

On the top, the carrot and potatoes on the left are standard, the ones on the right the ones I've made. On the bottom, the standard egg on the right, and my egg on the left.