A small world's big buzz!

Mini inspiration from the Nebraska chapel

I know I've been posting a lot of "mini inspiration" articles lately, but when you travel, there are just so many things you see that make you draw a breath in awe or that make a little crafty part of your brain say, "I can totally recreate that."  And when my friends and I were in Nebraska for my friend Martha's birthday, this glass chapel did both of those things!

It's the Holy Family Shrine located in Gretna, Nebraska, and it's right off I-80. We actually saw it from the interstate, which piqued our interest, and we decided to use our few extra hours to explore and learn. It's a quiet and peaceful space with another enclosed building serving as an entry room; the building and the chapel are connected by a stone pathway (bottom photo). I wish I'd gotten photos of the interior of the building and its gorgeous water pathway, but unfortunately I wasn't looking ahead. Anyway, enjoy the photos!

Traci

 

 

 

Final inspirations from Arizona

A couple weeks ago I did two posts about my visit with family in Arizona and the awesome architecture I found at the Greek monastery and the outlying chapel there. Here are some more fabulous things from Arizona that I thought could be really fun to make in mini!

First, we visited a winery near the monastery that had this really interesting chandelier:

I  kind of want to make one of those in both full-size and in miniature! But then I'd have to learn wireworking in both sizes, which seems like a lot of work. Oh well--it's a good pipe dream (or wish list).

Another photo I wanted to share was of the corner of my great-aunt and great-uncle's house in the Queen Creek area. If you're building an Adobe or Southwest-style home, take a look at how the corners and roof meet up. I never would have pictured the curved tiles being stacked like that; in fact, if I'd seen it in mini, I wouldn't have realized it was authentic! So this was just a mental note to myself to really research any style before creating it. Also, I really like how the stucco looks on the outside of the building.

One day, my aunt, great-aunt, sister, brother-in-law, and I went to Schnepf Farms (whose website has gotten upgraded since I was there! Nice!), a neat little farm with all sorts of festivals and such throughout the year. We happened to be there during the Peach Blossom, so we got to see lots of beautiful blossoms on the trees. But I, personally, was more interested in the random unique structures and items they had all around that would be difficult but rewarding to do in mini. Here is...something....that I don't remember what its purpose was. I think it may be a machine for measuring something, but I can't remember if it's peanuts, or coffee beans, or one of any number of other things. Any info you guys have would be helpful :-)


I also really enjoyed their Steampunk-esque brick pathway, which I thought was pretty unique. It'd make a great base for any number of mini scenes.

And if you're making your own mini farm or winery or outdoorsy touristy scene, you can't forget the fun items, like this "How tall this fall?" measuring display!

 

And, of course, they have a store filled to the brim with preserves, homemade sauces, and a variety of other farm creations. Accoring to their website, "The Country Store evolved from a simple roadside stand to become a full service country store and bakery." Sorry for the bad photos, but I didn't realize how blurry they were on my phone!

So, that was Schnepf Farms. Finally, the day I left, my aunt and great-aunt took my sister, brother-in-law, and me to lunch at an Italian restaurant before I left for my flight home. So, if you're working on an Italian bistro or some such thing, here are a couple pieces that I thought were cute! 

 So, no, there wasn't anything life-changing or dramatic about the places I visited, and I didn't see any miniatures the whole time I was down there, but I still found plenty of inspiration! I don't know if I'll create any of these scenes in the future (bakery, restaurant, country store, Steampunk area, farm, Southwest house....that's so much!) but if I do, I'll now have a stash of photos ready! I've started organizing them on my computer, too, by what topic they are, so that if I DO find the time to create as many scenes as I want, then I'll be able to have references at my fingertips, just a couple clicks away. Feel free to keep these for yourself too if you're keeping photo stashes for reference!

Traci

 

MMG Meeting!

This past weekend, Melissa and I (Traci) attended the May meeting of the Midwest Miniatures Guild. The format of the meetings runs pretty much the same way--in the morning there are coffee and snacks at registration, sales tables,  tables with displays and pieces out for auction or to win, and various workshops; then comes a fabulous catered lunch, and the conducting of official business afterwards, with announcements and Guild changes and the winners of the various auctions and displays; and then afternoon sales and workshops. Pretty basic, but lots of fun! In addition, this meeting had garage sales going on in the entryway, which they only do once a year. There were some great finds!

Melissa and I arrived right before our morning workshop was about to start, but first we had to choose a table. Each table in the room had a centerpiece that would be given away to a random drawing winner, and these centerpieces were gorgeous!

Ruth Hynes of Hanky Panky Crafts had bought the containers at Michaels, decorating the inside with various pieces--she'd painted and attached the shutters, found cake pedestals and painted them, added butterflies (from scrapbooking pieces) to wire, and just generally made them gorgeous. There were various peacock-themed ones, like above, as well as ones that were themed with butterflies and maybe even another kind--I honestly don't even know, because as soon as Melissa and I saw the one above, we made a beeline for that table and claimed it as our own. If we were going to win one, we wanted it to be that!

So anyway, we went to our first workshop. It was called A Window in Tuscany, and was taught by Pam Rouleau, who is just a sweetheart of a lady and so patient with everyone. Below are some step-by-step photos Melissa took with her phone.

We used "an old technique," as Pam called it, to stucco the walls. I'd never done it before so it was definitely new to me. Basically, it's like decoupage with paint and tissues. Put some paint down, add a single layer of tissue (just the cheap kind), and paint over it. The right side of my wall ended up looking REALLY stuccoed, with some mounds of stucco here and there (apparently you don't want the tissue to fold over on itself), but the left side and walls ended up okay.

 

Melissa's now-wired basket and now-painted barrel.

 

Melissa has now placed her image in the back, with the little foam posts to keep the wall at a distance from the image. Eventually, in the top left, we also put wire covered with some green material to create a tree branch.

 

Melissa has filled her basket with grapes!

 

Melissa's window has been placed, and the window ledge added on.

 

Melissa's finished project!! Now she just has to find a picture frame that she likes and that will cover the parts she wants to cover. It looks fabulous and so, so quaint! I wish I was there in full-size right now!

 

So then there was lunch, with all the drawings I mentioned. For the centerpieces, we just count off around the table. Melissa was 1, I was 2, etc. But then it was discovered that since Melissa was my guest and not a full member yet (that will be at the Oct meeting), she couldn't win! So then I was 1. AND 1 WAS CALLED!!!!! *squealofexcitement*

WINNER!

 

I was going to bring it home to display on my bookshelf, but then my conscience overtook my greed, reminding me that technically Melissa would have won, so now it's in our office where we can all enjoy it!! :-)

In the afternoon, we took the Fun with Faux Fineshes class with Carol Sherry, who is spunky and energetic and really fun to take a class with. Due to needing time for the paints to dry, we hopped around from marble to crackle finish to verdigris back to marble to verdigris to crackle to granite to marble to verdigirs.....but it was so much fun! We did it all on scrap wood, and our hands were covered in paint, so we don't have any photos--maybe I'll take some tonight of the finished wood to post tomorrow. But either way, it was LOTS of fun!

And that was it! We also did some shopping after lunch, finding a few good things; Melissa bought a little piano for her mom, and I got an entire set of artist's chalk for a dollar! All in all, it was a fabulous day. Special thanks to Carol Blanchfield (MMG President) and the entire MMG team for putting on another great event!

Mini good foods

Jen Tuttle of Miniholiday is one of my (Traci's) favorite artists--she loves contributing, has a great attitude, and creates delicous-looking food, among other things. When Melissa was working with Martha Puff on the "minis as jewelry" gallery (American Miniaturist May 2013 issue [AM121]), she was sharing some of the artists who were going to be included, and I was looking them up to see what sorts of sweet treats I could find. On Jen's Etsy page, I found a pair of Twinkie earrings.

YES. I KNOW. TWINKIE EARRINGS.

My lifelong best friend, Shani, and I would always give each other Twinkies for various occassions--birthdays, Christmases, random get-togethers. So when Hostess filed bankruptcy and we thought Twinkies were gone forever, we lamented, and tried to find an appropriate subsitute in Little Debbie Cloud Cakes or Mrs. Freshley's Dreamies. Somehow they weren't the same. When I saw the earrings, I knew I had to get them.

But wait! Would she even wear Twinkie earrings? Is that a socially acceptable accessory in the presumably serious financial investment company where she works? I debated until I saw that Jen's earrings could also be created as wine charms, and I knew immediately what Shani's birthday present would be: four wine charms, each of one of her favorite foods. The Twinkie was just the beginning! Jen, bless her heart, set up a separate listing for my random collection of foods, and a few weeks later they were in my apartment.

 

I brought them to Shani with a bottle of wine (obviously) when I visited for her birthday, and she loved them--particularly the banana cream pie, which I'd custom-ordered from Jen since Shani likes that flavor better than the lemon meringue that was listed. "Look at the little banana slices!" she kept saying.

In the same box she used to send those, Jen also included the pair of brownie earrings that she'd done a tutorial on and that she sent as a giveaway for Dollhouse Miniatures May-June 2013 issue (DHM33). Don't they look unbelievably delicious??

YUM!! Brownies with frosting are my ultimate sweet-tooth craving. So, big thanks to Jen for both making my friend's birthday special and also for this fantastic giveaway for DHM readers!

Traci

 

More inspiration from the Greek monastery

Earlier this week, I posted about visiting the Greek monastery in Florence, Arizona. All of the photos I posted were from the main part of the monastery, but there was another building that you could drive to. It was a chapel on a hill, like a beacon above the rugged and flat landscape surrounding it. 

The chapel from below.

Then we walked up to it, and I loved both the building.....

My sister taking photos.

 

...and the wrought-iron fence around it with its grapevine theme. 

....and then, we climbed down, and went home. Unfortunately this chapel was closed, so we didn't get to see the inside, but as you can see there was plenty of inspiration even from the outside. 

More to come on my Arizona trip in a couple weeks! Stay tuned!

Traci

 

 

Architecture and structural inspiration

Back in February, I (Traci) spent a week visiting family in Arizona.

 

 SUNSHINE!

After the too-long-gray Minnesota winter, the splash of color was just what I needed to get my mini inspiration going again! As my family toured me around the Phoenix-Mesa area, I snapped dozens of photos of items that I thought would be fun or interesting to recreate in mini. Many of these items were from the St. Anthony's Greek Monastery in Florence. In particular, I LOVED their brickwork, especially around windows, as well as the beautiful wood designs on their ceilings...everything was gorgeous. I thought that if anybody was interested in ideas, this would be a great place to visit!! In the meantime, here are some photos to peruse until you can get there yourself. I'll post more photos in upcoming blogs with more photos of other places, but there are plenty here to keep you occupied!!

Click on any photo to see it at full size.

 

Wandering around outside...

 

Some fabulous interior shots....

 

Brickwork!

 

The gorgeous ceiling.

 

 

 

Little gifts

This is a little late, considering the contents, but bear with me!

In our March-April issue (which you can purchase here), one of our Star Letter winners was Susan Rensch. As a thanks for choosing her as our winner and sending her a prize, she decided to send each of us a little gift! Thank you, Susan, that's so generous of you!

And when we received the packages, we of course had to document it.

 

Within the boxes pictured above were even smaller packages, like those little Russian dolls that have even smaller dolls inside them. Here are photos of each of us trying to delicately remove the paper without damaging the contents!

 

 

 

Finally, we got the little pieces out. There were adorable little woven baskets filled with paper, and painted eggs with our names on them!! How she managed to do that on such small items, I have no idea. A steady hand and a teeny paintbrush, apparently.

 

 

After opening the gifts, we stood around and talked for a while....

 

...and then we took our picture together, because we all wore red, even though it wasn't Valentine's Day.

 

So, all in all, it was a pretty great day. Thanks again to Susan for sending on these sweet little gifts!

A visit to Little Enchantments

I know I just did a post about photos from our fancy new camera, but I took these photos a long time ago with my phone and just haven't had the chance to post them yet, so....yeah.

Back in January, Jane Sanem of the Midwest Miniatures Guild sent out an email noting that Little Enchantments was having a sale. For those of you who get our magazines or Dollshouse.TV, you'll recognize the owner of Little Enchantments, Karen Fernholz, from various articles and films. She's an energetic and talented miniaturist that I always enjoy meeting! And being that I can never pass up a good sale, and I had that Saturday free, and I hadn't seen Karen in about a year, I headed up to see what she had in store (pun fully intended).

To be honest, I wasn't planning on buying anything. I have a Real Good Toys kit from their first Build-Along, and I'd been planning for the past few years to turn that into a replication of my apartment in Boston. But...I was intimidated. I'm still an amateur--an enthusiastic one, sure, but still amateur--and every time I thought about finishing the kit and possibly not being 100% accurate, I had a minor internal meltdown. And so, it sits on my crafting chair, still unfinished. So around the time I was getting ready to head to Karen's store, which I'd never been to, I'd already to decided to give up on the idea of recreating the apartment until I was more experienced and knew I could do a better job. My goal at Karen's was to browse and get some ideas for possible other themes.

And then I saw this lightpost....

...and I thought, "Hey, I could put that on the sidewalk outside my kit."  But as soon as I thought that, I dismissed it. Why limit myself to that era based off a lightpost? Anyway, this is either a Houseworks or Cir-Kit piece (my receipt is at home and I was in a rush this morning!), and the wire from the bottom of the piece means that my next adventure will be learning about wiring.

I kept browsing, looking at all the beautiful artist items, kits, and premade pieces. I seriously considered buying a fireplace but couldn't envision what to do with it. I kept walking. AND THEN I SAW THIS LITTLE GUY.

And I decided right then and there that he was coming home with me. I know he's a Falcon Miniatures piece, so he's not one-of-a-kind or anything, but gosh darn he's just adorable. Look at those eyes! And based on the shoe he's chewing, he would fit right into that Victorian period I'd wanted to avoid earlier.

I kept browsing.

I found the Clearance section, which is by far the best of any section in any store. That claim may horrify many people, but I have a lot of student debt, so right now I'm working with what I have. And guess who I found in there? This little lady:

Who may or may not be a suffragette....

Unfortunately, I forgot to ask Karen who created the Purple Lady, so I'm going to have to get back to you with that info. When I checked out, Karen was at the counter and we chit-chatted. She seemed to recognize me but was hesitant to say it. Finally, she said, "You look like..."  And I said, "Yeah!"

And she said, "Traci?" And I said, "Yeah!"

And she said, "But not that Traci..." And I said, "Yeah!"  

And she said, "From...?" And I said, "Yeah! Ashdown!"

Which is by far the best conversation I've had with anyone who recognized me. (Except maybe Felma Jackson last year at IMA, when she hugged me before I realized that it was Felma!)

Karen also seemed concerned about my purchase of the Purple Lady. "You know that she doesn't have feet, right?" she asked, pulling up the doll's skirt.

"Yes. You know that she's $2, right?" I asked. I will pretty much buy anything for $2, so PL's lack of ankles wasn't a major concern for me. I'll figure out a way to make it work! Maybe she'll be sitting behind a desk, or maybe I'll give her boots that reach up her calves. Maybe I should watch Mary Poppins to get ideas. Actually, I'll need to do quite a bit of research into that era to make sure everything I buy will work together. I do know for sure that they will have a large study with lots of bookshelves (I'm a bibliophile even in mini) but I want to nail down a specific date and make sure the floors, walls, etc. all match as well. I can't wait!

Just some photos

Allison and I (Traci) were testing out our fabulous new camera in the studio the other day. I put together a quick little scene from items we had hanging around and thought you'd like to see some of them. Enjoy!

 

Allison was getting fancy with the wallpaper shot.

 

Museum Admission Giveaway for Dollhouse Miniatures

Are you planning a trip to Europe--or looking for an excuse to do so? Our Jan-Feb issue of Dollhouse Miniatures (downloadable version here) announced a fabulous giveaway: free tickets of admission to The Toy Worlds Museum Basle. The museum houses more than 6000 teddy bears, dolls, toy grocers’ shops, dollhouses and miniatures, making it the only one of its kind in Europe, and it holds many special exhibits throughout the year.

For miniaturists, this fascinating collection as well as the special exhibits provide the opportunity for unparalleled invaluable information about period pieces and toys. As well as being great inspiration, anything you see in the museum could help you add authenticity to scenes by recreating some of these toys in miniature, and looking at a photo just does not give you the same amount of detail as you'd get from seeing them in person.

Visit their website for more information on the museum itself or on future special exhibits. Perhaps you'll be interested in their upcoming exhibit, "To wind up and charge," which will run from April 20 to October 6 of this year. This will highlight moving toys from the past 100 years, from cars to teddy bears to animals. There will also be 70 short films highlighting the movements of the pieces so that you can recreate them in miniature with all their moving parts! "The early toys were often made completely from tin and could be found with elaborate and detailed lithographs," says the museum's announcement of the exhibit. If you're creating a playroom or nursery from the mid-1900s or even a modern collector's room, this is the exhibit to catch!

Happy, the Violinist

Toplay Ltd., (T.P.S. v. Tokyo Plaything Shokai), Japan, around 1956, wind-up toy

 

Other upcoming exhibits include an exhibit about starlet Marilyn Monroe (running from Oct 19, 2013 to Apr 6, 2014) that includes "more than 700 original memorabilia and personal items of the extraordinary icon" on display. What better way to add to your Marilyn scene than with recreations of pieces from her real life? There is also a series of Christmas biscuits and cakes from around the world (Nov 30, 2013 to Feb 9, 2014) as well as a historical look at shoes (Oct 18, 2014 to Apr 6, 2015) and their transformations over the years.

The best part? These tickets don’t expire, so you can use them whenever you are in Switzerland or can plan your trip around any exhibit that you find particularly interesting.

The winners of these tickets will be chosen by random drawing. To enter the drawing, email traci@ashdown.co.uk with your name, address, and phone number. You could also fax this same information to (507) 634-7691. Just be sure to put Museum Giveaway - Dollhouse Miniatures in the subject line. But hurry--the deadline for this entry is Friday, March 22, 2013, just a few days from now!