Wednesday, April 25, 2012

News on the Miniature Alice in Wonderland Rabbit Hole project

This has well-working lights that plug directly into an outlet (and for anyone international the plug can be changed out to your countries specifications.  The wiring is put on to this particular plug-in made for miniature lighting and the wires simply unscrew from this unit below):
    


Almost done:




The top part, which is all wild and natural, still needs Alice's kitty peaking down into the hole watching Alice falling down.  I'm starting her tonight.  The lower part which will be layers of the earth hasn't been done yet but shouldn't take more than a couple days.  The cat might take me up to three days depending on what's going on around here and my busy house :)  As you can see, Alice is done and mounted inside.  I had to make her dress, and let me go on record now saying I'm not natural when working with fabric!  I hand sewed that outfit and hated every single minute of it lol.  It's hard for me personally.  I managed it without many regrets in the end though.  She looks like she should.  I took a Heidi Ott doll in a child size for this size of project and simply rehaired her, made her clothes, and repainted her eyes which were small and indistinct compared to Alice's eyes in the movie.  So she had to be repainted with big blue eyes.  The dolls eyes were small and brown and there wasn't much detail so they had to go.  Now she looks much better.  The next time I blog this it'll be all done, yay!

On another note, a client of mine sent me darling pictures of her precious little dog Romeo with a miniature she bought from my Etsy shop.  I just have to show you all these, he's so cute!  And him and the miniature house are quite close in size, hehe:

  Isn't he the sweetest little thing?  Apparently Romeo likes the House of Bleeding Hearts :)   Thanks for sending me these pics!  Hugs everyone, have a lovely day and keep collecting! 

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Dollhouse Miniature Harry Potter Dumbledore Memory Vial Cabinet completed and listed for sale

All done, my last part came in today :)  Here's the backside photos of it all done now:




Yay for crooked pictures!  My skills at photography rock :)  This is MUCH better in person, as always.

Available here for sale:


Thanks for the comments everyone!  Keep 'em coming :)  I wish I could do the same for you but I am really really busy and I just can't often find time to do much of anything.  Large house, large yard with many flower beds I tend, kids, husband, cooking and cleaning.  Whew!  I get exhausted just thinking about it all!  And yes I even do the grass mowing.  And we have a large amount of ground to cover here, almost a city block of mowing :o  Some of it has to be done on a tractor :(  You should see me when I get off that thing!  I look like a dirt monster!  And for the shower I sprint afterward :)

Monday, April 16, 2012

A very special miniature Harry Potter Memory Cabinet, nearly complete

I'm lacking one single piece that's on it's way to me in the mail right now, otherwise this would be done and listed.  I'm not sure if some of you remember that my MIL Sherry has said she wanted to create the memory bottle cabinet in Dumbledore's Study next to the Pensieve?  Together she and I plotted a way to make it successfully.  It's no small feat, the cabinet was highly elaborate.  Sherry bought some parts for it, but she's been having some health trouble and doesn't have a lot of energy right now.  So she brought the parts to me and allowed me to try making it instead.  I picked up the rest of what was needed and gave it a go.  And by some funky twist of fate, I was short one piece off the back top trim.  Grrrr.  Anyways, it's on it's way to me and hopefully will be here soon.

Let me first show you a video of a shot of the cabinet in the movie, and of course mine isn't quite that high because of miniature room space limitations.  I had to keep mine a little shorter on top.  But the design is very similar.  I did my best on a truly hard thing to recreate.  The whole thing is custom built.  And honestly it wasn't cheap to build at all!  I have over $110 in materials here in front of me, including custom miniature glass bottles from the Ukraine that were quite expensive.

Before you watch this you might want to go over on the right side of my blog and shut off the music player.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GPS8Xe8wIU&feature=player_embedded

So without further ado I'll post what pictures I have.  This cabinet is the same all the way around so you could literally pick your favorite view of it.






Of course I'll shoot better pictures when I get the last piece on. 

Thank you all for your wonderful comments all of the time!  I really love hearing from you :)

On a side note, I have to share a rather unusual recipe with you, hehe.  Here in Illinois each late spring brings the great morel mushroom hunt.  What exactly does a morel mushroom look like?  This is it:

Now you may ask why anyone would want to go looking for these things?  Because they can be cleaned, breaded and fried and the flavor is something to look forward to the entire year.  Masses of people go trekking through the woods scanning the ground in an effort to find these rare mushrooms which are once a year oddities.  It's not as easy as it sounds!  They blend into the forest floor which is covered in leaves, etc.  It can take hours to find enough to cook a batch.  Are they worth it?  Yep.  But what are they not worth to me and my husband?  The massive poison ivy rash that breaks out all over both of us when we venture into the forest.  And the hunters of these mushrooms fetch upwards of $20 a pound or more for these little things!  And yes, they do get that much for them.  Like I said, they're worth it.  Luckily my husband came home with a recipe from a friend for "fake" fried mushrooms.  So we tried it out.  We started with these
which are portobello mushroom caps from the grocery store.
We chopped them up finely like so:

and to them we added a can of cream of mushroom soup, finely crushed saltine crackers, an egg to form a rather sticky and lumpy paste that is best dished into your breading bowl with a spoon (not your hand).  You must add enough crackers to make it so that the mixture holds together to form into mushroom shapes without breaking apart.  Or you can make patties out of it.  After you drop a lump into the breading bowl, scoop up a bit of breading and pour over the top of the mushroom mixture before you touch it or you'll be a sticky mess.
Here's our bowl of ingredients before mixing:

I took another dish and put more crushed cracker crumbs and some flour, and then I formed mushroom shapes and dipped my little mushroom patties into the flour/cracker mixture.  On the stove I heated a stick of real butter in a frying pan.  In went the little mushrooms and away they fried :)  I had to make enough for an army because half my family showed up to try them out.  Three packages of large mushroom caps, one large can of cream of mushroom soup, several small packs of crackers and an egg went into mine and made a whole lot of mushrooms.  There wasn't a single one left in the end so I guess they were a hit.  And yes they were a very convincing copy of an actual fried morel mushroom :)  These look awful but they're actually very good:
 
            

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Updated Pictures-Dollhouse Miniature Snow White Theme Tree

All I have left to do to the rabbit hole project inside is cloth and hair Alice.  I was working on that and got fed up so I took a little break to make this theme tree :)  Snow White is everywhere right now due to the movies Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman.  So it put me in the mood to make a theme tree.  My pictures are horrid because the sun was directly overhead when I shot them so I'll have to come back in tomorrow with new pictures.  So please note that this is better in person!








Available here:

I also reshot some pictures of a necklace I made since the pictures were so distant and far away that it wasn't selling.  Every other piece I've made has sold previously, this is the last one left. 


Available here:
 

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Miniature Rabbit Hole Alice in Wonderland updates 4-7-2012

All I have left to do is make some curtains for the window and dress and hair Alice and add her into the bare spot in front of the lower part of the mirror-plus clean it up really well inside (I sand everything in my craft room and the sanding dust gets all over everything before I realize what I'm doing) and the inside is done.  Then I can start the outside!  Yay!  So close to being done with the inside I could jump up and down!  The outside will be much easier to do, and hopefully faster :)  Of course like everything else this is much nicer in person.  My camera does bad things to my projects. 




Wow you can really see the dust inside from me sanding, but it'll come right off with a nice soft paint brush with a touch of windex on it.  Eeeek, it looks so gross right now :(  That'll teach me not to cover my projects while I'm building parts for them and sanding :(  I'll wipe it all out and get it sparkling before the final big reveal :)  If I had figured it out before I shot these today I would have cleaned it up.  Natural light has a way of showing everything I can't see inside in my craft room.  That white rabbit took me three days to sculpt!  It was a painstaking clay-building and sculpting process.  He really came out accurate to the Disney movie one though.  This is such a horrible, dingy-looking picture I'm ashamed :(  It makes it look so much worse than it does in person!  This project is going to be cleaned super well before the next pictures are taken.  I can't believe I did this!  Yuck.  Embarrassing.  Well I guess I have been working on it for months now, it should be dusty after sitting in my craft room where I'm working all the time.  I'll be back when I get curtains and Alice done :)  And for goodness sake, it'll be cleaned up then :)
 

Monday, April 2, 2012

Spring in Illinois brings babies, flowers, gardens growing, and Miniature Fairy things :)

Spring is in full bloom here in Illinois and I've been out working in my yard, trying to clean it up from the ickiness of fall and winter.  I have a large yard, lots of trees so it's difficult and time consuming.  Less time for mini making right now :(  And good weather brings in more family and friends to my house as well.  It's pleasant here so everyone comes in for food and fun.  Yesterday was no exception.  We attended a flea market in the morning, which for those of you who don't know what that is, it's a sort of huge gathering of people who bring things to sell like pets, livestock, rare birds, household items, handmade goods, plants, etc.  We picked up baby mallard ducks, and a baby goat still on a bottle.


For anyone who hasn't raised a farm animal like these, they get very attached to people if they spend enough time with them.  They will love you and remember you forever.  I had a little goat like this when I was a child and no matter how far out she was if she heard me call her she'd come running as fast as she could.  She clearly loved me and would follow me wherever I went without food as a lure.  As I grew older and spent less time at the farm, time would elapse before I saw her again.  And no matter how old she got or how long it had been seen she saw me, the minute she heard my voice she would come running.  She did this for no one else but me.  And when she got to be an old girl and a little on the fat side, she'd still give it her best and run and fast as she could to reach me no matter how long it had been since the last time I had visited.  If I sat down on the ground she would lay down beside me with her head on my lap.  So my daughter is about the age I was when I got mine so when I saw that goat I knew I had to get her :)  My poor husband groaned and rolled his eyes lol :)  So it was we spent the day trying to rig up a place for her and good shelter, and then I spent the rest of the day digging up all my plants in the area and replanting them away from this little plant killer.  She'll eat everything in sight :)  Although right now she takes a bottle and if she feels the milk isn't coming out of it fast enough she jerks her head in impatience and knocks it clean out of my hands if I'm not holding onto it good :)  Ok enough about the goat, hehe.  Sorry I'm just having fun with her, it's like I'm 10 again.
Flowers:


Argh the wisteria vine is toppling the flag pole it's climbing on again, I'll have to get someone to pull it back upright AGAIN :)  Killer vine, but so pretty when it blooms!



My bleeding hearts plant inspired the bleeding hearts fairy house:


And since it's spring which makes me want to do fairy things, I put together this little fairy sewing notion cabinet last night at the end of a long nap that had me up all night;



Complete with little mossy stool for sitting at the sewing machine and a tiny fairy couture dress on a vine hanger.  Of course the wind blew the feathers on the dress all around so it was hard to get a good shot of it.  It's not that messy in person because the feathers are still.