Updates on miniature projects and some progress on the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole

I know I haven't blogged for awhile but I really really was so tired from Christmas and everything else going on.  I had to take a little break!  I was simply exhausted:  minis, redoing the floors, Christmas shopping and cookie making.  Not to mention all of the regular work around the house and cooking.  I think I slept for two days on and off from sheer exhaustion.  So I took some time off, working very sporadically.  I have gotten a little done, and I'm now getting back to work a lot more than I was.  Here's what I have done to the rabbit hole first of all, and keep in mind that I have so much more to do before I'll be happy with the inside enough to start adding in furniture and other things:

Much of this will be less visible anyway after I get stuff inside the hole.  And the bottom floor (the 3 different colored walls) are just started, they need the trim work like up above.  And each section I'm trying to give it's own individual look so they don't blend into each other so much as the original sculpture.  I want each section of wall to have a life of it's own like in the original Disney movie.  Like I said, still so much to do and add in.

It will evolve as I continue my work.  The outside has nothing new added but I have begun adding a large rim around the top so I can add a scene up there that will be full of life and cool things.  Right now it's nothing but raw clay with nothing added so it's not worth a look yet.

So anyways, that's where I'm at right now on that project. 

I'm waiting on a little help from my husband who has been too busy thus far to help with my meat pie oven project.  I bought a thin metal pipe thingy that needs to be hooked together and cut off (which is where he comes in).  I don't have the strength to use tin snips on it so I have to wait on him :o  But the fire unit came in the mail so I have a good start on supplies :)

Also, I have some interest in the upcoming Snow White and the Huntsman movie so I thought I'd make a creepy little gothic chest in honor of the new film.  This chest was made to me quite nefarious in nature, slightly gothic, and most definitely evil :) Evil in purpose anyway :) Why evil? Well what else could it be when it's made to hold poor Snow White's heart? The evil queen did in fact send the huntsman after her and asked for her heart to be brought back in a chest. And so I've made it: a tiny human heart in a jar of fluid, a long dagger/sword with a smidge of blood on the blade, a casting crystal orb on a stand, a poisoned apple, a bottle of poison apple potion as well. The outside has images of the evil queen (Charlize Theron) and snow white (Kristen Stewart) from the upcoming movie Snow White and the Huntsman. The inside has a classic Disney Snow White image of the evil queen and her magic mirror in the lid.

Here's my icky winter time pictures of it:

You can't see it but there's a heart inside the glass bottle :o  Pretty convincing!

Finally I've had this jewelry chest sitting around for quite some time waiting on time to make it.  I didn't want to do a regular jewelry chest out of it, I wanted to make something neater.  So I decided to paint it black, stain the pink lining a dingy red, and make a wizard or witch ingredient chest out of it.  Like an advanced potion ingredient chest, with lots of labels with the names of Harry Potter potion ingredients on them.  There were some great potion and ingredient names from those books and movies.  I managed to find a long list of them.  Here's the cabinet, although it'll be far more tricked out in the end than what you see here:

This doesn't look like much right now, but give me time and you'll see a really cool miniature in the end :)  I plan on adding metal filigree details to the outside as well, and this will be one of a kind because I only have one of these chests.

 

 

Dollhouse Miniature Designer Cabinet Completed :)

Remember the Gucci bag cabinet project?  It's all done now and listed.  My pictures are horrid (and they will be until well into spring thanks to winter weather) but I'll post them anyway.  I wish you all could see how nice this actually is!  It's a cutie in person.

Oh the dang camera glare!  It makes everything look washed out and icky :(

Oy vay :(  Wow do I need a new camera or what???

Haha I just now noticed the buckles on the little strappy sandal heels are wrong.  I guess I need to add one on the correct side of the other shoe, duh me!  Sheesh, I guess I was a bit tired last night when I finished that shoe up :)  I wish you could see those in person though, they are really good ones.  I was kind of proud of myself on those, making tiny shoes-especially strappy high heel ones is really hard to do.  And the little handbags are to die for!  Just darling :)

I'm still working on the rabbit hole, I'm currently adding the criss-cross boxy trim work and it's not fit to be seen yet.  So no pictures until I'm done, and nearly every color of the walls when it changes has that.  And I also have to do some brickwork as well, so it may be a little while before I can show it. 

And I had a second custom order request as well.  Do you all remember the Mrs. Lovett's Pie Counter? 

The lady who bought it has commissioned another piece to go with it based on this:

The meat pie oven!  I've ordered the fire unit for the bottom with flickering LED lights so I am super excited to try it out :)  This lady has a lovely set up for displaying her Sweeney Todd stuff complete with a shop and some well done artisan dolls so I can't wait to see it all put together.  She even has a brick oven similar to the one in the film in the kitchen scene.  She's still collecting parts but she's promised to provide some pictures when she gets somewhere on it.  How fun!

 

A little quickie miniature cabinet project while waiting for paint to dry on the Rabbit Hole

Nothing worse than watching paint drying :)  What to do while I wait?  Well a little cabinet for fun.  I had this great bag that came with my eyeglasses from Gucci, just a cool set of stuff that came with my eyeglasses purchase.  I HATE throwing anything neat like that away when I can find a new use for it.  So I cut apart the bag, taking the logos off to use on a cabinet.  Even the box that my glasses came in had a cool Gucci print on the inside of it so I used that as well.  I'm not quite done with it but I have a plan and I'll explain after I post these rather bad pictures of it:

Icky pictures :(

Ok so the top will have the red and green stripe with horse bit on either side of the topper, and the shelves will hold luxury items like a necklace display bust with jewels, tiny blingy shoes, leather handbags, perfume bottles etc.  You get the idea.  Super glam and stylish!  I'll update it when I get done.  And I'll be working on my rabbit hole project too, but most of what's going on right now is waiting on coats of paint to dry before I can progress much.

Down the rabbit hole one step at a time, an update on the miniature Alice in Wonderland Project

Christmas is over and I have been hard at work constructing from scratch a custom ordered Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole scene.  I have the structure built and boy was it interesting and difficult to do!  It's solidly built though, you could probably whack something hard with it and it would still be in one piece :)  It's very sturdy, wire framed and very strong.  And shockingly light weight so far.  I covered the wire frame with mesh on which to build my clay over so it's good to go.  I just haven't gotten that far yet.  I did get the inside coated with a lightweight material of my own making so that I would have maximum room inside the hole to add in all the things that will go inside there.  But I still have much painting to do before I can begin, what I have in there now is very "beginning stages" of what is to come.  The colored areas need a grid-like trim structure as shown in the movie which I'll have to do with clay strips and apply them as I go along.  After they dry I'll have to paint them to match whatever paint is in that area.  Most of the furniture will have to be handmade either by building it or sculpting it because the scale is an in between size.  The Alice doll I'm using is 4 inches tall to give you an idea.  The structure I built is 19 inches tall.  And this is just the beginning of what's to come and it will change and get better each time I work on it.  I plan on really doing the best I can and this really doesn't show what it will be in the end at all.  This is just a very basic start on a very elaborate piece that will have tons of detail in the end.

Just a sample of the many things that will line the rabbit hole in the end.  And like I said this will change in a big big way as I continue to work on it.  I'm still working on getting the colors right so even they will change as I work on getting them mixed closer to the original Disney movie.  And the top of the hole will have Alice's cat looking down the hole as well as grasses, flowers, etc.  I'm planning on working in a few talking roses somewhere just inside the hole.  That portion of the hole will be natural materials, mosses, faux dirt, rock, etc.  It gets far more house-like as it goes on down.  And the house part isn't built yet so it looks like a whole lot of nothing right now :)  Stay tuned for future updates :)

          

Happy Christmas to all from 19th Day Miniatures

I've had so many people wish us a Happy Christmas and I'm so sorry I don't have time to get to all of you so I'll say it here for all to see, thank you so much and have a Happy Christmas everyone! Hugs! ~Tara, 19th Day Miniatures



Christmas Pictures Comments - Photobucket

Turn off my blog music player before you play this video :)  There's clickable button on there that shuts it off.

What I've been making since I last blogged

I have had a bunch of custom orders to get through and I've had very little time to work on anything, being so close to Christmas.  That plus a new puppy (who didn't work out and had to go back to the pound because she kept attacking my other dog and my cat.  Apparently she hates other animals :(  and finishing up work on my wood floor redo.  Plus December brings me:  My little cousin's birthday, my own birthday on the 15th on which I turned 34, my daughter's birthday party was on the 17th and she went swimming and stayed at a hotel with us and her little girl friends, her actual birthday falls on the 19th (hence the shop name 19th Day Miniatures, to which is a homage to my husband, daughter and son all being born on the 19th day of their respective months and so is my lucky number) and we had the regular family party that day, today is my wedding anniversary (14 years now, wow!), my aunt's birthday is tomorrow and then Christmas is the 25th of course.  Needless to say December is an extremely busy month for us!  So no time to work, no time to blog :(  Here's what I've managed to get done amid all the disruptions:

vampire themed cabinet (sold)

Missing from these photos was a hand-sculpted and mohaired disney-style squirrel I made that perched on the other bare side of the top.  I wish I had gotten pictures but I finished at night and they wouldn't turn out in the photocube.  So I'm sad to say we'll never see it here on the blog.  I was just too wiped out tired to deal with shooting it again before it shipped out :(  This was a custom order and my client was waiting for me to get it done.

(sold) smaller honeydukes themed tree for confined spaces or even the inside of a candy shop

(sold) A small set of Honeydukes candy bottles with a polymer clay chocolate frog

This was actually a gift for a friend of mine so it's gone too-Honeydukes themed cabinet

See this is what happens when I try to take pictures at night in my photocube :(  Yuck pictures!  This was a custom ordered (sold) Hogwarts chest with student items in it that a kid might take with them to hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry.  Not that you can tell, but there were some neat items in there.  A defense against the dark arts book, a wizard robe with a gryffindor crest on it, a hand carved wooden wand, a bottle of felix felicis (liquid luck) a bottle of Amortentia (love potion), more spell books, chocolate frog, roll of scrolls and a feather quill pen, a daily prophet newspaper, and tickets for the knight bus and for the hogwarts express train.

Below, a captured fairy set-A little fairy was made to look quite worried about her currently living conditions :)  The other one sleeps it away as though nothing can bother her :)

*Update-She did in fact buy this so it is now sold.

Ok this was also a custom ordered item, but I have no idea if the lady will actually get this or not.  It was ordered a long time ago and I haven't been able to get to it til now.  I have no idea if she'll be able to pick it up right before Christmas or if she'll have to pass.  It just worked out like this unfortunately.  It may be available, we'll have to see I guess.  The pictures are perfectly horrid due to the weather here (it's not easy getting pictures outside in the winter when you're freezing your butt off while shooting them :)  and this is about 100 times nicer in person than these crappy pictures show :(  

Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope you have a great one :)

   

Updated-Projects, custom orders, and Holiday Cheer :)

Another blog only deal:  Type in coupon code "christmasblog" during checkout to get your complimentary 15% off the purchase price during the month of December only.  This deal is only for those who have read my blog because it's not posted anywhere in the store :) 

Gosh I haven't blogged in awhile!  Too busy :(  The holidays are upon us, and this means not only do I have the house renovation and store to deal with, but also family and shopping :o  Sheesh!  Thanksgiving was madness as usual, with an extended family as large as mine.  I made eight dozen deviled egg halves!  Eight dozen!  Lord have mercy on me because Christmas dinner is right around the corner too.

Enough about that.  What have I been doing?  Custom orders for one.  I made this for one of my new customers, a custom snow white evil queen chest based on this chest the evil queen is holding here in this picture:

It was given to the huntsman to bring back proof in the form of a heart that snow white was indeed dead :o

Here's my version:

The bottles inside have apples, poison apple potion, a sculpted heart, beauty potion, malice (has a knife in it, hehe) and a bottle of wealth.

I have another custom order for her to do when the piece I ordered comes in.

This chest will be a snow white themed item, made to look like something of hers while she resides with the 7 dwarfs.  I'm planning something woodlandish, with sweet little details made to look like something of snow white's.  I think this piece looks exactly like it could have been in that wooden cottage of the seven dwarfs!
Another upcoming custom order, and it's a major big one!  The same lady wants me to make a Alice in wonderland scene, quite large compared to what I normally do, based on this:

I'm planning on making the structure of air dry clay and wire.  There will be only one Alice though.  Three just looks odd to me.  And the scenery inside should be quite different and more true to the movie.  This will be the cartoon version, not the Tim Burton version.

So I'll post updates as I build it.  It will take awhile, and I also have to have a working light unit inside it.

Otherwise, I just finished this up last night:

a witch's birthday party table and chair set :)  See the overflowing cauldron birthday cake?  This is so flippin' cute in person, the pictures don't do anything for it :(  In person, it rocks!  And it's available now in my store.  I no I won't make another one, lol.  If someone buys it, it's gone!

And one last thing in the spirit of the Christmas season, a short story:

When I was a little girl in second grade, we had a house fire right before Christmas.  Our entire house burnt to the ground.  If it hadn't been for my Mother, I wouldn't have made it out alive.  She ran down a burning hallway that was completely engulfed in flames to get me.  She had part of her hair burnt off and her eyebrows were burnt off (it all regrew, but now you get how dangerous it really was)  we lost everything we had.  I sat across the street and watched our refrigerator melt!  There were no longer any walls left by that time.  In the aftermath, we picked through the rubble looking for any sign that anything had survived the fire.  There was absolutely nothing left not burnt up or broken, save this:

I have all of the pieces, but they weren't out yet in this picture.  This single thing was left.  The entire nativity set was in one piece, and wasn't burnt up.  You can see the charred look on the paint of the people, which shows it went through a fire.  But nothing was broken.  Matter of fact, the burnt look added to the authentic look of the set.  It made it look more realistic if anything.  My Mother had LOTS of nick knacks and porcelain figures.  Everything was reduced to rubble.  Every single thing we had ever had at that point in our lives was destroyed.  Why then did this entire set come through the fire without a single chip?  It was on display, like all of her other things at the time.  Everything else was most likely knocked to the ground when the walls came down or the furniture they were sitting on burnt up.  Yet we found every piece of this nativity set unscathed.  Strange, huh?  And our town rallied around us and gave us back all the stuff we had lost and I ended up with more toys and clothes than I had before :)  The true meaning of Christmas revealed???  You decide :)

"Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!" Dr. Seuss