Happy Tuesday!

We are in a deep freeze here in New Hampshire, but the sun was out this morning giving us the illusion of a beautiful day as long as you just looked out the window. It was 0 degrees F when I left the house this morning and is now up to 32 degrees F so it has improved quite a bit.

Last night when I let the 4 legged kids out for the last time before bed I could not believe how bright it was with the moonlight reflecting off the snow. If the wind had not been blowing it would have been a wonderful night for a walk. I had noticed on my way home that the moon was already up at 4:30 PM so knew it would be lovely to look out at the snow later on, but it seemed so much brighter than usual and the moon was huge. I was amazed that the kids did not go crazy when I let them out as they often do when we have a full moon.

I am watching the weather bug program that is a necessity when you work for a roofing company. We have a weather event coming at us from the west which is supposed to drop about an inch of snow on us this afternoon and evening. It is to be just enough to cover up the dirty snow and make everything pretty again.

I was able to get my parrot painted last night and hope to be able to get some feathers on it tonight. Hope to have it ready for reveal tomorrow. If you would like to see some of my other projects you can go to my photo site and take a look around. I have many of the projects I have completed and miniatures I have made there.

You gotta see this!

There is a wonderful group on the web called Custom Dolls, Houses & Miniatures that I have been a member of for a couple of years or more. They have online classes most every weekend and this past two weeks one of the members, who is an IGMA Fellow, Kerri Pajutee taught a class on sculpting and feathering a parrot. It is two hard for me to follow along with a class on my slow dial up at home so I wait until it is over and check it out. Well let me tell you I will be doing it this weekend or at least attempting to do it. My sculpting skills are not professional at all, but I really want to try this one. The picture is one completed by Kerri. Notice the comparison of her finger to the size of the parrot. It is just over 1 inch in length and about 3/8 inch wide. I was totally amazed at the realism she achieves. You can see other things she has created on her website: http://kerripajutee.com/ . After my attempts at making one of my own I will post a picture of the results. Anyone who is interested in miniatures needs to check out the CDHM site: http://www.cdhm.org/ . There are amazing artists there creating some of the best in miniatures I have seen.

My world of Doll House Miniatures

Today I thought I would introduce you to my world of miniatures. I was given a doll house for Christmas 10 years ago. I had always wanted one and finally had one. Well I opened the box, looked at the directions and viewed the video that came with it. Intimidated is to mild a word for what I felt. I closed up the box and stored it away. It took me 7 years to get up the nerve to open the box and take the plunge into the world of doll house construction. Now three years later I am still working on the basic construction of the exterior. I am down to the detail painting and trying to make up my mind where I want to add that last bit of color to make it pop without being gaudy. It is a little further along than when this picture was taken, but still have much to do to finish the exterior.

Well it didn't take me long to learn that I would never be able to afford all the wonderful miniatures it would take to fill up the 6 rooms in the house. One visit to the doll house shop nearby and a wondrous world opened up to me, but alas my tastes run to the high end of the market. I knew then that I needed to find a way to make as many of the small things to fill it as I could or it would never get furnished. Just how does someone new to this little world find out where to go. Well a search on Yahoo groups brought up numerous groups dealing with the small world of miniatures. I was off and running. I joined everyone I could find and read everything I could about scales and any advice that anyone could impart. In the miniature world you can find the most supportive people willing to share knowledge that in other areas most people charge a small fortune for. Ask a question and you will receive an answer sometimes even before you ask. There are also many websites found when doing a search for dollhouse miniatures.

Many of the miniatures I have made can be viewed on webshots at http://community.webshots.com/user/mizdeb11?action=publicAlbums

I have so many projects in line to do that I doubt I will ever finish them all. I tend to think about what I want to do in terms of where will it go when I leave my stick house for life on the road.









I think my favorite thing to do is create gardens. You can see many of them in my webshots albums. I love flowers and creating them has become a passion for me. I usually give these little gardens away as they make others smile and often brighten a day that is dark and dismal.

One nice thing about miniatures as they will fit nicely into my RVing lifestyle when we take to the road. I just have to make sure I save storage space for the my supplies to keep making these wonderful things in miniature. I am rethinking my doll house as it is almost 4 feet high and on a base that is 3' square. How will that fit into a motor home?

More tomorrow!

Have a great day,
Debs