Happy Birthday Ilona!!!

To my Dear Friend Ilona,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEARIE!!!!!!!!

I know today - 19th January is your Birthday, today is almost at it's end here and in it's early stages in the Nederlands. I hope you have a wonderful day full of Family, Friends and celebrations! I would like to thank you for your kindness and friendship, it is hard to imagine a friendship growing over such long distances but some how, as we all know connections can be made without ever having laid eyes on each other. You are an inspiration to us all and the dedication to your craft shows in the exquisite work you create.

I have a little poem I found which made me think of you -

We take our friends with us where ever we go -and say to ourselves: 

"They would love this"' "This I must remember to describe", "I wish that they were here to share this view, this meal, this adventure"

Pam Brown, B. 1928

and

Friendship is unnecessary,

like philosophy, like art.......

It has no survival value;

rather it is one of those things

that give value to survival

C.S. Lewis

So my lovely Lady, I have been thinking of you all day today, whilst at the Australian Open Tennis.

Waiting to get home to make my post. I hope your day is wonderful!

It has also been my Nieces 21st Birthday and I have given her the gift of some Jewellery she liked but I also wanted to make her a card, my original idea was to make a miniature scene out of paper, but you know how it is.......once the mind gets ticking over......paper became Fimo, houses had to have lights, and trees made from seaweed, a path, a figure.........

These are not my greatest photos but I took them last night at India's birthday dinner....with my iphone again, so, they could be better, but you get the idea. The figure is not exactly to scale but I have to admit that the whole process took much longer that I thought and I whipped up the figure 5 mins before walking out the door!! 

The village sits on top of a shoe box lid covered in linen. Underneath is a collection of LED lights connected to a battery pack. I drilled holes in the lid and pushed the lights through and stuck the little houses in place over the top. The trees are twigs with little balls of seaweed attached, they do look remarkably like trees I think.

I had so much fun making this little Diorama, I really like the way the houses have turned out, I intended to make them straighter but I kind of like the way they look quite organic.

Happy Minis every one!!!

ML Fi xxx

Kitchen Tiles

Hello All,

Just a quick post today. I was recently very excited to come across a fellow Australia blogger of miniatures. We are few and far between compared to you Europeans and Americans, ooops not to forget Canadians, but you all get my drift. The most exciting thing is that , Emily from Architecture of Tiny Distinction is from Melbourne!!! Incase some of you weren't aware that is where I am from, down south.......

Any way, Emily asked me how I did my kitchen tiles and rather than take up a huge amount of space on her blog I thought I would explain here incase any one else wanted to know.

Firstly I followed Josie's direction were she explains in the Kitchen section of her Cannel House website . I painted some card stock the colour of my choice, then sprayed with several thin layers of Varnish.(more on that later) I then cut the tiles to the required size (I used a guillotine as I found it most accurate) I then stuck each tile to a piece of graph paper I had cut to the correct size of my wall and marked out where the tiles were to go. Once this was done I used gap filler to grout the tiles. This in brief is how Josje explains it but I made one VERY big mistake that cost me hours later. I was impatient to get it done and didn't realise at this early stage that it is important to do several thin coats by watering down the paint, this way you don't get brush stokes. I found it difficult to get the paint to level without brush stokes so I change course and used an Acrylic Enamel for house painting. This is were my problem began. The spray varnish reacted with the paint and left spots. SO, because there was already a gloss I decided to skip the varnish, only to find that when I filled the gaps in the tiles, instead of wiping away easily it grabbed and was very time consuming to remove. It then left my tiles dull with no shine. I then chose to paint every single tile again which took hours, I nearly gave up on miniatures all together. It improved the result but I am still not entirely happy with the finnish.

Well you live and learn!! I am currently painting my new fire surround and the white iron bed steads and how am I doing it???? With lots of very thin coats!!!

I am also doing another little miniature project as a gift for some one and I am really very happy with it so far. I will post about it in a day or two.

Until then, Happy minis every one!!

ML Fi xx

Thank You!

Hello Every One,

I just wanted to say a very quick thank you to all those who left their lovely comments on my last post, your thoughts and encouragement's are so inspiring and appreciate so much you taking the time. I hope to get back into some miniatures very soon.

Much love, Fi xx

Kitchen Effects

Hello every one!

Firstly welcome to my new followers and thank you for taking the time to have a look.

I had a few ideas about how I would show you detailed photos of my Kitchen and I hadn't quite got around to taking the next lot which as you all know can some times be time consuming if you are fiddling around with lenses and lighting. Whilst sitting in the evening, not doing much else than watching the TV  because I had no daylight to take photos I decided to experiment with my iphone. How would the kitchen come up if I used this nifty device instead? Well I must say, it did an okay job, it was much easier to take pictures because I could fit it inside the DH which defiantly has its advantages.

The iphone took good accurate pictures but they didn't have the usual atmosphere I like to achieve so I used the instagram app I have on my phone to give them a bit more character. I think the final result is a bit of fun! It probably doesn't do the finer details much justice, so some of the lovely things like Carrie's plates from A lavender dilly I have hanging on the walls and shelves really look much prettier in RL so in another post I will show them in better detail. The basket I have mentioned before is by Liddy from Basket case miniatures and the paintings I did my self although I must say they didn't come up well in the photo so there is another future post. The Geraniums I have shown in a previous post and mentioned that the lady who makes them does not have a website but I believe she will have a display at the Sydney Doll House Fair. Mia and I made most of the food except the ham which was one of our first purchases made at a local DH fair. It was a must have considering we both adore The Tale Of Two Bad Mice, and the scene where Hunca Munca tries to cut the ham with no luck. Every thing else was either made by me or purchased from my favourite Doll house shop ( sadly the only one in Melbourne) The Dollhouse including the Kitchen dresser already assembled with the items attached, Mia was fortunate enough to received this as a gift from a family member. It hasn't come up all that well in with the effects but will do in the future posts.

For now I will leave it there, my apologies in advance if I don't get to reply to your comments immediately but I will be out of action for the next few days. So until then, happy minis every one!!

ML Fi xxx

The year that was!!

As we are all aware the New Year is a time for Reflection of the year that has past and Hope for the New Years possibilities. My initial intention was to post on my latest miniatures but found my self reflecting on the year that has passed and how you all have played a part in it. I would like to dedicate this post to my son Jay, who has faced  the most difficult years of his young life. Having said that, it has been one of the most challenging years of my life supporting him through it. He has just successfully completed his final year of Schooling which included an Art folio and a Media folio along with studying, English, English literature, Music and Psychology.

Above is an image of the first of a series of pen illustrations Jay created based on a waif theme, progressively getting darker as the year went on, I think there were eight or nine in total. The particular feat in creating these images is that each one is at least a meter square, some even larger than that and whilst I spent at least an hour trying to work out how I could enlarge sections of this image to show the intricate paterns of cross hatching that make these pieces so amazing, I was not able to. Jay created all of these illustrations as well as making an amazing movie whilst facing some incredible personal challenges which were at  times debilitating. I am so proud of all that he has achieved whilst dealing with these issues, his hard work has been rewarded by being accepted into the course of his choice and first passion, Film and Media based on his folio alone.

This is were you all come in!! This year has been nothing short of stressful, I could not fully express in words how difficult it has been at times. Having my miniatures to escape too has been a delightful relief and whilst I haven't created that much at all, reading your blogs and having wonderful communications and friendships with you all has been my saving grace. I appreciate so much your encouraging comments and kind words, the great humour and inspiring images. At times I have had tears in my eyes and laughed out loud at some of your comments. I consider you all dear friends and I am so grateful for your support throughout this past year.

I wish you all Great Happiness, Good health and Amazing prosperity!!!!

Much love and big hugs,
Fi xx

Australian Christmas.

Hello all,

As you may have read in my last post I am holiday in Noosa Queensland and I thought I would give you an idea of how we celebrate Christmas here. Certainly no snow and no woollies. Our Christmas dinners are often eaten outside to make the most of the beautiful weather. We do partake in the traditional dinners of Ham and Turkey which can sometimes be a little much when the oven is roasting along with every one else in 35 degree heat. Often we have seafood and BBQ's and it is certainly the more becoming more the norm these days.

Being on Holiday I had very little at hand in the way of miniatures so I made this little post with all that I could gather together. I'm sure you can guess what the Christmas tree originally was.....hehe! I tried my hand at sewing the little Christmas stockings and made the star fish and candy canes from Femo. The baubles are beads from the craft shop.

I must mention the Pineapple.......Something that is often part of a Christmas celebration in all sorts of uses, fruit platters, Salads, glazing hams....the list goes on but I put this in to bring a smile to the face of a certain person.......you know who you are.....; )

Merry Christmas to all and I would like to thank you all for your lovely encouraging comments and your warm friendships. It has made an otherwise difficult year bearable knowing you are all out there.

Love and good will to all and  have a wonderful Holiday.

Much Love,

Fi xx

Time for a cuppa?

Hello every one,

A big sigh of relief as we finaly make it to our Holiday destination and the world stops spinning so fast!!

I am up early as I usual before every one else, it's my favourite time of day, peace and quiet before the days activities. Not much on today except beach and sitting beside the pool so a quick blog catch up is ideal relaxation.  My apologies to all for being so absent from the blogsphere, some how I wound up with both sides of my family for Christmas dinner only 2 days after we arrive home from our holiday which meant I had to leave the house fully prepared for Christmas, not to mention fitting in my son's 18th birthday and getting him through all his final exams before we left.

So needless to say I had a very long list of things to do stuck on my fridge and I managed to get through all of it except for one, which was  Do Kitchen Post. One I was supposed to do early on but I was disappointed with how my photos turned out because I rushed them and I haven't been able to re-photograph them. So I have decided to post just a few for now because I don't have much else and when things slow down I can photograph some of the lovely things I collected for my kitchen and properly link them to all the places they came from.

Here are just a few that will give you a bit of an idea on my progress so far.

My original idea was to go step by step through the kitchen door, as if the lady of the house had arrived back from the market and was about to have breakfast before she prepared for lunch with her friend.....thus the wine, wheel of Brie and baguette in the basket (my favourite with friends). Each step showing the little things I have made and collected. I did make the baguette and found the wine and cheese label on the internet. I made pears and lemons and other goodies and painted some little paintings but unfortunately you can't see them.......I will re photograph when I get back.

Happy minis every one!!

ML Fi xxxx