Ten out of ten: social butterflies

From the moment I collated ideas for each day of this year's challenge, I knew that today's post had to incorporate the inchies I made to mark the end of 2016 in some way. (Even if it meant just blogging that photo: sometimes being a pessimistic optimist is useful!)

Over the past few days, things fell into place. I spotted a black metal cube I'd picked up in an op (thrift) shop some months ago, thinking it'd make rather a nifty modern four-poster bed.

And, while searching through my scrapbooking paper stash for another scene I found a paper that I thought might pick up some of the secondary colours of the inchies rather well (while thinking I might be sailing perilously close to creating a room in a bordello...)

I let the ideas percolate for a while. Decided I'd start putting the scene together last night, and then started to panic a bit when I didn't do anything except dig out a few bits that I thought might work, leaving them tauntingly at eye level while I worked on other things.

Which meant that after work today was showdown time. (Luckily, in the wind-down to my end-of-year leave next week, I'm finishing work at 3 pm!)

One of the things I like about this scene is it incorporates a frame given to me by a friend when I was in New Zealand in March (especially as I don't know when I'll be able to fly internationally again) and a bookmark rug given to me by my grandmother before she died last year.

And one of the things I found a challenge (apart from said mirror constantly falling off the wall because of the weight of it), was incorporating cosmetics into the scene. Because I am so not a girly-girl.

Nine months

 Parties. Remember them?

I particularly remember the virtual 9th blogiversary party I 'held' at Margell Public School back in 2015.

(And the state of the place the morning after!)

Eight is enough

Don't panic: I'm not abandoning the challenge. I just need some head space to make it through the last few days of my work year, and time to clean up the studio after my weekend efforts.

So I'm recycling this scene from 2015. Interestingly, it happens to use the exact same white rectangular bowl, jar of shells and tarnished jug that I used in yesterday's scene. What are the chances?

(And, come to think of it, that looks like the same chair as well...)

Seven weeks of summer

Today's scene inspiration? A Dick Frizzell rug by Designer Rugs. (Which seems rather apt as this year's Christmas day reading is his new book).

I decided early on the it would probably be in a kiwi bach, but the sort of kiwi bach that could contain a (probably) quite expensive rug and furnishings to match. And art. Of course.

I could've stopped there, but being a beggar for punishment, I decided to keep building the scene, with further kiwi touches

and an enitre kitchen to boot!

Alas, it wasn't until I took and went to edit the pictures that I discovered that the greeny-yellow scrapbooking paper I'd picked out to match the colours of the rug reads as cream by my camera (oddly enough, the plates on the shelf next to the stove are reading pretty close to the green they are: which, to the naked eye, are about the same colour as the paper).

Rats! This makes the whole scene look a lot more suburban and boring...

All sixes and sevens

I was preparing for the scene I was planning to make for today: gathering flooring, furniture and accessories based on the image I'd found as inspiration.

And then I realised that most of the furniture came out of Hideaway cafe. And Hideaway cafe just happened to have a seat cushion made with a coffee bag. A coffee bag that just happened to have a 6 on it.

So rather than spending time on my last Sunday before I start my end-of-year leave almost recreating Hideout (but bigger, and with a licence), I'll save some time and send you over to visit Hideout cafe yourself (although I hear it may have gone since I last visited...)

1975

This scene is loosely based on my childhood bedroom circa 1975. I say 'loosely' because I've taken some liberties with time (mainly around not checking the age of the ABBA posters before printing them out and hanging them!)

And before you think I've cheated by not including the number five in the scene, I did. In fact the whole scene was inspired by a vintage Famous Five book cover that's been sitting in my Pinterest Miniatures to make album.

Of course, it's a waste to use a whole sheet of paper to print just one book, so I collected the whole set,

and then got carried away hunting down other books and magazines I remember from that era in my life (or that were similar to ones I had) to add to the scene, even though you can't see half of them!

While I was at it, I used some fuzzy paper to print a version of the blanket I had on my bed as a child, and some cardboard and wood veneer to make a miniature version of my divan.

The big four

 Today's scene was always going to be built around the fabulous framed 4 that Kat sent me in mid 2018.

The rest of the scene came together pretty quickly once I'd narrowed down which of my scrapbooking paper sheets worked best with it.

The irony is, that the scene themed around the number four, but all the accessories are grouped in threes!

Throwback Thursday: three

After dinner last night, as I cut out record covers and magazines, I started contemplating what I could do on day three: and hatched a plan for the rest of the month.

I now have a folder on my desktop, with sub folders for each number. And have gone through most of my miniature photos and saved copies of ones with numbers in them to the relevant folder.

Which make me feel very much more relaxed about the whole thing as I already know that some days are already sorted, and if I get stuck on others, I probably have a back-up plan.

Like a Throwback Thursday. Back to June 2013, to be precise...

A well-overdue two tone dance party

 Back in January 2017 I received an order of Dollhouse gig posters I bought from Starshaped Press and got as far as this in plotting a scene inspired by my favourite one:

Today at lunchtime (as I realised that perhaps this year's challenge might be a little easier as I'm still working from home, so can do some prep work then) I remembered the poster set, and that this one fitted the criteria for the day quite nicely.

So once I logged off for the day I pulled the poster out of stash and spent some time looking for the rest of the items in the original picture (pork pie hat and red scooter still AWOL), and searching google images for pictures of things I could make to add to the scene, and stash for stuff I already had that would work (also currently AWOL: one Union Jack cushion).

Originally I was thinking that the scene might be an actual dance party in someone's lounge, but in these physically-distanced times, decided it might be more prudent to make it a bedroom scene of a current-day mod who is holding a two tone dance party for one.

Here's where I'm at:

And now I need to make some things before dinner time rolls around.

Daily Dolls' House December 2020: One

 And so it starts, for the seventh year.

And I've found myself, in the lead up to this year's challenge, wondering if now is the time to admit defeat.

Not just on the Daily Dolls' House December challenge, but on miniatures in general.

You see, one of the main reasons I've been doing Daily Dolls' House December through the years is to try and carve some space into each year reserved for me to play, and hopefully find my miniature mojo.

And each year it seems to become more just another thing on the list that I need to get done.

Since I moved into my first home almost two years ago, and my smaller studio, with crapper light, I've found myself in the situation where I occasionally buy something in the hope that it sparks the return of my former creativity, only to find it just seems to add to the pile of unused possibilities, and things that I need to do, or have tried to do and failed.

I was going to show examples of how overwhelmed I felt at the beginning of the challenge each year, but surprised myself by realising (at least blog-wise) that wasn't the case.

Which shook today's Eeyore-like outlook up a bit and made me a little excited about what I might be creating in the next 31 days.

Am I completely insane to add the extra challenge of including the number of the day into each scene I blog during this year's challenge?

(Today's number one courtesy of Margell Public School: one of the buildings I sacrificed in the shift to a smaller flat...)

Life in uncertain times

 And, finally, the weekend.

I gave up on the studio as too cold and decamped to the dining room table, where I finished the last few things I needed for my chair scene, then, chasing the light, to the kitchen to finally put it together.

I call it Life in uncertain times.

(And I'm hoping that that 'P 30m' sign doesn't mean 30 months: although my mortgage would be rather pleased if that were the case!)

Careful placement of the chair, and the angle and cropping of the photographs means you don't get to see this:

(I did have a back-up plan which involved ever-so-casually draping a throw or shawl on the side of the chair, but that turned out to be unnecessary).

One good thing about setting up a scene on the kitchen bench is that you're forced to put it away (or at least somewhere else) before you can start preparing dinner...

Mid-week minis

 I finished the chair. And it sat there for almost a week waiting for me to have the time and headspace to finish the scene I was planning for it, and for some light to photograph it (it's been a grey, rainy and freezing week, culminating with snow early this afternoon).

That doesn't mean I've not been mini-ing. After I logged off from work each afternoon this week I pulled out a kit from stash (in a fairly random way: but focusing on quick and easy wins), and worked on it.

Life in lockdown

 And so, after almost ten days of side-eyeing my half-completed and almost abandoned chair kit, yesterday morning I came up with a plan that might just work, and, more importantly a possible solution to cover its problem area.

And reminded myself that done was better than perfect, the whole point of the exercise was luring myself back into the studio, and if it all turned to shit I would quite happily bin the whole damned thing.While waiting for the first lot of glue for the day to dry I played my favorite game of 'Who lives here?', reacquainting myself with the stash to see where the potential scene was heading...And it seems it's heading into life in lockdown. The yellow table is back, and paired with one of the stools I picked up at the 2018 Sydney show, and a radiator I bought for the 2015 HBS Creatin' contest (which isn't moving forward anytime soon... *sigh*).

There's working from home so I needed a monitor, laptop and keyboard (and a mouse: as yet unmade).

Some topic-appropriate artwork, collected from various places across the years (including a magnet I bought at the Wellington Underground Market in 2014 (now closed), and in a city that I'm not sure when I'll next be able to visit, and which I thought I'd be using in quite a different scene (as yet unbuilt...), a wee something from a gift from a friend back in 2015 (are you sensing a theme here?), and a card of another friend's father's artwork).

I added some appropriately-coloured and themed swaps and gifts, and, finally the necessary cleaning supplies. Except I realised that the hand wash didn't really look like sanitiser, and so spent a couple of hours on the sofa that evening looking at tutorials for making miniature hand sanitiser pump packs without coming up with anything that was the right scale, and included items I already had.

So I went to bed.

And an old friend returned. Just after 3am, a thought bubbled into the dream I was having (am I the only one whose dreams are currently more interesting that their real lives?). 

My subconscious reminded me of a piece of canvas I'd completely forgotten that I had: with colours that might work as a mural in the scene: and causing the viewer some more general 'unease' with it.

Even better, it came up with the solution to my hand sanitiser problem: suggesting that a bottle from the perfume bottle set I'd bought as part of the At home with Hello Kitty range could possibly, with some white nail polish and a couple of labels, turn into a bottle of hand sanitiser.

And blow me down: it was right. Not only in remembering the tiny bottles, but also, helpfully, reminding me I had a macro lens for my phone, and pointing me to where it was!

So my Sunday involved rooting out forgotten treasures, making some ever-so-important-in-these-times hand sanitiser, and, finally, finishing the chair that started the whole thing...

(Which doesn't look so bad...)

Plus (unexpectedly and quite pleasingly) starting to move some things around from where they landed when I first shifted in, to places that make more sense for how I'm using them!

The kit with no instructions

I'm not actually sure when I was given this slipper chair kit by Adelaide Cann of Adelaide's Miniatures, but I suspect it was probably over five years ago at the surprise birthday workshop she threw at Div's.

It's been sitting in stash ever since, and one of its biggest issues is a lack of instructions. (If I'd been given any verbal guidance at the time I've long forgotten it).

But in my constant effort to sort out the studio I'd stumble across this op-shopped treasure, which suggested it might work rather well with the parking sign I bought on my last trip to New Zealand (Oh, in those halcyon days just before travel restrictions came into place!)

And I decided that it was worth giving it a crack as the potential negatives were so low (financially at least) and the positives so high (a new scene!)

I thought I started well, although commented on Instagram that I was at this stage where I don't know if this is going to be brilliant or a complete disaster...

Turns out, after further gluing today, that I'm lurching dangerously close to a disaster.

So I've abandoned things for now to let my poor (overloaded by work) brain time to come up with a brilliant solution that works within the small amount of fabric I have.

In the meantime, I'd decided that this piece required a scene. Which required a keyboard.

Which I only have one of, in the wrong colours (and in the wrong operating system).

A quick text to my local miniature shop indicated that such a thing would be some weeks away, so I went with option B: printing one myself.

It may not be perfect but I think it'll work for now...

Attempting it again in August...

After the spectacular (in my mind at least: I suspect no one else much noticed) failure of my May miniature challenge, at the end of last month I finally thought I should try another approach.

It's a nice mix of supportive and caring ('I know it's been a draining couple of years and you keep saying you don't have the brain space for minis, or find your 'new' studio easy to navigate, but perhaps by making some time to make something you'll feel better and finally start settling in?'), and my usual hard line and logical ('And if you don't actually start to use some of this stuff, perhaps we need to consider getting rid of it!')

And so on the weekend I figuratively locked myself in the studio: firstly unearthing my cutting mat and the chair in front of it,

and shoving stuff into the cupboard ('My what a lot of treasures you've amassed!'),  then dismantling and putting away most of The Sailor's Daughter and dusting off the remaining empty space.

I even worked out how to pull apart the IKEA mini shipping container that was sitting next to it, making more room for future possibilities (which may just include its return, if I decide to attack it with my tin snips rather than look into laser-cutting options...)

After all that excitement, past failures, and realising that I'm once again very rusty, I decided to approach things very gently.

There's making scenes. And there's making miniatures. Perhaps I should focus on the latter this time, rather than the former. Yes, I'll end up with just the same amount (if not more) stuff in the studio, but at least it's completed and not grumbling at me from the cupboard, and just perhaps starting with the latter will kick the former into action.

And so, on Saturday I started with this,

figuring that since I didn't remember where the kit came from I wouldn't care to much if it came to nothing,

By the end of the day I had a handful of completed projects

(none of which, you may note, is the book kit that started the whole approach).

Since my focus was on kits made of paper, I also made these: from a kit I received in the goody bag from the 2015 AMEA convention.

(Giggling as I spent way too much time making sure that the card corners weren't square...)

At that stage I hoped quietly that I'd managed to find and recapture my mini mojo....

Just parking this here

I've been feeling a bit envious reading all the social media posts from people who have been home over the past month or so, with lots of free time to deep dive into projects.

Then I feel conflicted as I remind myself how fortunate I am to have a job. And a job I can do from home. But which often leaves me brain dead by the time I clock off for the day.

So I decided that I should attempt a challenge: but with all the other stresses caused by the current situation, make it as low-pressure as I possible.

It's called 'May be miniatures'. It's May. I'll try to do something miniature-related each day, but I'm sure as hell not going to beat myself up if I don't, or the lighting's crap because it's dark by the time I finish whatever it is that I plan to create that day so my photos aren't great.

Yep, this is going to be the loosest challenge I can come up with. Perhaps you'll hear from me tomorrow. Or perhaps I'll decide what I need to do is stay burrowed under the doona (duvet), keep warm, and read. We'll see...

Minis in a mad world

It was only two weeks ago, but I feel very fortunate to have made it to New Zealand (and back!) on a trip to visit The Parental Units and New Zealand friends.

I hadn't intended to come back with minis, as I was aware of the fact that I've not been doing much recently, but things just... happened.

Here's my haul: a mix of gifts, op-shopped finds and discount-store discoveries.

First the gifts, and one particularly precious one. Friend Miggs gave me the oak side table she made back in the 90s,

with its beautifully inlaid top,

along with her collection of vintage miniature pottery from Peru,

and a set of miniature pallets she found in her local tip shop.

I've always admired the table, and will treasure it. Hopefully sometime soon I'll make a particularly special scene to display it in.

From one of my favourite Wellington shops, I picked up this weathered bird cage, and a lighthouse and letter A charm.

From Uncle Bills [sic], some puffy stickers,

and from various op shops around the region, what can only be described as 'some weirdly random bits' that spoke to me.

I managed to slip back into the country six hours before self-isolation became mandatory for anyone entering, which means instead of being forced to loll round at home for 14 days reading books and playing with miniatures, I've been working there instead.Just to be on the safe side. I felt better about the whole thing when my role was declared 'critical', as I'm working on national COVID-19 related stuff (she says enigmatically).