I couldn't contain myself...

...at the Australian Miniature Enthusiasts Association meeting yesterday.

I bought a trunk for Margell (even though I have the kit from the last meeting, still waiting to be put together.

But I figured $12 was a small price to pay for such a beautifully aged example, and I can now use it as study piece when I make my own.)

 And the trunk seemed to set the theme for the rest of my acquisitions. Kathy Brindle gave me this beautifully-crafted hat box the she made, and Adelaide Cann gave me one of her new wooden crayon cases.

And there were more containers in a couple of 'bags of bits' I bought from Chell Oldfield (who was the tutor for the round-table workshop I took):

 These black and white shoe boxes caught my attention in one of the bags,

 as did this lovely vintage gift box,

 and this crumpled empty Toblerone packet!

 And this is the rest of the contents of the jar-making kit I got from the Chell's workshop. Lots of lovely possibilities in there for stocking Margell's pantry!

A jarring day

One of the great things about Canberra is the fact that you can wake up in your own bed in the morning, spend the day in Sydney, and return to sleep in your own bed that night.

Today The Australian Miniature Enthusiasts Association held it's  November meeting, AGM and Christmas lunch in Sydney. I was lucky enough to get a lift up and back with a friend who was visiting her mother.

The main reason I wanted to go?

 To do Chell Oldfield's jar-making round-table workshop.

 I particularly wanted to make a jar of Vegemite and a jar of pasta for Margell. 

 The Vegemite I finished. But I kept getting distracted so my pasta jar remains unlabelled and empty for now... 

And the rest of the items in the kit? Added to my teetering pile of UFOs...

Global cuts

Having the vet visit on Tuesday meant I had to clear off my work bench to make room for him to examine Mr Nibbs.

And I vowed that I would deal with the piles of stuff that I moved off it rather than just pile it all back on. But first. while it was clear, I decided to see if I could indeed use some of the contents of the snow globe I bought that afternoon from the Typo factory outlet store:

Three miniature New York landmarks for a total of $1? I'm happy. (Alas the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building didn't survive the breaking into the globe and the cutting apart of the contents)

Little houses, at the markets, little houses made of clay.

This afternoon, while visiting a friend who had a stall at the Belconnen Arts Centre Christmas Market, I stumbled across a basket of tiny clay houses.

How could I resist, with a sign like this?

 I chose my house...

and took it home.

Where I'm now trying to decide if it should like with my full-sized decorations

or in my mini-world...

Seidler in Sydney

Our final stop on our Museum of Sydney visit earlier this month was the Harry Seidler: Painting towards architecture exhibition.

By this stage I was starting to suffer exhibition fatigue so didn't fully take in all the details of what was on display. But this cross-stitched picture of Rose Seidler House (created by his wife, Penelope, in 2005) caught my attention:

 as did this architect's model:

 (although I prefer Div's 1/16 scale version...)

I was captivated by this model of Australia Square, made out of Lego:

 (Including a tree

 and the Calder stabile!)

Looks like I'll need to schedule another visit to Sydney later in the year...

An afternoon off work

This afternoon the vet visited to check Mister Nibbs out (and, it ensued, take him back to the surgery to do some work on his teeth).

My boss preferred I take the afternoon as flex, rather than work from home after the vet had left. So I took the opportunity to run some errands that had been on the 'To Do' list for a while.

Buying wood filler, for example (thanks, Pepper, for the info). And 3D paint for a chest kit I ordered from the August AMEA workshop that I wanted to attend, but wasn't able to.

But the Typo factory outlet was slap bag between the hardware store and the craft shop that sold the 3D paint. What's a girl to do on an afternoon off with such temptation, except give in?

So there was a visit to the 'Not Quite Right' table, where I picked up (for a dollar each) a handloom weaving kit (which needs to be glued back together), a wooden magazine holder (to be pulled apart), a second packing crate (I wonder where that's heading...), a broken New York snow globe (just waiting to be broken into and harvested), a tin of neon lime paint (...) and an orange mini alarm clock,

While I was in the centre, I checked out the new Pottery Barn/ Williams Sonoma/ west elm outlet. 

And bought something very big.

Dream Home, Small Home

I'm only a week late in sharing the photos I took on my visit to The Museum of Sydney last weekend with my Co-Editor...

('Dream Home, Small Home'. How could we not?)

Especially when I spotted this as I entered the exhibition:

More info on the ready-cut cottages can be found on the Sydney Living Museums website (and of a local one, which is used as part of an artists' residency, on the TaMS website). And I'll stop there with the links, as that's a rabbit hole I could very easily fall down.

 The exhibition included lots of fabulous magazine and newspaper articles and promotions featuring DIY homes from the era

 including a number of plans available by mail order that the time, which would make modern miniaturists swoon...

(Dream Home, Small Home

23 August 2014 - 23 November 2014

Museum of Sydney, Cnr Phillip and Bridge Streets, Sydney, NSW 2000

$10 entry)

Sale-price Sunday

There's a newsagents I know of that sells off the bits that were attached to magazines that didn't sell. Whenever I'm in the vicinity I make sure to spend five minutes digging through the box to see if there's anything I could use in miniature. (It's like a $2 lucky-dip box but you get to see what you're getting before you spend your money.)

Today's find was a box of nail art from a Girlfriend magazine, which included slices of orange, lime and apple.

Recollect: In the city

Here are the rest of the buildings that caught my eye at the Powerhouse Museum's Recollect: Models exhibition last weekend:

Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board building: a lovely wooden model of the building, which is still standing (there's a great Flickr album of how it looks now)

Own house, Trier Center by Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin.

This particularly interested me as I recently read a book on their work and lives which covered this estate, and the house was never built because they moved to Australia to work on their winning design for Canberra.

The House of Tomorrow, by Robyn Boyd.

(Which I've always thought would make an excellent dolls' house design)

And, finally, Le Corbusier's Villa Shodhan

If you're in Sydney any time before February 1 next year, I recommend popping in to the Powerhouse Museum to see the exhibition for yourself.