Flashback Friday (it *is* Friday, isn't it?)

A couple of weeks ago I shared some photos of the bedroom of my Mickey apartment: the very first scene I'd created when I returned to the hobby in my 20s (and if you're new to the artform and feeling like you'll never be any good and so should just give up now: have a look at this photo I took just after I started as an adult...)

At the time I mentioned that I didn't have any electronic photos of the lounge/ kitchen area, and hadn't yet got my printer hooked up after moving a year ago. This has now been rectified, although I'm almost loathe to share the photos as they're so bad (and did momentarily consider recreating the scene to rephotograph, as I still have the rooms and the contents: wrapped up until I decide what to do with them in my much smaller home):

Let's go for a stroll down Memory Lane, shall we?

It's the late 1980s, so no internet as we now know it existed. (I worked in a scientific organisation and had recently been introduced to this 'thing' where you could leave messages on notice boards and other people THAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD would reply: so yes, the internet existed but only for a very specific and rather small group of people but most certainly not for buying dolls' house miniatures).

I knew of two shops in Wellington that sold miniatures: one, the hobby shop where the Lido cafe now is (in what I didn't realise then was a lovely modernist building),that sold basically Chrysnbon, some wood, and not much else that was interesting for a miniaturist. The other was an odd little shop in the Regent cinema arcade on Manners Street: I remember poring over the contents of their sales counter wondering when I could afford the singer sewing machine set displayed there: even though it wasn't modern, it was still miniature.

Apart from the pieces I mention in my original post on this room, I made the Mickey Mouse triptych out of wrapping paper and cardboard, the Mickey Mouse wall clock out of Fimo and cardboard, and the speakers out of Balsa wood, paint and pantihose. The records are prints from the World Record Club catalogue (remember them?!), and I sewed the gingham cushions.

I was particularly proud of the yellow case I made out of Fimo: the first time I recreated something I owned myself.

The rest of the contents were commercial pieces I picked up over months as I saved up enough to purchase my next 'must have' item.

Sadly, to this day, although I have lights in the room, they have never been hooked up to work...