Day 24: Throwback Thursday

This serendipitous photo from the 2016 NZ Association of Miniature Enthusiasts' convention fits the bill for today nicely: 

It was a fun convention. You can read my posts about it here.

23rd of December

It's that time of the year when things are winding down, the end of the year and a summer break is squarely in sight for most people (if not already started!), and I've pulled up the drawbridge until all the madness is over.

So I figured today needed a serene pre-Christmas scene.

(With, of course, the now-mandatory number included...)

Catch 22

In a nice change from this time last year, it's been a lovely cool week: mainly because it's been overcast and/or raining for the past few days.

Which is brilliant for keeping the temperature down to a level I can cope with, and for keeping the plants alive, but not so good for getting my washing done and dried, or for good light for photographing miniature scenes.

Luckily I have a photo from the archives that I can use today, but not one that brings back good memories.

I was applying for a job I didn't want, with a manager whose behaviour I didn't like, but financially didn't feel I had much choice.

I got the job, and then made sure that I was financially no longer in that position (and, in fact, four years (and many transfers) later, quit and supported myself for around 9 months while I recovered).

Day twenty one

Chinese Ginsengs & Herbs co, Chinatown, Sydney 2018, from Urban Decay, an exhibition of miniature buildings created by artist Joshua Smith that I visited on a day trip to Sydney last year.

Four 'N Twenty pies

There's an iconic Australian pie brand called Four 'N Twenty: which was fortunate for today's scene.

Not that I've ever eaten one: or been to the footy, where they are usually eaten. Obviously I'm not a rooly trooly Aussie!

Day nineteen: and a day off...

I had all the plans in the world to produce a scene today around the concept of the book 1984.

But I'm feeling a wee bit flat and lacking in creativity, so instead here's a photo I took of a framed one-twelfth-scale plinth and work from the Call of the Small exhibition I curated for Craft ACT back in 2010:

and a link so you can read all about the exhibition, if you so desire. While I flop back on the sofa for an afternoon's magazine reading.

Explosive eighteen

It was last night that I started to realise the folly of my plan for this year's Daily Dolls' House December challenge: in previous years I could spend several days working on (and blogging) a scene, but this year I have to come up with something new every day, unless I have a photo I can recycle from a previous post.

I had a late night last night working on another project, and so a slow start to today.

Every time I reminded myself I had a scene to do, I gulped and pretended I hadn't heard myself: until just after 3 pm, when the nagging and the stress because too much and I decided to go with the lowest common denominator among the pictures I'd saved from some frenzied googling.

So with much inner encouragement ('Go on, slam something together and then it'll be done for the day and you can finally relax!'), I came up with a picnic for one, based on some scrapbooking paper I'd pulled out days ago, just in case,

and with a suitably trashy, but perfectly-themed, book.

(I just hope the 'explosive' doesn't refer to the after effects of eating cheese that may have been sitting out in the sun for too long!)

Seventeen magazine

 I discovered Seventeen magazine, and bought my very first issue (the very fat August 1979 'back to school' issue) for a whopping $2.50 (a fortnight's pocket money) back in December 1979 at the age of 13 and a half.

The fact I remember all this shows what an impact that purchase had on me (although had I not bought it, and cemented my love of magazines, I would have saved rather a lot of money since then!)

So it was pretty much a done deal that today's post would include a Seventeen magazine in some way. Originally I thought I might update my childhood bedroom to my early teens, but when I found a stash of very vintage covers, plans changed.

I narrowed the many choices down to a set of six, in red white and blue and with a theme of stripes, and then the rest of the scene came together quickly.

A rummage through the scrapbooking paper stash unearthed a piece of stripy paper I thought would work as a feature wall.

I added a Lundby sofa (last spotted back in 2018), a dead-stock perspex hall table (last used as a sneeze guard in Buzzbar Cafe) as a desk, and a desk chair from the 2016 NZAME convention (dodgy covering artfully disguised by a handknitted lace shawl!) 

Flowers in a jug from the local tip shop, and a stripy 'tissue box' bead complete the desk, which is set up for a bit of writing, both analogue and digital.

Sixteen candles

Today was one of those holiday days that rather got away from me, and it wasn't until after 5pm that I realised I needed to make the scene I had prepared for, or revert to the back-up plan I had tucked away from 2017.

So it's a wee bit rough and ready...

(especially if you look at it closely

or, indeed, from a distance!)

But, as the saying goes, done is better than perfect.

And is it just me that now has Depeche Mode stuck in their head?

15th of December

 The day, and the scene a year ago, that inspired this year's version of the Daily Dolls' House December challenge.

The fourteen day detox

 A quick one today after the two-day effort to complete yesterday's scene:

The thing I'm enjoying about this version of the challenge is that some days I have no idea what the scene will be, start to panic as I continue search google images for a leaping off point: but once I have it , things just fall into place.

Sunday afternoon at the beach house

 First Sunday of my break, and I'm thinking of holiday houses again. Travelling in my imagination is definitely much safer (and cheaper!) at the moment, and something I seem to do regularly at this time of the year.

And before you ask, yes, there is a 13 in the scene: in fact it was one of the things that inspired the whole thing, as I was propped up in bed yesterday morning searching through image search for suitable 13 inspiration.

The other piece of inspiration was a fashion picture in the January 2021 Australian marie claire (my special beginning-of-holiday treat to myself that I was reading in bed in between image searches).

I really liked the old-holiday-house by the beach vibe, and decided it was worth getting out of bed, showered, and dressed in order to head down to visit James at Victorian Dollhouses to buy some white wood french doors and windows to have a go at staining.

Which meant when I got home I headed down to my workshop to work on something for the first time since I moved in. Which was a bit of a milestone.

This morning I was up and out of bed bright and early to finish off the staining (and varnishing) and then made my biggest scene in a while. Which included a courtyard with a pergola which can be seen through my beautiful, completed french doors.

And a touch of artificial sun, as the studio in this flat faces the opposite direction to my one in my last flat, so I can't borrow the real thing without moving everything to the other side of the flat: which is just too much extra effort.

Apart from being pleased with how the doors came out, I'm also pleased that I've used a number of bits and pieces from stash that have been waiting to be used for a while.

For example: the rug covering the sofa is from MitchyMoo Miniatures (I used it last year as well...). Pieces in the bookcase came from Kitty and Kat Miniatures in our last swap, from my friend Miggs, and from Whirlwind Designs during my last visit to New Zealand. Kat also supplied the canoe and palm in the courtyard, and the dream catcher and elephant on the wall. The Mako my day artwork has been waiting patiently for a scene since I picked it up in Wanganui in 2016, the piece next to it from Rotorua on the same trip, The large floor vase and the palm tree posters were from various Canberra shows. The end table by the sofa is from an op shopping trip during last year's challenge, as is the fence in the courtyard. And the rug?  Dead stock from when I used to have a stall at miniature shows here and in Sydney.

And now I'm a wee bit exhausted. And already worrying about how I'm going to pull another scene out of my brain tomorrow, especially as my studio is in desperate need of a tidy-up after today's effort...

One twelfth scale

There was only one choice for today's post: this scene from back in 2011...

which started with this inchie from my 2011 Inch by Inch challenge,

which I then embiggened,

and finally things just got silly and it morphed into the scene at the top!

Elevenses

 Humour me in some poetic licence today, my last day at work for the year.

Because I made an office cubicle scene, and I haven't actually had a desk in an office since May, when our team shifted. And they've shifted again since, and 'my' desk is being lent to someone else.

Not that I've actually seen 'my' current desk, or the one before it. It's an odd situation to be in, but at least I have sighted the tub I packed before the first move, safely tucked away next to my boss's desk.

So it's a tad ironic that I create an office cubicle (my first, I think?) for today's scene. And before you ask: yes, there is an eleven in there (and not just the one circled on the calendar...

But there's a tiny problem. It's so damned small you can't see it, even if I use my macro lens!

Which is a bit of a bugger as I especially drove two suburbs over to pick up takeaway coffee cups to scan and create (not terribly well) in miniature.

All part of the challenge, I suppose. And tomorrow is another day, with another number.

And speaking of numbers: the number of days until I return to work? 24 :-D

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...)