Magazines Everywhere!!

Recently, I found out that one on the ladies in my miniature club has a subscription to American Miniaturist.  Now when I stopped doing minis 14 years ago,  There was a magazine that I loved called Nutshell News.  At the time, it was the only one I would get because it was such a good magazine.  When I started back up a few years ago, I was sad to find out that they no longer do that magazine, but the new one "American Miniaturist" was close to the type of magazine it was, so I found one & bought it.  I liked it well enough, but never really found it in my budget to subscribe for a year...so when I found out a club member had hers for the last several years, I had asked her if I could borrow some of them just to look through for any interesting projects.  Well, she shows up at the next meeting and brings me this.....

I was so excited, but quickly told her it may be a few months before I could get through all of them... I really only expected her to bring me 5 or 6 of them, which would have been great!  Then she proceeds to tell me that she really never looks at them & she does not want them back... she is giving them ALL to me!  I was speechless to say the least.  I tried several times to have her keep them but she really did not want them anymore, and I really cant get a subscription right now so I gladly took them, and sang "Merry Christmas to me"  all the way home.  I spent the next night sorting and organizing them, and finding a new home for them in my cramped space, and come to find out She had given me 6 years worth of issues and I am only missing 9 of them for a complete set!  It was so amazing, it still makes me smile to think of her wonderful gift!

Take care!

Presents in the mail....

I had a little package come in the mail for me on Saturday, and I finally got a chance to photograph it... I HAD to get one of Kats Pirate hats, well, because I just LOVE the Captain Jack Sparrow character....So while in her ETSY store I saw a teal looking witches hat that I think I am going to keep for my long term "The Burrow" project.  I am just really collecting things for it right now & have figured out the ground floor.  Kat, being the wonderful person that she is, put a little something extra in my box which I am so excited to have, & they will go perfectly with my hutch that I am currently working on!!
Anyway, Here are my newest hats....

Yes!  She sent me a little pair of witch shoes!! Aren't they adorable!

Here is a closer picture of the 2 hats, you can see the stitching better on the Jack hat & the details on the teal patchwork hat....

and here is a better photo of the shoes!  I just love them to pieces!

It seems as time goes on, that I become more & more addicted to her lovely little hats!!  I still have to figure out what on earth I am going to do with the pirate hat....  now I have to do a pirate scene....:)  Now I get to learn how to make little fimo pieces of eight!!  LOL  At least I have plenty of empty bottles for the rum.  Wow, I must be getting tired...

Take care!

Random Jars

I have been playing around with filling some of the bottles I have been collecting for the past year.  Most of my ideas for filling revolve around using a resin of some sort, but I have not ordered any yet, So I thought I would play around with some things I already had around the house.  Honestly, most of them looked really stupid, but I did manage to get a few done that I might actually be able to use.  

The photos are a little dark, but not too bad.  You can click on them to make them bigger.

 These 2 jars have the bones in that I posted about earlier.    

These 2 have dried-smushed flowers in them.  The one to the left is a really dark red from red roses & the other is a really pretty lavender color.

These two you can see the colors better & the tops have clay on them right now just to keep the stuff in while I decide how to top them off.  I am probably going to use some jewelry findings & beads to make the tops.  The one to the left is a square shape & the circular one is flat.  I think I like these 2 best       (so far).  :)

This is a part of one of the flowers,but I really liked the way it looked in the jar.  It has good texture.

Here are all of them together.



So far that is all I have done.  I still need to decide what to call them, and then make & attach the labels, but before I can do that I need to learn how to age paper.  I started last weekend and have a few pages that turned out pretty good, so I am going to make more aged paper this weekend & see If I can get some labels & scrolls & random pages to lay about with assorted things on them.  I have some dragons, mushrooms, botanical drawings, ect that I have printed onto the aged paper, but I still have to seal them.  (I just bought the sealer last night) so that should pretty much take up my free time this weekend.

Take care!

My Witch Hats....

Well, I have gotten a little side tracked, but I finally did get some pictures taken.  I do not have anything from Christmas to show you, I think I left that at work.  But I will show you my attempt at making a witches hat following Kat-The -Hat -Lady's tutorial, click  HERE to go and try for yourself.  I actually wasn't planning on doing this tutorial for quite some time, (I am trying to stick to my to finish list before I begin anything new) but I was shopping one day and checking the clearance bin, and came across this suede like wallet that would be perfect for a hat for $1.50.

 It was too good of a deal to pass up, so I added one more thing to my list and moved it to the top!  The tutorial was very easy to follow and I didn't have any trouble following the instructions, but doing those little seams in the back was a lot trickier that I had anticipated!  Especially since I could not fit my fingers in there!  I am really particular about my seams being straight, so it took a bit of work, and my tongue had to be sticking out of my mouth just so, but I got there!  I then went to the fabric store & got some trim for the edges.  It is hard to tell in the photo but the one on the left is gold in color.  The one on the right is supposed to be like a fur trimmed hat, but I couldn't get the fur to turn out like I wanted it to be.  The one in the picture is the closest I could get.  After all that, then I got to put the wrinkles in.  That part was pretty fun, but it was hard to decide where I wanted them!  I finally just made a commitment & put the glue inside.  Overall, I really am happy with the way they turned out, especially since I have never done anything like that before. 

I have also been working on filling some bottles for my witch's hutch, but I think I will save that for next time.  I need to go and get some real life stuff done.... oh if only I could live in miniature world for a while....

Take Care!

Ideas Welcome....

Just a quick post to say that tonight I am going to dedicate myself to taking all of the photos I need to do my next blog posts!  I don't like blogging without the pictures, that is half the fun!  so when I go for long periods of time with no posts it is because I have no time to take my pictures for the posts. 

I am a excited because today I got my confirmation that I got in to this years State Day.  It is hard to believe it is almost time again for that.  This is the only miniature event I usually get to attend besides the monthly club meetings, so I look forward to it quite a bit.  I thought I would post a quick pic of the project for this year & get some input from you guys.

The box is split in two & the bottom is where you put your scene.  Being the Harry Potter fan that I am, when I first saw the clock, I really wanted to do Mrs. Weasley's clock (withe the family faces on the arms of the clock) & then for the scene do a room from the Burrow.  So, my question to you is which room should I do.  The room is not very big.  I think it it is 9" x 9" & 5" deep.  The Kitchen has a lot of possibilities, I could do like the stove with a pantry & bookshelves with all of her cooking stuffs around.  But the livingroom could be fun too.  I could do her little knitting chair with baskets of yarn &  a little side table, or I could do the fireplace with a chair & rug.  Then again, any of the bedrooms could be fun as well!  Any input or ideas are welcome!!

Well, I am off to take my photo's now...
Take care!

My little pots

These are some little pots that my cousin made me for Christmas.  I actually got them a few weeks before Christmas, but it was around the time my computer went crazy, so I am now just getting to get them posted.  He actually does regular pottery and one day I was looking through his site HERE, and I came across some small pots he had photos of.  So of course I immediately contacted him to see if I could buy them.  He had made them just to test out some of his new glazes, but promised to make me some for Christmas.  I thought he would make like 4 of 5 (which I would have been happy with) but I was so surprised when I opened my packages to find such a large assortment of pots and bowls!  Some of them are too big to use for 1" scale 'regular' pottery, but they will work for some large corner urns and things.  Don't worry... I can make them work!  My daughter keeps asking me which one is my favorite, and I am hard pressed to choose just one.  I like them all for different reasons!     

The rest of my Christmas was real life stuff, but I still enjoyed it all.  I did get the Harry Potter Film Wizardry book which Michelle has a brilliant post about HERE, she has taken great photos of some of the pages inside the book which I really don't know when I will get a chance to do, but it truly is a wonderful book full of Harry Potter eye candy!

Well, That is about it for now.  I will try to post this weekend about our miniature club Christmas party.

Take Care,

(P.S. Sorry for the messy formatting, still getting used to the new photos posting thing.  It wont let me arrange them like I used to be able to.)



Late Christmas Greetings...

Well, I hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas getting together with family and celebrating the season! My Christmas didn't turn out quite like I had planned, but it wasn't horrible or anything.

My computer has not been working for a few weeks now we finally got it fixed so I am glad I can get on  post again... :)

Sorry, back to Christmas.... originally We had planned to go and spend Christmas at my Mothers house which is in the Tennessee mountains. ( her house sits on the very top of their mountain) These photos were taken at a previous Thanksgiving, but it will give you an idea...

This is the front of the house

This is the back of the house, my favorite part is the porch that runs the across the entire back


This is early in the morning looking off the back porch into the valley which is filled with fog.

It is a lovely house with breath-taking views, I always enjoy going to visit it is so relaxing. She only lives about 4 hours away, so it is not a long trip, but the weather was supposed to be bad filled with snow ice, so all week long we watched as the forecast changed daily, then on Thursday they were calling for us to get 2"-4"of snow, which means that her snow totals would be at least twice as much as we got. ( she always gets more) So I decided to be a chicken and stay home. I was worried about being able to get home on Sunday if the roads weren't clear and sliding off the side of the mountain.

So anyway, since we were supposed to go up to Tennessee, I did not do any decorating at home. I had not planned any menus or anything!! So we quickly put up a small tree with only lights the angel, went grocery shopping and had a small family Christmas. It was quiet, but nice. We woke up Christmas morning  there was no snow! So now & I am disappointed that we stayed home. My husband decided to go to his family's house with my daughter (about 2 hours away) since the weather was clear. That left my son  I at home to play with our new toys! It was a very quiet relaxing day. Well, then around noon it started snowing and snowing and snowing. (husband & daughter made it home OK) It did not stop until Sunday morning. When all was said done we got around 8" of snow. It was nice to have a white Christmas. We have not had one in our area in about 40-50 years.

This is looking out my front door, down the street in my apartment complex.

(It is always much prettier in person, but I had to put one up here)

I spoke to my Mom on Monday  she was laughing telling me it was a good thing I was a chicken because they were at 18" of snow and counting. It was still snowing there & they were expecting another 1-2"! I was so glad I did not go get stuck. I would be so nice to get snowed in, but I don't think my employer would appreciate me telling them I would miss a few more days right after Christmas break! I all worked out as it was supposed to! The cool thing is, is now we still can look forward to a weekend at my Mom's when the weather clears up with presents! ;)

This post is getting much longer than I had planned and the kids are getting hungry..., so I am going to go,  I will finish this up tomorrow.

Take Care,