My Mind full of Miniatures

As I mentioned in my previous post, letting go of the parrot wallpaper wasn't easy. I really loved those parrots! So I started wondering whether there might be a way to bring them back into the room after all. Perhaps still as part of the wall décor? I found illustrations from  A Monograph of the Lories , published in London in 1896. In the original artwork, the parrots are predominantly reddish, but to make them fit the colour scheme of my morning room, I decided to redraw them in shades of deep pink, purple, and blue. The drawings were done using coloured pencils. Once they were finished, I sealed them with a fixative spray. I then cut sheets of PVC to size and framed them. The plan is to hang the two framed drawings on either side of the baby dollhouse. (I first intended to hang them side by side above the desk. But I decided a large painting is a more suitable choice for that spot.)

During the months I spent waiting for the cabinet that would include my dollhouse to be installed, I chose wallpaper for each room. It needed to reflect the Victorians' love of rich colours and elaborate patterns. On top of that, I wanted the colours to be well balanced throughout the house and to create a harmonious whole. Unlike a real house, after all, every room in a dollhouse can be seen at the same time. I browsed through hundreds of wallpaper designs online, made selections, reached decisions — and changed my mind at least ten times before I was finally satisfied. I then had all the wallpaper for every room printed on heavyweight paper at a local print shop. All that remained, I thought, was to cut it to size and add the wainscoting. My, oh my... how wrong I was! This was going to be the wallpaper for the morning room, with a ‘wainscoting’ made from a leftover piece of the dark green wallpaper we used in our real bedroom. But as soon as I tested it in the morning roo...

It had been a long, very long time since I had done any embroidery (back in my early twenties, on 14-count Aida fabric) . It was while reading dollhouse blogs like  Latchkey and Jonquil  and  About My Doll Houses  that I felt inspired to pick up a needle again. I searched the internet and discovered Elli Jenks' Etsy shop. She lives in New Zealand—literally on the other side of the world from me—but she also sells digital files of her designs. So convenient! Just minutes after buying it, I downloaded the file for the Lower Whilborough rug. The suggested colours did not match the colour palette I had planned for my morning room, so I replaced them all with different shades from the DMC range (another advantage of not buying a complete kit) . I would only know whether I had made the right choices once the rug was well underway! To increase my chances of success, I made sure that the new colours matched the original ones in brightness. The numbers written in pencil o...

I left you guessing about the themes of the three remaining galleries in my miniature museum in a tea box. Five of them came to mind quite quickly, but I have to admit that I really had to rack my brains to come up with the theme for the sixth room. Gallery 4 – Insects and reptiles I’m not a fan of insects. Even less so of reptiles. (That’s putting it mildly.) Of course, there are exceptions. Butterflies are gorgeous, for one. And turtles and chameleons definitely have their charms. So they were given a gallery of their own. And okay, there’s a crocodile too—only because it’s such a miniature one. I imagined a cabinet filled with drawers containing pinned butterflies. Yes, the original idea was actually to cut out dozens of little butterflies, fold them slightly in the middle, and then glue them on to create a 3D effect. However, I quickly realized that this would take far too much time. So instead, images of butterflies were placed inside the drawers. In the central section of ...

 At the end of May, the son of a very dear friend celebrated his ‘groeifeest’ (literally translated as ‘growth celebration’) . This is a typically Belgian phenomenon. It is a secular confirmation ceremony, organized for children who do not participate in a religious confirmation. Both celebrations take place at the end of primary school, in the year the child turns twelve. It was quickly decided that the gift for the guest of honor would have a miniature theme, since he has a soft spot for anything small and cute. Finding the right subject, however, proved more difficult. That changed when I bought a copy of Dollhouse Nederland and came across a 1:12 scale natural history museum featured in the magazine. Perfect for a twelve-year-old boy. Inspiration struck! Because I had only seven weeks to create the entire museum, I had no choice but to keep its dimensions modest. I bought a tea box with six compartments, each measuring approximately 7 × 7 cm and 5 cm deep. Each compartment...