Highlights from March Online Miniature Show

So, in my recent obsessive re-immersion into the world of Miniatures, I've realized with no small sense of delight how much things have changed since the 1990s. Not only are the mass-produced minis so accessible, there's so many possibilities for acquiring hand-crafted miniatures! One is limited only by their ability to scavenger hunt teh Interwebs.

I also never realized that there are MINIATURE SHOWS AND CONVENTIONS.

So what happens when you combine Miniature Shows and teh Interwebs?

An Online Miniature Show, of course!

Here are some of the captivating highlights from some truly talented artisans featured in the March show:

From Montserrat Folch Ephemera Miniatures:

To be honest, I saw The Tudor Dollhouse blog referencing this "sealed set" item, and I can only add my own personal raptures. The attention to detail is absolutely exquisite, and I can only wish in vain that they would sell a tutorial for this particular creation.

From Eden Castle Arts:

This is actually one of a few lovely desks from this shop, composed of woods ranging from rosewood to cherry to mahogany. Elegant to the core!

From AmanSpeak Miniatures:

This deli tray reminds me that miniature making is not always just a hobby. Sometimes, it's ART.


Also from Amanspeaks. There are CRUMBS on this creation, for crying out loud!

From Villa Miniatures:


The possibilities with this bookcase are rather endless, but the price point is just right!

So those are my personal faves from this month's Miniature Show. God bless the Internet!

The Beginning, Continued...

After a few months, the McKinley model was finished. The girl's grandfather had painted the outside in a bold, brilliant turquoise that had very little to do with historical accuracy and everything to do with the girl's particular tastes. He had even wallpapered the walls of the dollhouse with leftover scraps of "real life" wallpaper. It was ready for our girl to play with.

And not a moment too soon, for the girl's "real life" was not exactly the happiest thing going. The children at school were becoming increasingly cruel, and while her grandparents were kind and loving, the greater family was riddled with tempest and dysfunction. This became painfully apparent on her twelfth birthday, when, a few hours before her little party, her stepfather called. Painfully, he explained that he might not be able to make it; that he and her mother were having difficulties.

Our girl's heart began to feel the first rumblings of disappointment; her stepfather was dear to her, all the more so because her biological father was nowhere to be found. And so she employed her first act of deliberate emotional manipulation--must be something that comes with adolescence. "But I really want you to come, Stepfather. It's really important to me that you're there."

Even as she said it, she knew exactly what she was doing, and she kind of hated herself for it. And she hated herself even more when she heard the annoyance and resignation in her stepfather's voice as he agreed to come.

He came to her little party, and so did her mother, and her sisters, and a little neighbor girl, one of the few people who was her friend. And the gifts were plentiful--a dear little tea set, a brass bed for the bedroom, a Victorian couch and two armchairs, a little kitchen set, a dining table and four chairs, and a doll family, too.

The girl's dollhouse and miniature life were at a point of being completely crafted--the irony was that her real life was completely falling apart.

To Begin at the Beginning

Once upon a time, growing up in the balmy heat, amidst the scrub pines and sable palms of Florida, there was a young girl. She was a curious little thing, a strange combination of shy and talkative. She idolized her older sisters, and so imitated them. She was perfectly comfortable with and could chatter away with adults, but children her own age were a puzzle to her, and she to them. Her mature speech patterns--as well as her aversion to regular bathing--simply alienated her from them, and so as she began to enter her pre-adolescence, she did so at a disadvantage.

She was resourceful, our little heroine, and she had a lively imagination. She drew and wrote little stories and immersed herself with her dolls. And then, her family noticed that she developed a new interest. Whenever they went to the mall, or to the flea market, she would gravitate towards the little miniature stands. She would beg her long-suffering grandparents and stepfather to take her to Dunn Toys and the Old America Store, and once there, she would just look, for hours and hours and hours.

Never the most subtle of girls--subtlety being something one acquired through socialization and interaction, you see--our girl began to drop hints, each more broad than the last. And then, in the Christmas of 1991, Santa and a very kindly-intentioned family came through. The little miss awoke on Christmas morning to find a big box under the tree, and when she tore away the cheap paper, she gazed in awe at this:

Or, perhaps a little more accurately, this...

Except, for the sake of veracity, it looked nothing like either of these pictures. It was a long, low, heavy box, filled with wood. Lots and lots of wood which would someday compose another interpretation of the Greenleaf dollhouse, the McKinley.

Over the next few months, each day that she came home from school--that experience being a tale with its own particular flavor of misery--our girl would fiercely, jealously examine the progress her grandfather had made on the house...first the shell went up, and then other details. The girl, for all her attention to minutiae, didn't care in the least to be bothered with the work that now doubt went into the construction of her dream. As her grandfather labored and sweated and no doubt hit all sorts of annoying little snags, she simply watched adoringly, and occasionally went to the stores and imagined the furnishings, the dolls, the things she would get to furnish her perfect house, to make a perfect life.