The Sea Captain's House by Robin Carey

The Sea Captain's house was built from the Skil-Craft Victorian Manor with Coach House kit which is now out of production. As with all of Robin Carey's works, I really love the stonework!

Chalet Gutierrez: 19th Century French Dollhouse

This impressive doll's house has an incredible façade of long windows with balconies on the second floor, double staircase on the front and an elaborate entrance with carved columns. Named "Chalet Gutierrez," the house originally came from Toulouse, France. The two windows on each side, with finely painted curtains and trim work, were painted using the special technique of Trompe l'oeil which makes the art-work look three-dimensional. The interior is divided into six rooms with painted walls: the two upstairs rooms have cut out archways. The roof is gray with painted fish scale shingles. Carved and highly decorative windows walk adorns the top. The house measures 55'' in height, 43 1/2'' in width and 22 1/4'' in depth. It was sold for a winning bid of $6000 on eBay last month.

Brandy: Sheltie by Mary Holstad

If you are a dog-lover, you would fall in love with Brandy, the Shetland Sheepdog by Mary Holstad. She is hand-sewn from white and tan mohair, and has soulful glass bead eyes. She sold for a winning bid of $955 on eBay last month.

My Reshma

My Reshma: as sensuous and soft as the silk that is her namesake. She picked bangles, necklaces, anklets, earrings and tiara that complement her peach and cream complexion. Her hands, arms and feet are adorned with traditional henna designs. Her bronze curls are arranged in an artfully braided chignon.

Reshma's ensemble was inspired by the peacock-feather that graces the mask she holds. She is dressed in antique gold Indian lehenga-choli: hand-embellished in gold and turquoise paint.

My Recipe Challenge Selections

I have placed some new items on eBay that I made to look as real as possible and I wanted to share them with you.

I spent a load of time making these to match some recipe cards from Martha Stewart Living and to try and replicate her real life dishes as much as possible. They took several days for each one to be complete but I am very happy and proud of the results. I hate to be self-promoting but that's the way it goes sometimes! I hope you enjoy looking!











The link to find these on eBay is here:
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZnorthernminiaturesbyamanda

Crime in a nutshell

Camille Minichino (aka Margaret Grace) here. I'm thrilled to be part of this wonderful blog. Because I'm so insecure about my own abilities (especially after seeing the amazing Pavrati!), I decided to start with a pioneer miniaturist, Frances Glessner Lee (1878–1962). Lee was a society matron and International Harvester heiress whose life was dedicated to miniatures and forensics.
This little info-blog is for those who may not have heard of Lee's amazing dioramas, compiled in "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death." Lee meticulously crafted miniature scenes in the normal dollhouse scale of 1 inch = 1 foot to teach law enforcement students the intricacies of investigating a crime scene.
The dioramas have extraordinary detail and verisimilitude. The windows open and close and the pencils write; tiny clothespins, whittled by Lee hold stockings that she knitted using straight pins. The kitchen crime scene shown contains half-peeled potatoes in the sink.
Lee endowed a Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard, and eventually gave seminars to homicide detectives. As far as I can tell from the sources, it was she who came up with the idea of "circling" a crime scene in a methodical pattern to obtain the best vision of what the evidence revealed.
For a look at more of her macabre scenes: http://www.bellwethergallery.com/artistsindex_01.cfm?fid=28
Long before CSI, Lee was a tireless advocate of forensics science and dedicated miniaturist.
No wonder I wish I could have lunch with her.

My Parvati

For a long time now, I have been looking at the film-still from Devdas and dying to create a doll inspired by Parvati played by the beautiful Aishwarya Rai.

Parvati is dressed in a classic Bengali style: a peacock-blue sari embellished in jewel tones. Her hands and feet are painted in alta, a very traditional adornment used by the women of Bengal. Her ornaments include necklaces, bangles, earrings, anklets, ring and tiara.

To read the story of Devdas, visit:
http://devdas.indiatimes.com/story.htm