Welcome!

I have not welcomed my new followers in a very long time. Please forgive me. I very much appreciate all who take the time to read my blog and post comments. In fact, I think it's about time for another follower give-away. I will post information about it soon.

I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season!

Paper houses

I found some printable houses on About.com. Printed without adjustment they are approximately 1:144 scale. I made a few changes with the extra components and added snow and glitter. The evergreen is curled chenille stem. I think these would make adorable tree ornaments.
I also reduced the houses by 40% to make a village for the boarding house mantle. That was a bit of a pain but it looks great now that I'm finished. I also added snow and glitter to these houses.

Christmas in mini, part two

Here are our real stockings. Hubby and son have snowmen and the girls and I have angels. They are very oversized - about 2 1/2 feet long or so. One year my sisters-in-law and I got together and made stockings for our families. We all did different things but they all turned out really cute. :-)
This is the mini living room with stockings. I used felt to make the actual socks and scrapbook paper for the appliques. I'm having so much fun miniaturizing our special things.

Christmas for the mini family

We have some family decorations that are extra special for one reason or another. I am working to miniaturize them for the mini version of my real house. It's always Christmas in that dollhouse but for some reason I never thought to make minis of some of our things. The boot was my childhood stocking for almost as long as I can remember. My mom found large pressed cardboard Santa boots and we got to choose pictures from old Christmas cards for her to decoupage on to them. Mine has elves, Santas and snowmen. My sister's has pink fur and lots of glittery angels. The older of my two brothers has always been a history buff so his boot has a patriotic theme. My baby brother was too young to choose so his is red with a big Santa on it. They have held up remarkably well. I now use it to hold the pieces for the advent banner hanging above it. My mom and I made the banner for my kids. The very last thing to go on it is baby Jesus on Christmas morning. These days I'm the one putting the pieces on each day, lol.
Here are both items in mini. It's Christmas Eve in the dollhouse so everything but the baby has been put up. (Although after I took the picture I noticed that one of the angels was still in the boot - oh, well.) I also had to draw in the "R" because the pink didn't photograph well. The banner was always hung low when the children were young so that they could reach it. In the dollhouse the children are 5, 3, and 8 months old.

The boot was made of air dry clay. I cut out little graphics printed from a card making program. I was excited to find some vintage style elves very similar to those on the real boot.

Next up will be reproducing our stockings. They are oversized ones that I made. The girls' have angels and stars and the boys' have snowmen and snowflakes. I think I can use scrapbook paper cut-outs on felt stockings to make a pretty good mini version.

Photo booth fun

Tonight was my husband's "Holiday Party." I still call it the Christmas party. Anyway, for the second year they had a photo booth. Here are this year's photos. I love the middle one.

Rudolph just watched the reindeer games

All of the reindeer got a makeover today to match Rudolph a bit better. I like the darker color. I also painted the sleigh runners and trim. Once Red gets those reindeer hitched to the sleigh Santa is ready to go.

The deer came from a variety of sources - one is a child's toy, one a tree ornament, and four are decorative items meant to sit on a table or shelf. Most of them had a glitter or metallic finish and several had some sort of embossed detail. All got a coat of paint, a layer of tan flocking, and a coat of darker brown paint with soft white accents. The embossed parts are much less obvious and the reindeer look more like they are supposed to go together. :-)

And now for something completely different

In the mini version of my real home, my young daughters share a bedroom. They never have in real life and rather than choose one of their real rooms over the other as inspiration I just made a generic girls' room. Over the years the fabric I used for the bedspreads has faded and I was recently thinking I should at least make mini versions of the real comforters they had at those ages.
To keep things cohesive I used the same ribbon for dust ruffles and pillows for both. My oldest was five in 1993 and she had a Little Mermaid themed room. My middle was three and had a Sesame Street theme. They are now 23 and 21 so I couldn't find photos of their actual comforters online. Instead I used a card program and graphics from online to make approximate representations of theirs. I am quite happy with the results.
Here are the beds in the room complete with toys, books, and various little girl stuff. (Sorry for the blurry photo. It's really hard to get to the third floor of this house. Even my tall son had trouble getting a good picture, lol.)

Isn't it funny what inspires our mini projects? That's one of the many reasons why this hobby never gets boring.