Lately...

...I have been working a lot (as in 14 hour days) for different deadlines from different places.  You can see one of my sketches above which is a rough for the sequel to my Witch's Cat book.  And the castle at the top too is a small portion of a 3d set I was working on last week.

We went to the bluebell wood the other day and so did Celestine. We saw a purple carpet stretching through the forest as far as the eye could see!

I realised the reason I am enjoying the blossom so much this year is because I must have missed it all last year by being in Dubai for almost a month. Also it's just so nice to see some colour after such a long grey winter. 

...and that's about it really. Exciting I know!

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Bekonscot Model Village

Last Saturday we went to Bekonscot Model Village with some good friends.  It's not the generic thing you'd expect a group of twenty something people to do but we enjoyed it none the less!  I am so glad I have friends who I can do geeky things like that with.

I had already visited Bekonscot a couple of times before when I was younger (probably about ten years ago) but it was still as fun as I remembered.  It helped that it was a nice sunny day too.

We all went up together one car and it felt like we were on holiday or something as we drove through Beaconsfield as the weather was so nice and it had a seaside town vibe about it. There were beach toys sitting outside the toyshop. We stopped at a supermarket to buy sandwiches for a picnic.

Henry thought it was hilarious that there was a picnic shelter at the model village with benches round the side.  So of course we had to sit down in the picnic shelter to eat our lunch before we went in.

There's just something very novel to walk round a whole little town in miniature. To feel like giants looking down on all the little rooftops. And of course it is completely charming too! We meandered round quite slowly, marvelling at the working trains and the tiny stations, the boats and moving fairground, the harbour with it's boats, the three castles complete with soldiers, the tiny trickling streams, the gypsy caravans, the circus tent and thousands of other miniature things.  There were even some little cable cars which went up and down over a small stream where there were miniature people rowing in canoes!

And as you might have guessed, Celestine came too. She loved that everything was her size.

It was a really good day. Just one of those unexpectedly fun trips.

Have you ever been to Bekonscot?  What did you think?

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Recently...

From top to bottom: Celestine's new sun hat // walking on Pegsdon Hills // blossom buds in the garden // trying out my new boat in a stream // castle progress.

On Wednesday I went to see my friend Henrietta in Cambridge. We popped into the Fitzwilliam museum to have a look at the Quentin Blake exhibition which is on at the moment.  It was smaller than I thought it was going to be but it was nice to see some of his original artworks.  There were also some of his paints and artist tools on display:

After we had lunch we paid a visit to the Haunted Bookshop.  I love this place.  If you havn't been there before it's a tiny little shop down an alley way absolutely stuffed with vintage children's books.  We went in and had a browse and I discovered the most beautiful perfect book that I fell in love with. It was just a small paperback book tied with string about the adventures of a little wooden peg/dutch doll called Catharine Susan. Sadly though it was way too expensive for me to buy. I'm talking fifty quid here.  BUT I did manage to get some shots of the pictures on my phone whilst I was in there: (actually the last picture is courtesy of Google) 

What do you think? Had you heard of the Catharine Susan books before? They seem to be very rare.  I so hope I get to own a copy of this one some day!

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Crown Jewels

I just want to show you this miniature jewel cabinet that I created the other day for my castle.  I'm very pleased with it! 

I had been searching for the perfect jewel cabinet to display all my miniature crowns for a while but with not much luck. I couldn't find anything the right shape or size for what I wanted. I wanted one which was longer horizontally than vertically and that seemed hard to find! In the end I bought this one on ebay which was labelled as being a display case for a shop and decided to customize it myself.  

As you can see it's not exactly the most regal looking thing. Also you can't really tell from the picture but the depth of it was bigger than I wanted too.  Silly me didn't think about the depth when I bought it I just looked at the height and width!  When I put it in my castle it stuck out quite far from the wall which i didn't want. ALSO the crowns were too tall to fit on the shelves!

Well! I decided that I would take it apart and re make it exactly how I wanted it. Henry warned me not to. He said there was no way I could change the depth of the cabinet without ruining it and he said to leave it.  But I am a perfectionist. So I got out my little hand saw and began to saw it almost in half length ways. Then I cut the 'glass' in half too, shifted it down a bit so the crowns could fit in, painted all the wood gold and stuck it all back together with superglue.  And it worked!!! I was so proud! I was secretly quite worried that it wouldn't.

Then I decided to fancy it all up with some gold decoration. I bought these little bits and pieces a while ago. I was originally going to use them to make an ornate little mirror but then decided that the jewel cabinet was a more worthy cause.  

So there you go! A fancy little jewel cabinet for my castle. It's going to sit in pride of place!

More tiny animals

The other day in an idle moment I decided I would just use up the rest of my block of fimo before it went hard and unusable. There was only a very little bit left so I used it to make some more very little animals!

I really wanted to try making a fox (again this one is inspired by Mijbil Creatures) and was pleasantly surprised how he came out:

Then I thought I would make one of my own design so I tried a penguin. I also made a baby penguin with flappy wings but haven't painted him yet.

My friend Dave wanted to see if I could make Robot Dove which is a character of his own creation so I gave that a go too!

And then came a little mouse...
I seem to be gathering quite a collection!

I wonder what I will make next... I think a pink giraffe would be nice...

And now for some unrelated photos.  The sun has finally been making an appearance over here. About time! Suddenly all the flowers have sprung out. 

Do you like Celestine's flower crown? she feels like she is posing for a perfume advert in that picture.  

Have a sunny weekend!

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Creative Weekend

Hello! Hope you had a good weekend.  Mine turned out to be very fun and eventful. On Saturday my friend Anna came round and we made things out of fimo.  I hadn't made things from fimo for aggges and so was looking forward to having a go with it again.  I was inspired by the Mijibil Creatures blog to make this little giraffe.  I was really pleased with how my versions came out!

Then, also inspired by some of the things I've seen on the Mijibil Creatures blog I created this tiny little pixie girl with a toadstool spotted dress. Celestine is rather taken with her...

Then, I decided to make a tiny little reindeer too.

I also made a few other things that I haven't finished yet. And Anna made a little sausage dog among other things.  Hope she won't mind me showing it here:

I think I've caught the bug now- I want to make more and more!

Also this weekend we had friends popping over on Sunday afternoon and then went to a family friend's house for a roast in the evening which was all really nice. For a weekend that I thought was going to be very quiet, it turned out to be pretty busy! Also it was really sunny both days.  Good weekend. :)

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