Sometimes when working on something, inspiration strikes a second time.  The inspiration for the Black and White Room was a "rug" I found at a sale.  It was actually a pillow cover in white, black, gray and a bright olive green.  The design called for a very contemporary room, so I started gathering everything I could find that fit the color scheme, beginning with the black and white chairs.  Gradually, as I began to add in objects, especially the spiral staircase my daughter, Katie, threw into the mix, I began to notice that nearly everything had curves, and inspiration struck again.  Curves became the secondary theme of the room.  I changed the couch I had been using for the curved back chaise lounge and added the piano.
 
I also decided to use the black grandfather clock for the height it added, but it brought a new color in.  The red actually added some excitement to the room that it needed, so I added more.  The first picture I tried was one I really like, (a tall thin print of a woman in a red coat which you can see in the first set of pics of the black and white room in the Gallery) but the details were too subtle, so I looked for other images, this time chosen not just for the color but to match the theme of curves that had developed.  I chose the picture of the curved staircase to reflect the spiral staircase next to it for a bit of whimsy.  The large painting was the piece that was supposed to pull together the color scheme, as it had all the colors of the room in it, but unfortunately, it didn't photograph well, so some of the impact was lost.
Altogether, the room proved very difficult to photograph.  All of the black objects in the room wanted to show up as simply black shapes.  I had to play with the brightness, midtones and contrasts and I still wasn't happy with how little detail shows.

Some of the small objects I add to a room never show or don't make it into the final cut when I am choosing what pictures to use.  One of my favorites in this room was the sheet music on the piano- Dave Brubeck's "Take Five."  I felt that whoever lived in this room would like jazz.  I tried, and rejected, several posters of the Brubeck quartet as possible wall art.

In the end I was pleased with the final result, but  my photography did not do it justice, partly because I accidentally shot it with the Macro setting on my digital camera turned on.  If doing a room like this over again, I would probably not use natural lighting again, but use lights I could better control.  Though I love natural light, and always prefer to use it, in this case, it didn't light as evenly as I would have liked, leaving the right side of the room a little in shadow and overexposing the left side and the mirror table.  The contrasts can be very effective, though, as in the picture of Poppy sitting on the couch.
I learned a lot from this room.  It didn't come out quite as I had pictured it, but it was, like all my doll rooms, a learning experience.

Time to break this one down and go on to the next one.  A thousand more rooms are dancing in my head!  One of these days I'll get one of them perfect! :-)

So I start a new website and my daughter promptly shuts my hand in the car door, smashing most of the fingers on my right hand and breaking the middle finger.  Hurts unspeakably.  I am, of course, right handed. Suddenly I have to use scissors, write notes, button my blouse, and everything else either with my left hand or very gingerly with my bruised thumb and pointer finger.  This makes for some interesting spelling variations when typing. So if you see any mistakes please contact me.

It had been my hope to add to the "How To" section on a daily basis, but with the difficulty with taking pictures and manipulating small objects, this probably won't happen for a while.

On the upside, the smashed hand gets me out of a certain amount of house work which gives me more time to set up dioramas.  I have several going, but am a little stuck because, while I can move (doll) furniture around, I can't do fine work like sewing curtains.

The one I'm currently working on- pictured in the projects section- is an experiment in using a focal point to design a room.  The rug was what began it all. The colors-black, white, gray, and olive- became the inspiration.  At first I decided to limit myself only to those colors, but when I introduced the grandfather clock, which has a red interior, I decided to add a splash of red to the room to make it pop.  It is still a work in progress with many of the details still lacking, but it's halfway there.  I hope you enjoy it.  Let me know your opinion.