I had someone tell me once that I was living vicariously through my dolls.
Well, duh, obviously.
But if you think about it, I'm also living vicariously every time I pick up a novel, go to a movie, or watch a television series. 
Through those mediums, I have:
Watched the burning of Troy and Atlantis, flown with Superman,  been stranded on desert islands numerous times in numerous ages and survived, traveled to other planets, performed magic, performed surgery, and hidden  inside other people's heads listening to their thoughts and dreams.  I have loved living all those vicarious lives!

The fashion dolls introduced in the last half of the 20th century allowed a new way of living vicariously. Not only were they beautiful and had great clothes, but through them you could imagine yourself in numerous careers, drive hot sports cars, and be independent.  It was a great thing for a girl's imagination.

As an adult I'm still enjoying them and, yes, still living vicariously. Through them, I can experience the joy of a real silk gown, the luxury of an enormous bed covered in throw pillow and satin sheets. I can own rooms full of furniture and still have room to store it. For me one of the joys is vicariously being the designer I've always wanted to be.  And owning clothes I could neither afford nor fit in. I can enjoy careers, visit other countries, have the perfect Norman Rockwell celebration, all of it limited only by my own imagination. 

The mink pictured above was one my friend purchased when we were room shopping at the GAW convention.  It is soft and luxurious and the only mink either of us will probably ever own.  Lilith has allowed us to enjoy not only this diminutive piece of finery, but a chance to enjoy posing her for her Blackglama photo shoot.  Frankly, I've always loved those ads with their black and white photography and all those famous people draped in black mink. I've always wished it was me being photographed! 

I've also always wanted to own an antler chandelier.  Don't ask me why. One  of my latest projects was to make one for an upcoming diorama.  Now I can own it without having to figure out how to store it or whether it goes with my decor.

I am all about living vicariously.  "Had I but world enough and time", I'd love to experience everything I've read about or watched in a movie.  As it is, I'm grateful for all those vicarious experiences that have allowed me to enjoy much broader horizons.

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.