Murphy's Law at Work 09/01/2010
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. 1 Comment Size is Everything! 08/20/2010
 I’m really not a size Nazi. Well, only a little. Wait, that isn’t true. I AM a size Nazi. But only for my own dioramas. Even then, I’m tempted to occasionally sneak in something a little large or a little small because it’s so darn cute. Take the case of the tansu in the picture above. It is, perhaps, just a little big. This obsession with getting everything in 1/6 scale has made my collecting over the years very interesting. I haven’t actually carried a Barbie in my purse to measure things against- which I probably should- so there is always the question: is this object too big or possible a little too small? After 40 years, I’ve developed a pretty good eye for it, but I still bring home something not quite in scale from time to time. Then I argue with myself. Use it or not? Usually the need to have Barbie's rooms look as real as possible wins out and I discard the piece no matter how much I like it. In the case of the tansu, the tansu won. As I’ve collected over the years, I have always tried to stay truly in scale for the sake of my own sense of aesthetics. But now that I’m photographing my rooms and sharing them online, on my website and on Doll Divas, the need to get everything properly in proportion seems more important than ever. Most of the ideas I will be sharing on my website can be adapted for any size, but 1/6 scale (Playscale) is my favorite because, as the name suggests, you really can play with it. My daughter had a 1/12 scale house for a time, but it was difficult to actually play with. Mostly she put the furniture in and looked at it. The big Barbie house that stands in my hall (7 feet tall!!) was the one my daughters and their friends actually enjoyed and spent hours playing with. I want to use this blog to explore the how and why of collecting and working with 1/6 scale, as well as sharing ideas and unique doll houses and dioramas I’ve seen in other sizes. There is nothing quite so fun as sharing with others who have been equally captured by your obsession! |