Steamer trunk

I was so happy with the results of my apothecary trunk that I can't stop the production anymore...
This one is more girlish, with pink stripes and crystal and golden bottles.

I will list this trunk on my Etsy !

Discovery of a naturalized Dodo in a private collection

The Dodo will be the first piece for my Cabinet of Curiosities. This heavy flightless bird from Mauritius Island has been extinct until the late XVIIth Century. We have descriptions and drawings by Dutch travelers who visited the Island during the Sixteenth Century, some bones are preserved in Museums but no complete skeleton has been found. I have the chance to be the owner of the only naturalized Dodo known in the world…Of course he is 1:12 scale made in FIMO and flocking, with the addition of some feathers, but he is still very rare.

The FIMO part of the work.

Painting the Dodo

A new Dodo is born.

My Humpty Dumpty House little Etsy store

www. humptydumptyhouse.etsy.com

I have opened my own Etsy store, the Humpty Dumpty House store, where I’m listing some of my handmade miniatures. I already have romantic shoes for sale, the kind Madame de Pompadour or Marie-Antoinette would have liked. I’m going to list the slippers right now. I will also sell other miniatures I have made in the recent past, like my stamps collector desk. I hope you will enjoy it.

Evolution

In Manhattan, there is a very interesting store for anyone looking for curiosities, oddities, taxidermy, natural history...

Even if you make miniatures you can find something there. I came back with new pieces for my Cabinet of Curiosities. Here are the first pieces for my mini cabinet...the others- I still have to make them- are not ready.

Tiny coloured shells, a fossil ammonite, a fossil sea urchin and at the bottom some extrasmall rock crystals.

Also a really tiny seahorse and a starfish. I have added my miniature magnifying glass to give you the size. The skull was carved in a bone in Indonesia.

You can use the magnifier to see my last find, that's really the best one : fossil amber from the Baltic with a mosquito or something trapped inside. I will play "Jurassic Park". Next time I'll show you my dinosaurs !



Potions trunk

I'd like to have an old trunk like Professor Horace Slughorn's in the Half-Blood Prince. So, I've made my own potions trunk. I used wood, cardboard, copper foil, paper, faux leather, beads, glass bottles...

At this stage the trunk still needs some bronze painting and some aging too.

Now it's better, the trunk travelled around the world and gained stickers.

         The nice apothicary bottles are by Gerd Felka.

Cabinets de Curiosités

Hello and welcome “followers’, I’m really happy to see you here, and to read that you like my miniatures. Sometimes, when you are alone with your PC and your camera, you don’t know if what you are doing is wrong or right, especially when you try to compare with the other blogs full of wonderful  miniatures and dream houses. Whatever !

I’m working  on a house – that I’ve had for almost two years! – where I plan to fit out a Cabinet of Curiosities . It’s a long shot idea and the very reason why I called this blog “Petit Cabinet de Curiosités”. I just bought an excellent book on all kind of cabinets from the Sixteen century to present days  and I can’t resist to show it. It’s really an extraordinary book both for text and photos.

Patrick Mauriès - Cabinets de Curiosités –Gallimard 2002.

The original edition is in English, published by Thames and Hudson, but is very difficult to find. I’m sure that miniaturists can find in it a basket full of new ideas. Now, the challenge is to convert ideas into objects!

Struggling with wisteria

The front of my Art Nouveau house looks empty. I thought it wise to add some life there. And what's better for a welcoming entry than some climbing plants. I love wisteria, but that's not the easiest one to make. I began with a nice kit I bought at the Kensington Dollhouse Festival. But kits are usually to small, with not enough wire for the surrounding of the door, not enough petals to make the flowers [ and a grown up wisteria has a lot of flowers ], not the appropriate colour, paper too heavy for those flowers. I'm not satisfied with my plants and there begins the struggle ... how to achieve a more realistic look ! I'm still browsing the  web for any kind of picture and any kind of tutorial. I'm gluing confetti together to form a 8 shape and there are so many  flowers that it will surely keep me busy for the next two months.