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.

Pinky cupcakes

I spent more than a  week baking cupcakes, FIMO cupcakes. They seem so delightful and so easy to make when I see them on other blogs, made by artisans. But the truth is that it's very difficult to make something round and creamy looking like an actual cupcake. First the pastry is too yellow or too white, then the paper lining is not pleated but wrinkled, and the cream is collapsing. Eventually, I have some white and pink cupcakes for my display !

The Stamps Collector Desk

I spent some time trying to put nice books together. I mean miniatures books ! I now have books of all kinds : some you can open and others you can't, some you can read and others you can't, some truly false and others not really false. And, at last, I came to miniaturize Pictures Albums and Stamps Albums.

Here are the results with the stamps. I used a kit from "House of Miniatures" ( It's an old one...I have a big stock of those ). I created the philatelist's desk with all the needed stuff including the magnifier. The stamps are sticks one by one and there is a leftover box for exchanges. Yes, Have a good look at it !

Wait, I forgot the regular books ! I love these ones

Incredible but true : they are made of paper, but also marbled paper, faux leather and - That's what I'm very proud of - the sheets are stitched like in the good real books...but, inside, there is nothing to read.

Romantic shoes

I'm in the mood for "I like Marie-Antoinette style". I already had some shoes of this kind in my shelves, I added some more with pinky romantic colours. All the shoes are 1:12 scale. The armchair is an old broken Bespaq completely reupholstered.