It's time to make miniatures to fill the Hutch

It's time to start making miniature items to fill the hutch! I looked through beautiful nature prints to find inspiration and seeing the different colorful birds and flowers made me think of Spring.
Before I knew it I started making a tiny shadow box to represent Spring. It is a collage of tiny dried flowers, a branch, paper illustrations and part of a poem. I protected the box with a plastic window. The tiny shadow box measures 2 cm x 1.6 cm x 0.5 cm and fits on the hutch shelf!
As usual, as I was making this little box I started getting ideas for another one! So, I will create a story and imagine that this is one of the hobbies my miniature nature lover has: she builds little shadow boxes with items she finds during her outdoor excursions. :)

Painted hutch

I decided on a pattern of flowers to paint on the hutch, to go with my nature lover's theme). Now, painting isn't my strengh but they looked simple so I decided to go ahead. They turned out o.k. although I'm not completely happy with the ones on the doors, I'll just keep practicing.
After this step, I washed different shades of paint on the whole hutch, to get the used look, and finally, gave it a coat of paste wax to protect it.
My hutch is now ready for decoarting, which for me is always what I enjoy the most: making the things to put in it, and then changing them around. :)

Starting work on my hutch

The first step will be to prepare the hutch so that it can have a "well-used" feel to it.
I started by sanding the whole piece as it already had a shiny finish to it. After this, I painted the whole hutch a medium brown color; I liked the way the paint was absorbed more or less by spots and decided to leave it like this.
I want to add some color and decoration to the hutch before I dirty it so I'm off to look at borders and small motifs in a very pretty book I just bought.

My Website is ready!

I'm so happy and excited to let you know that my website is now online!
I hope that my joy and enthusiasm of creating it show through its pages and that you'll enjoy visiting!
Here is the link: http://maiastwinkleminiatures.com

I'd love to know what you think about it!

Inspiration for scenes

Thank you MiniKat for your comment! I also fall in love with a miniature and then build a scene around it. And in this case, the scene usually starts growing and growing... I’ll post examples about this in the future. I think I plan a small scene in order to convince myself that it will be easily completed and then get carried away while making it; I suppose many of us find ourselves in this situation!
I might also have a certain theme I feel like working on, like Christmas, a girl’s bedroom...
But with the hutch it’s different as I have the furniture but hadn’t thought of making one and I don’t have things for it. So... I have decided that I will decorate the Nature Lover’s hutch only with things I’ll make for it. It will be a good challenge for me!
The picture I posted is of a miniature I bought because I loved it and I don't have a place for yet. The shapes of the cookie cutters are exactly like the ones my grandmother, my mother and I have. :)

How to decorate my hutch?

We were given a hutch to decorate, the theme was free.
When I have the equivalent of a blank canvas, so to say, I always find it difficult to decide what to do. I get plenty of ideas but how to chose one and set to work?
This time, I decided to look at the hutch and see what appeared in my mind as I did this; what would I enjoy making or what was the hutch telling me it wanted to be.
I started visualizing nature prints on a well used piece of furniture: birds, flowers... Then, a young woman who loves nature, who picks things up as she walks outdoors and who collects them and saves them in her little corner, her own space.
So... I have chosen my theme, it will be a Nature Lover's Hutch! I'll keep you posted as I work on it.
How do you decide on a theme for your little vignettes?

My website is coming soon!

I'm so happy to share this news with you! During the past few months I've been working on creating my website and now it's almost ready!
This has been one of the most interesting, enjoyable and a little nervous things I've done. Every step is a pleasure to create and to think about. And there is so much to do, all the fun little details to make it special.

I'll let you know as soon as you can visit. :)

A treat for myself

I couldn't resist this beautiful little fimo bear which I found at the show this weekend! The hardest part was choosing, as all the fimo pieces were beautifully made and detailed. It was made by Mychele from "Mini knitting and crochet".
It is now in my Easter scene!

West Coast Miniature Show 2009

This year I realized that miniature shows are a little like Christmas! There is all the excitement of preparation and the anticipation, then the day finally arrives, and before you know it the show is over! But what a wonderful time you have. :)
I enjoyed this year's show even more than last year I think. The new venue has beautiful natural light and is airy. The dealers were very friendly and I enjoyed talking with them and the customers very much! It's such a joy to share our love for miniatures!
It is also motivating and I'm full of energy and ideas for new projects!

Add a personal touch!

I was thinking of something different and fun to make for Valentine's day or for any special occasion, something that you could add a personal touch to.

This is how my unfolding photo albums were born! There are many different ways in which you can display them: closed, half open, standing... This is part of the fun; the other part is that you can remove and change the pictures which are in the album. So you can make a very special gift for someone. :)

The pages of the album are beautiful antique prints. Take a look at my cdhm gallery if you would like to see them: www.cdhm.org/user/twinkleminiatures, or leave me a comment if you would like to see more designs!