The new A.I.M. Issue!

The August issue is out today! Can't wait to read it ♥

AIM for August

http://www.artisansinminiature.com/issue10.html

First Pumpkin has made an appearance!

We're having a proper Summer this year, and the pumpkin vine is really starting to take off! I'm going to go put a marker at the ends of each branch when I get finished posting this, because it seems this beautiful, strong, and magnificent vine is growing about a foot a day now :)

First pumpkin about the size of an orange.

Growing high too... this picture is from the southeast end looking north-ish

A busy bee doing his job :)

July 17 it got up to 100 degrees... pumpkin vine did not like this very much :(

Leo doesn't look to be enjoying 100 degrees much either...

Stay tuned! I'm going to start taking pictures as the vine grows "real" pumpkin looking pumpkins, and the vine takes over the back half of our cat habitat. (don't worry, they have all kinds of fun places if the maze jungle gets taken over by a humongous vine)

Look What I found!

In my own backyard! I have never seen one this big in person, well, I know he's dead, but still! He must have died of natural causes because I see no evidence of cat play here... funny that he also appears to be hollow? Maybe that's normal too, will have to google it later, right now I'm headed for bed :)

Peru Bead Project

In one of the past chapters of my life I was really, really into beads. I have so many wonderful beads from those days, not enough of anything to sell as a destash, but still a huge collection. One day, I was going through the cabinet that houses these beads and saw a box of handpainted beads from Peru. I was thinking what fantastic artwork is on these beads, little stories on the Lentil beads, (one picture on the front, another on the back), that I should think of a way to use some of them in miniature scenes.

This first picture is not what I ended up using, but just a collection of the beads I was going to try and work with.



My intention was to make tiny vases from some of these beads, so I began working with the clay to plug up holes and make some kind of base.



After this first group had been fired once, (a few twice with the new glaze added), I decided the whole idea was "cheesy" and didn't look that great, so I shelved the idea for a couple of months.

I've probably mentioned in blog posts before about how slow I work, and how frustrated I get without being able to "keep up" having at least 10 new listings a week... Well, after another project that was supposed to be fast compared to my usual sculpting fell through, I decided to revisit the Peru Project. This time, I only used the Lentil beads and some little Llama shaped beads. I am now loving this project again!

This is after the first fire with the holes plugged and some simple bases made:



Now for the finished first set of miniature vases and Llama sculptures:



I think they are so cute now, and plan to make other "sculpture" to go with the Lentil Bead vases later on. Everyone who bought something from me this week will get a set of one Llama sculpture and one Llama Lentil vase. They can imagine their dollhouse family took a trip to Peru and these were souvenirs of the trip :)

What's new? Actually, old news...

I have neglected this blog so bad! The only news I can think of is actually old now. There was an interview with me for American Miniaturist magazine that was published in February. My friend, and miniature team blogger, GoldenUnicornMiniatures, put a notice on the team blog. The pages aren't legible, but that's okay, I sort of talked too much and they printed more than I thought they would 0.0

http://teammids.blogspot.com/





Other than that, I have been pretty busy treating my miniature making like a real job since the beginning of the year, and not being online nearly as much as I was in the past. I have had a few requests to show "work in progress" pictures and descriptions/tutorials, so maybe I will be doing some of that here real soon.