The Holidays!

The holidays came up pretty fast but I can say that I am actually ready.  Tree is decorated, presents wrapped and cookies baked.  Now, time to relax and make more minis.  During the last 2 weeks, I have been putting together 4 shadow boxes of some of the things I have either made or received as swaps.  I will be keeping them up all year even though they are seasonal.  The first is my Christmas one and I had lots to put into it.
The second is Fall and Halloween.  Unfortunately, everything I had related to Thanksgiving just didn't fit so I'll be doing something different.  I'll get some pics up of the other 2 in my next post.

Have any of you done something similar?  Or, how do you show off your minis? 

I must have been fairly good this year because Santa came early.  My DH got me the Cheltenham front opening dollhouse from Greenleaf.  I have always wanted a front opening dollhouse so now I'am a very happy camper.  I will be following this blog http://moreminis.blogspot.com/2009/05/gloucester-day-1.html for the help I am sure I will need.
Although this blog is for the Gloucester, it is very similar to the Cheltenham (the difference being the Cheltenham has a double opening, left and right side with the latch in the middle.)  I think this will take me a while.

Well, that's all for now but before I go, I want to say:

To all our families, friends, followers and visitors, A very Merry Christmas!  And here's hoping the New Year is full of blessings and good fortune.

Diane

Matty's Blue Seas Bistro lll

Christmas and Easter are my two favorite times of the year, especially for swapping.  Unfortunately, I have had to cut back on swaps this last year because I am not able to display the swaps like I want.  Rotating them out into various scenes and vignettes isn't working very well.   So, I dug through my stash of shadow boxes and small printers boxes to see what I could come up with.  This is my next project and as soon as they are done, I post some pictures. 

These next pictures are the last showing some of the accessories I made for the Bistro.  The first one is of the palm tree that I really lucked out on.

This is Pampas grass and can be found just about anywhere here in Florida.  The stem is hollow like a reed and the plumes are very fragile and "whispy" like (if whispy is a word).  I cut off a 5" section from the middle and painted it gray and hi-lighted it with a darker gray.  After that, I took some silk flower leaves, cut them to shape, glued to florist wire and put the end into the center of the reed.  Here is what I came up with.  It's not the best photo in the world, but hopefully you'll get the idea.  I  had hoped to be able to preserve the plume but it is so fragile that anything I sprayed it with just made it stick together.

These last two picture show the food I made.  The sushi is different quilling paper rolled into a tight coil while the caviar is sand mixed with either dark blue or dark orange paint.  The raw oysters are real tiny clam shells with a little gray varigated fimo for the oysters.  The clam chowder and pies are all fimo.  But I didn't bake any of the fimo-wasn't going to try and pry it out of the shell or bottle caps just to bake it.

Well, that's it for the Bistro.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Now I'm off to work on some shadow boxes.

As a last note, I want to apologize for not welcoming several new followers.  Along with quite a few other bloggers, we have had trouble with our Followers gadget.  I did get a reply from Google saying they were aware of the problem and are going to fix it.  Soon I hope!

Til next time!