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Saturday, 24 July 2010
Friday, 23 July 2010
Meet our Members - Lesley's Gardens
Lesley's Gardens
by Lesley Shepherd
I'm a garden designer and educator and began making miniature plants to illustrate gardening principles to my design and horticulture students. The miniature containers and gardens were popular as gifts for shut ins or friends who were gardeners. Eventually I combined my experience with scale miniatures to produce accurately detailed plants and simplified plant kits for people who wanted to create special gardens or conservatory plantings for their miniature scenes in scales of 1:12, 1:24 and 1:48th, with occasional commissions in 1:6.
My background in design means I often work with historical recreations, and I use my knowledge to create miniature plantings that accurately reflect seasons and historical periods. I pride myself on producing miniature plants which can be identified as individual named and historic varieties, with accurate leaf, petal and often stamen details. All of my miniature plants transmit light through their petals and leaves the same way their living counterparts do, with parts in the closest possible scales to the originals, both in thickness and size. I'm happiest creating gardens or planted containers, but as a trained florist I often use my skills to create various period floral displays in my own containers as well as those of other artisans.
A background in museum work means I make all of my plants with wire, artist's papers, watercolors and acrylics, and archival glues that are suited to long term display and storage. I produce my own line of stoneware and some resin pots for miniature plants in the scales of 1:12, 1:24 and 1:48. These are based on planters that are either historic, or currently available to the horticultural trade in the sizes I reproduce accurately in miniature scales. The larger 1:12 stoneware planters can be used to grown tiny bonsai or other dwarfed living plants.
In recent years I've begun to offer simple plant kits of coloured paper parts, as well as laser kits of parts designed to be custom coloured by miniaturists to suit their particular garden style. I enjoy teaching classes on making miniature plants and the line of kits has developed in response to requests from students who love the accurate colours and growth they can reproduce in miniature.
In my 'other' miniature career I write the miniatures site at http://miniatures.about.com for About.com Inc. a division of the New York Times. I've also written several articles on making miniature plants for past issues of The Doll's House Magazine.
You can see my work at local fairs in the Pacific Northwest of North America, or at the Kensington Dolls House Festival.
Meet our Members - NoaMiniatures
NoaMiniatures
by Naomi Machida
My miniature hobby began several years ago. I was fascinated with beautiful, realistic miniatures and dollhouses. I started to collect and create many kinds of room settings such as sweets shop, bakery shop, doctor office, pet shop, flower conservatory, nursery room, sewing room, artist studio, country kitchen room and girl’s bedroom. Also, I collected books and tools to make my own miniature food for my dollhouse as my future assignment. But, I did not try to make my own miniature food until recently. I don’t have years of experiences for making miniatures on my own unlike most talented miniature artisans do. Nevertheless, I discovered that I do have the ability to make quality sellable miniatures. I am inspired by many talented miniature artists who dedicate their time in making lovable handmade miniatures and wish to be part of those talented people who love miniatures. Currently I don’t take special order request, but I will in the future.
Contact Details:
Etsy Shop: www.etsy.com/shop/NoaMiniatures
eBay store: http://stores.ebay.com/Noas-Mini-Shop
email: naomisanus@yahoo.com
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Meet our Members - Miniartworks
Miniartworks by Jean Boyd
My name is Jean Boyd and I sell miniature paintings and needle felted animals and bears under the name of Miniartworks.
As a child I loved a friend’s dolls house but it wasn’t until much later in life I finally got one of my own. This lead me to join Fantasia Dolls House Club where the ladies are so friendly and helpful I soon found I had the ability to make my own furnishings and accessories.
Having taken art classes and been awarded a First for a full sized watercolour in a local competition, it seemed natural to try to paint in miniature. I am self taught from a couple of excellent books and have not painted a ‘big’ picture since.
Acrylics on art paper is my preferred choice for my miniatures which come framed and are usually 2.5 x 3 inches in size including the frame, sometimes smaller. Mainly I paint portraits after Gainsborough, Reynolds, Waterhouse and many others. Dogs and cats are another favourite subject to paint.
Commissions are welcome and on the home page of my website is a photo of a young boy I was commissioned to paint in a Victorian costume.
I discovered needle felting in 2007.
Felting animals and bears soon became an obsession and a great number have been sold on eBay. Private commissions have included cats, dogs, foxes, a chimpanzee, orangutan, Bengal tiger and a mountain lion. It all started with a teddy bear kit offered for sale on an eBay forum and has developed from there.
The teddy bears are thread jointed and most animals have a wire armature to enable posing.
I sell paintings on eBay as mini-artworks and needle felts as miniart2007 and have a website with various items for sale which is...
Recently I have made my own site to show my collection of dolls houses and a room box which were all made and furnished on a very low budget...
email: boydies@boydies.karoo.co.uk
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