nid d'abeille

My local doll house store is closing!  I grew up there!  At least, I guess I started going there when I was about 13, and now I'm nearly 30, so it's been my store for a while.  Though there were several missing years when I went away to college.  As a teenager I used to take workshops there.  I learned how to make fimo/sculpey food, I made a wicker sofa, a gazebo, a dogwood tree...  They were so much fun.

Anyway, now it's closing because the owner's retiring, and therefore things are on SALE.  So I finally bought my scales!  My scales!  The Nantasy Fantasy scales!  Which I yearned for and loved so much, which swept me off my feet, and which I used to visit every time I was in the store!  They're mine.  No one else would have loved them like I do.  They're mine, and I will give them to the miniature invisible Dr. Maturin.  Even if they're unsuitable for life aboard a man o' war.

I also bought a beautiful table by CJ's Miniatures.  It's very simple, but it's so fine that the Bespaq things I looked at seemed chunky.  Though they were still tempting... but I find that I'm more drawn to simple things rather than the frilly fancy elegant rich Bespaq things.

And I also have a picture of my surgery table.  It was an unfinished table I bought and stained and distressed.  It was fun.  I thwacked it and gouged it, sanded edges, rubbed grime all over it, and...  ok, this may sound mad, but I cut my finger while working on it, so I dabbed blood on the table top.  It's very subtle, so you can't see it in the picture, and it's just a small spot.  But it's like my signature.  I'll spread the mini tools across it in the sickbay.  (No, there won't be an amputation scene.)  And I do know that a naval surgeon would often lash together the midshipmen's sea chests for an operating table, but in the movie of M&C they have a trestle table.  And it looks nicer in miniature than a bunch of vague sea chests.)

So here, pictures.



 
linked at doll_houses and little_world .
 

I have a new miniature cot - or a hammock if you prefer.  Yes, I know hammocks and cots are different.  But if I tell most people that I have a cot, they picture a little bed, the kind with legs, not a swinging hammock-like thing.  So I'll obstinately call it a hammock.

It was made for me by the talented elwenlj (who also makes curtains and bedding and other wonderful textile miniature things) in exchange for a set of ivory handled surgical instruments that I made for her.  The hammock is SO cute in person, and it swings so sweetly.  I really wish I could crawl into it and swing to sleep. 

All I've done to it is finish off the rope ends and add the rings for hanging, but I plan to dirty it up a bit too.

She made a mattress as well, very cunningly weighted with rice to make the whole thing hang nicely with a heavy feel - but unfortunately the ceiling of my little tiny roombox is so low that the hammock touches the floor when the mattress weighs it down.  And speaking of ceilings, I'm rather proud of mine because I added beams and things, plus cleverly disguised the electrical connections behind the beams.  I've finally been working on the electricity.  It's a bit tedious, since it's just logistical challenges instead of cute tiny fun pretty things, but the lights are going to look fabulous.  I have the handsomest hanging lamp for the great cabin!

And now, pictures of the hammock (and the traded surgical tools):

  


linked at doll_houses and little_world .

I got a book today - Naval Surgeon: The Voyages of Dr. Edward H. Cree, Royal Navy, as Related in His Private Journals, 1837-1856.  It's full of his own journal entries and watercolors.  It was dirt cheap on amazon.

Oh, cionaudha, I also got Regeneration.  But I won't start until I'm done with Adm. Byrd.  ARGH and I haven't finished Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death yet either!

And in other book news, I'm really fond of my Moby Dick popup book.  Sounds silly, I know, but the popups are amazing!  So I've prepared a picspam.  I'm too tired to type about it, but a picture is worth a thousand words.

Also, I made little gold capped crystal bottles to go in Stephen's dressing case.

Do companionways in Jackish ships always go up to larboard, down to starboard (if they're athwartships-oriented)? *feels proud of jargon*  Like a letter Z if you were looking at them straight on, nose-to-nose?  (*fails at jargon*)

I really think the movie played a lot of tricks on me. That was very unkind of it, playing on my innocence and trusting nature like that.

I'm even starting to be like Stephen and think that larboard can be the other side of the ship if you just turn around.  And why not?  It sounds quite sensible.

I only fret because of my miniatures, and the fear that since I have no idea what I'm REALLY doing, someone will come along later and say "You did it all WRONG!  You've never set foot aboard a frigate in your life."  And they'll be right.  I've only been on a tiny little 16th century bark.  Whatever a bark is.

My little roomboxes came!  After the devious hoosier_red posted a link to Real Good Toys, I saw these on deep deep discount and realized they would solve some problems for me.  My sickbay/dispensary combination was getting too crowded (at least, in my mental planning of it), and I kept wanting more space.  And these are the perfect size for one tiny little cabin like a dispensary.  See?



Not bad for $8!  And it has a little plexiglas sliding window too.  Not sure what I'll do with the other two, but this one will be the dispensary.  Then the sick bay can fill up the whole lower level of the Big Box.  Never mind that I have beds bigger than this whole little room - it's perfect for a ship, even the shortness of the ceiling.  It will still be roomier than sharing the Big Box.

Some miniatures.


Bigger pictures below...

Jack (and Stephen) have chairs!  Now they can sit and play their instruments, when their instruments arrive.  (Actually, I had a dream about someone playing a mini violin I made for my big doll house... I was amazed they were able to get such beautiful music out of it, when I'd only used cotton thread for the strings.)

And the stern windows are varnished and glossy.  Probably not as glossy as they look in the pictures, actually, in case you're alarmed by the shine.

And I have hands!  One to hold the camera, and one to hold mini things.


Bigger pictures below...

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Look at my stern windows!  (Still in progress.)

I made Stephen's desk for his dispensary! I made it from a kit (the House of Miniatures Chippendale slant front desk, the closest match I could find to what he has in the movie - did anyone else ever notice what his desk looks like in the movie, apart from me?) but I distressed and messed it up to be appropriate for life on a ship, a life being covered with bottles of chemicals and dead specimens, and life with slovenly Stephen.  (I think he dissects that fish directly on the desk top.  I bet he eats garlicked bread right off of the same surface.  Probably at the same time!)


Bigger pictures below...


linked at doll_houses .

(LJ is being really slow and weird!  Here's the second try at this post...)

I picked up my roombox(es) yesterday!  They were custom built to my specifications, yay.  It's one unit with two rooms, one above for the captain's cabin, and one below for the surgeon's dispensary/sick bay.  The back panel for the captain's cabin isn't attached, so I can adapt it and add windows later (when I figure out how exactly I want to do that.)

I haven't even started doing anything to them.  I think I'm going to stain the outside, so it will look like an apothecary chest, and put a brass handle on top for carrying.  But I'm so excited and ADD about it that I'm paralyzed with the inability to start!!!

Here are pictures.  The Plexi covering-film hasn't been peeled off yet.  I'll wait till after painting and all.




linked at doll_houses .

I keep encountering GORGEOUS miniatures that turn out to be made by Nantasy Fantasy.  For instance, the $100 magnifying glass that inspired mine, and yesterday I met in person this amazing marvelous little scale, which was $90.  Sigh...  The man really wanted to sell it to me, and he prompted me to make an offer, but I knew I'd never come anywhere near buying it.  It was so precise though - the trays really were perfectly balanced.  You could tip them up or down, and they would still balance themselves.  Remarkable.  The man said, "Well I hope some time in the future it will be in your price range."  He was a nice man, and was enthusiastic to hear about my naval surgeon dispensary.  (I don't even know if a naval surgeon would have a scale like that.  Maybe not, with the ship rocking so much.  They'd probably be too delicate an instrument...?)  And the little drawer opens, and it's the most perfect little drawer I've ever seen - not at all like the usual chunky drawers.  I've shrunk the picture so it's about actual size.

So since I keep seeing this Nantasy Fantasy everywhere, I looked up the website, and there was a special section just for miniature firearms, which of course reminded me of sharpiefan.  Take a look at the armory!

Oh my goodness, there's a sextant.  *clutches heart*  There's a cat o'nine tails in a bag.  There's the most exquisite violin I've ever seen for a dollhouse (at $400)... And a chronometer!  And sea charts with a case!  Haha, there's even a dead guy!

I'm going to have a heart attack now.

Tonight I distressed miniature bottles.  Bet your evening wasn't as awesome as that.




Up next: labels on the bottles, leather covered books and a bookshelf.

ETA: And look at this miniature model of a ship's surgeon's dispensary at the NMM site!  How I squeaked with delight when I saw it!

Linked at doll_houses.

Heeheehee!  I went to the dollhouse store and the craft store and returned victorious!  I'm going to seriously begin my endeavor to build my Stephen Geeklab (as mentioned before in this post).  I bought lots of tiny random tools!  And I'll be able to jury-rig them into early 19th century surgical instruments, with the help of websites like this, Alex Peck Medical Antiques (how I loooove that site).  And with many more viewings of Master and Commander to look at Stephen's tools (like these:)

Eeee!  I'm so excited.  Now if anyone has advice or tips or good screencaps or info, tell me!  And I still need to figure out what exactly I'm making.  Am I making the orlop?

And feel free to offer inspiration in the form of other miniature things, even if they're not exactly related - like this mini Victorian physics laboratory, or Cristina Noriega's AMAZING miniature historic medical scenes.  She's a Spanish nurse who used to make ship's models, I think.  Guh.  Her things are to DIE for!  Pleeeease look at them so you can swoon with me.

linked at doll_houses and hms_surprise (here).

I finished my Surprise Family!  (Jack, Stephen, Sophie, Diana.)

Disclaimer:  I did not make the bodies.  I just dressed and adorned them They're just standard little wooden manikins.  (Where did the spelling "manikin" come from?  What happened to "mannequin"?  Anyway, these are called 4 1/2" wood "manikins.")  (My art supply store was having a huge going-out-of-business sale, and they were only $2.50 each!  How could I resist???)

Surprise!!!

ETA:  As a joke, I made Stephen a temporary wig out of my cat's fur, but when I tried to photograph him wearing it, the cats became very interested.  In fact, Nemo ended up carrying it off in his mouth and destroying it.  I didn't mind.


For more pictures (including closeups of the fabulous wigs, and Stephen wigless and also with his messy!wig, see my photobucket album.  Do it!!!