nid d'abeille

I just stumbled upon the most amazing website that's all one lady's collection of doll houses that she's made and filled - Mary's Dollhouses.  And I mean it when I say the pictures are breathtaking!!!  (Of course, having really good photography goes a long way to help, as pictured here.  The same room photographed with a flash would still look awesome, but not as amazingly realistic.)  I love this description (written by her husband):


Wow, just jaw-dropping wonderfulness.

Also, I'm so excited because, with the British pound being so low in relation to the dollar (and it's about time!!!) I just ordered a bunch of tiny chemical glassware from British artisan Ray Storey.  Just look at his things!  They're brilliant!!!!!!  (Click picture for bigger image.)

 And I talked to him on the phone just to make sure my order had gone through - I was confused because it wasn't showing up on my credit card yet - and he was just about to make my cobalt blue poison bottle.  He was so nice, and he lives near Newcastle so we chatted about that, and his son went to the same uni as me.  I also asked if he ever makes carboys (big stock chemical bottles - like what Stephen kept his main laudanum supply in, down in the hold) and he said yes, he does, so he's going to make me one.  I'M SO EXCITED!  I've wanted one forever.  And I've wanted to order things from him forever.  And he's going to make a carboy from scratch for me!  And also, he has brown bottles which nobody else has - at least, not that's suitable for me - and I like the look of brown for chemical/medical bottles.  So he's going to give me a mix of clear and brown ones.  YAY!

Randomly, if you haven't noticed, I LOVE miniature bottles.  I'm a little jealous of people who do witch and wizard miniatures and get to use bottles - jealous in a possessive "that's not fair, all bottles belong to ME" sense.  And watching "Merlin" and especially "Perfume" really made me want to make miniature rooms with bottles.  And of course I'm infatuated with Stephen's dispensary, which was the whole reason I started my M&C miniatures at all.  At first it was ONLY going to be a dispensary.  But Ray Storey has all these chemical utensils and stuff that wouldn't really fit in Stephen's world - he's a physician, not an experimenting scientist.  But that arc lamp really makes me want to make a miniature Enlightenment era lab, like for Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier or Sir Humphry Davy.  <3