Winner of New Giveaway!

Today is the day to announce the winner of my New Giveaway! The winner will receive all five of my greeting cards (including the "I'm so glad we're friends" card, which is currently out of stock):

The winner will also receive a secret miniature, which I will now reveal. The secret miniature is this beautiful miniature hat-making kit from Dragonfly International:

The hat kit includes beautiful laser-cut silk fabric pieces, blue silk ribbon, gorgeous white flowers, trim--everything but glue and scissors! You know how much I enjoy making miniatures from kits. I hope this kit brings the winner a lot of joy!

And now, I'll reveal the winner. There were 50 qualified entries in the giveaway, and I used RANDOM.ORG to pick the winning number. Drumroll, please.... And the winner is #26:

Ascension of mis miniaturas blog!

Congratulations Ascension! I hope you enjoy your prizes! :-) Please email me your address within 3 days, so I can mail your prizes right away! Thank you to everyone who entered this giveaway. There will be more in the next few weeks, as I celebrate my first year of blogging! ;-) xoxo Jennifer

  

Celebrating a Success!

I recently shared about seeing Maggie Rudy's MousesHouses diorama at Green Bean Books. It was an amazing experience, for several reasons. After viewing the diorama, my husband and I started chatting with the owner, Jennifer Green. She and I both expressed our love for Maggie's book, The House That Mouse Built, and my hubby bought me this adorable plushy finger puppet, Daisy, from Green Bean's plushy-dispensing machine:

Daisy the finger puppet plush

Then my husband whispered to me, "Give her one of your business cards." I resisted a couple of times (too shy!), but finally I sheepishly pulled out my business cards and said something like, "I make plushies too, with little story vignettes, and now they're greeting cards." I'm sure it was more jumbled than that, but by then two people (including Jennifer) had gathered around my business cards oohing and ahhing, and a third person came out of nowhere and said, "Can I have one of your cards too?"

Jennifer Green, owner of Green Bean Books

I was so embarassed that I was blushing, especially after Jennifer said, "I might want to carry your cards in my shop." Wow! I'd sold a bunch of my greeting cards to friends and family, but so far never in a brick and mortar shop. It was the next step I wanted to take with my cards, but I hadn't pursued it. As I left, I said that I would call to set up a time to show her my cards.

One week went by (how embarassing!), and I got an email from Jennifer. She'd looked at my blog and wanted to know if I'd be interested in selling her some cards for her shop AND if I'd be interested in doing a diorama in the store "like the box Maggie Rudy's display was in." OMG!!! A diorama in the box where the MousesHouses diorama just was?! What an honor and a thrill! I think you can imagine how I felt! :-DDD

See my cards?! 

Here's the bottom line: My greeting cards are now available at Green Bean Books, AND my miniature diorama will be featured at Green Bean Books for six weeks starting in March!!! Woohoo!

Daisy and Snoop getting to know each other!

P.S. Daisy now has a boyfriend named Snoop! Aren't they an adorable couple? ;-) Until next time.... xoxo Jennifer

P.P.S. Tomorrow is the last day to enter my New Giveaway! The prize includes a secret miniature and all five of my greeting cards!

Blog Friends Are Real Friends

One of the really special things about blogging is the friends you make. Anna of LITTLETHINGS blog and I "met" when I won an adorable giveaway prize in her recent giveaway. In that process, we exchanged addresses, and we started following each other's blogs.

Blog friends are real friends.

Anna has been tracking my progress in building and decorating my 1920s lovers cottage. When I mentioned in a blog post that I wanted to add a bathtub to the room, Anna was quick to send me this fun photo of her niece's bathroom in Germany:

I love the view from that bathtub--talk about relaxing, right?! And how thoughtful of Anna to think of me!

Then recently Anna sent me these precious gifts in the mail, because she thought they would look lovely in the Lovers Cottage. How sweet! She signed her note "Best wishes and a hug from your blog-friend!"

That reminds me of Sans!' wonderful phrase "Blog friends are real friends." You can see that I borrowed her phrase and put it under a photo of Houndstooth Pup and Raccoon on my blog's right-hand sidebar. Thanks, Sans! ;-) And thank you, Anna! It is a blessing to have such sweet friends. :-)

By the way, there's still time to enter my New Giveaway! The prize includes all five of my greeting cards plus a surprise miniature. The giveaway ends this Saturday, January 28, 2012, and I'll announce the winner the next day. Until next time.... xoxo Jennifer

MousesHouses at Green Bean Books!

I've been following Maggie Rudy's MousesHouses blog for a few months now (I love her book The House That Mouse Built too), and then I saw that one of her dioramas could be seen at Green Bean Books here in Portland, Oregon. Here's the diorama I saw live: MousesHouses: Winter!

Cute diorama door made from recycled yardsticks

It was so fun to see her work in person. It was inside this cute door in one of the store's bookshelves. You opened the door, and inside, in a mini space of 11 1/2 inches by 11 1/2 inches (29 cm by 29 cm), with a depth of 10 inches (25.5 cm), was Maggie Rudy's adorable scene. I was struck by how tiny her mice were, and after having previously viewed the same scene on her blog, I was really impressed by how much expression she could show on the mouse faces when working in such a small scale. Definitely a thrill!

Giant Yeti in front window at Green Bean Books

A second thrill was discovering Green Bean Books itself. The giant yeti/abominable snowman in the front window (made by owner Jennifer Green) sets the scene for what you will find inside the store. It's an adorable bookstore with so many fun, quirky features. My favorite of them is the vintage cigarette machine that has become a cute plushy-dispensing machine. How fun! I couldn't resist buying a plushy. Her name is Daisy, and she's a finger puppet. More about Daisy later! :-)

Cigarette machine turned fun plushy dispenser!

Jennifer also has a fantastic mustache-dispensing machine!

Oh, to be a kid again!

Doesn't this look fun?! Needless to say, it's a wonderful store, and I had a great time. But there's so much more to tell, and it will have to be in a near-future blog post. In that post, I will show you Daisy the finger puppet plush, and let you in on a huge secret and wonderful surprise! So stay tuned! ;-) Until next time.... xoxo Jennifer

Mini Book, Big Book

Remember all of those lovely prizes I won in Beautiful Mini Blessings' giveaway? One of the wonderful extras that Kathi sent me was an adorable miniature version of The Dollhouse Book by Stephanie Finnegan.

Just recently, I was visiting Powell's City of Books, a Portland, Oregon institution and book-lover's paradise. Let me digress for a moment.  Powell's is the largest used and new bookstore in the world. It occupies one full city block and stocks more than 1 million new and used books. Its nine color coded rooms house over 3,500 different sections. They even have a map to help you find what you're looking for! Portland has many smaller, boutique-style bookstores too. I'll tell you about one of them, and some adventures I had there, in a future post. ;-)

OK, when I recently went to Powell's, I found the 1:1 scale (real) copy of the book, and it was used--yay! So I used my store credit, from trading in some books I no longer needed, to purchase this book.

By the way, The Dollhouse Book is an enjoyable overview of the dollhouse miniatures hobby. It's full of beautiful color photos and has information from the historic past right up to present images of the dollhouse in the media. I just had to show you some photos of the two books, mini book and big book. :-) Until next time.... xoxo Jennifer

Miracle Miniature Teddy Bears

I have to tell you the story of how these miniature felt teddy bears came to me. Back in late May, I was in Bellevue, Washington when my husband saw a listing for a doll museum. He took me there, and of course, I had to go to the museum's gift shop. I met a wonderful woman running the shop, and when she found out that I was interested in miniatures, she showed me so many things, among them these tiny vintage handmade wool felt teddy bears (one of them fully jointed) with an adorable Victorian-style locket (with bear pictures inside!).

The mini bears were beyond my means at that time, so I left them in the shop, but I never forgot about them. Soon after my visit to the museum shop, however, I became interested in 1:1 scale teddy bears, after never having an interest before. I started following teddy bear blogs (lots of them!), and I started looking for teddy bears at my usual thrift stores. Soon I had a doll crib full of teddy bears and was buying baby clothes to dress the bears in (!). Then I was selling and giving away some of them, because I had too many. There is absolutely nothing wrong with teddy bears--they're great, in fact-- but they were never even my interest before!

Finally, in September, I called the museum shop, spoke with the same lovely woman, and asked if the bears were still there, as unlikely as that might be. Unfortunately, no, they were no longer there, and they hadn't been there for a long time, but the lovely lady on the other end of the phone said that she would be happy to put my request on a list. Perhaps the bears had been sent to a show and would be found. She took my phone number and assured me that she would call me if they came back to the shop.

I never heard anything, not until late October or early November, when I received a call from Sigmunde (the same nice lady) at the shop. She didn't know when or how it had happened, but the bears were back in the shop with their adorable locket. Did I still want them? DID I STILL WANT THEM?! Of course I wanted them!!! It was like a miracle!

We arranged everything by phone, and they arrived in the mail a few days later. Here's the funny part. While we were still on the phone making arrangements, Sigmunde said to me, completely out of the blue, "Imagine how many teddy bears you must have collected when you really just wanted these two bears!" I hadn't told her about the other bears, but she was so right! I'd really wanted these bears, and now I finally had them. :-)

The doll museum in Bellevue, Washington is the Rosalie Whyel Museum of Doll Art. Unfortunately, they are closing March 1, 2012. Go there while you still can. They have beautiful antique and modern dollhouses as well as beautiful dolls, and it is well worth a visit. Until next time.... xoxo Jennifer

New Miniatures Made From Kits

I ordered some fun miniature kits around the holidays so that I'd have plenty of miniature projects to keep me busy this winter. Here are a couple of the kits that I've recently completed.

First, some perfume bottles I made from a kit from The Craft Pack Company. I won't use all of these in the lovers cottage, but the light in the cottage looks pretty for showing off the bottles. This kit has really nice perfume bottle labels. 

I love making something from a kit first, because there are instructions and a plan. Once I've made something from a kit, then I enjoy trying out my own ideas. Soon I'll make some more perfume bottles, this time from the Czech glass beads that I recently purchased at The Knittn' Kitten.

Next, I made a pair of miniature ladies gloves and a matching glove box from two Dragonfly International kits. I'll use these in Dad's Dollhouse in the master bedroom. Each glove has a separate piece for the thumb, which adds to the realism of the final product.

These kits were really fun to complete, and I have several more to do. Do you enjoy making miniatures from kits? Could you recommend any miniature kit companies that you like? I appreciate your comments either way! Until next time.... xoxo Jennifer