Dolly's Dreamings

Inchies for Show and Tell Friday

Show and tell Friday is hosted by Kelli at Kelli’s House – it is a wonderful opportunity to see so many lovely things so do go and check it out.

I have been playing show and tell Friday for a while now and love it so much. I love that the entries are so diverse from beautiful home décor items to thrift shop purchases and family history pieces.

Today I wanted to share something creative rather than something I have that I have bought.

I want to share inchies with you all.

Inchies are little art pieces which are 1” square, I am not saying mine are works of art. You should see some of the things people create. They are truly awesome.

Initially I got involved with inchies through a swap and I made two sets so I could keep a set. They were all vintage ladies and very pretty and arty and the picture here shows them. The theme was an alphabet hence why there are 26 of them. 26 tiny little 1” squares.

I love working in miniature – dolls house years I guess – and so I really enjoyed the size. I guess it was inevitable that I was going to go on to make a cat set.

The cat set were also ABC based and I used them on a scrapbook page to support the magazine article.

You can see the inchies round the page.

 

 

Then I decided to make a small set of blocks. I only made three – one for each of the fur babies I have currently sharing my home.

I had made a set of blocks before but they were 2” square blocks and so very easy to work with. This little set are only 1” squares and very dainty.

 

Obviously as each is a cube there are 6 faces to decorate and I had great fun creating them.

I used photo papers and alcohol inks for the backgrounds and I printed out tiny pictures and little word strips to sum up their characters, with one face just bearing their name. 

I think when you see the pictures you can't really tell how small they are.

I guess you need to look at a ruler and remind yourself how small and inch is.

I know when I made my first inchies I was staggered when I realised the size.

I have attached a PDF of the article to this blog post if anyone wants to read it.

It explains what I did and how you can go about making your own inchies

Download Inchies by Scrapdolly

If you are a paper crafter or an artist you will be hooked if you try it.

I would also recommend googling for inchies because believe me, there are some incredible things out there. there are some people who are just so very very talented.

It has been a bitterly cold day here today.

It was -5 in the night and it has not risen above freezing all day. The grass is still white, covered in thick frost and many of the rooves all around are still white.

I guess that is a good thing as it means the roof insulation is working!

I had rather more fun taking my PAD today.

The world may be very cold in my neck of the woods, but it has been quite pretty. Not as pretty, of course, as if we had had that all elusive snow, but still quite pretty.

The lily pond has frozen over and the only bit still thawed for the poor fish and birds is where the fountain sprays. You can see the grass is thick with white frost as well.

I am amazed the fountain is still working actually.

Have a lovely weekend everyone xx

Goldie - a special bear

I have a very different show and tell today - I will return to the dolls' House another week. If you want to read more about show and tell friday check out the hostesses fab blog Kelli's HouseThere are always such fascinating things to see on the blogs that link here as well. 

Today I am showing Goldie. Now Goldie isn't mine - though I guess I have part shares in him. He is my husband's bear. He had Goldie when he was about 5years old and has been a lifelong companion. He has travelled the world with him - though he often spends a considerable part of his vacations hidden away. Apparently this is because he is shy not because Nigel is embarressed.

In the words of the old skin horse to the velveteen rabbit he is real. In every sense. A lot of his fur has been completely loved off. He needs his clothes -w hich have also acquired real status - to keep him together.

The clothes were knitted by his mother when he was still quite new.

Once I made a hideous mistake.Nigel was team manager for the Irish Cycle Speedway team and Goldie had been to a couple of matches as team mascot. So as a suprise I knitted him a whole new outfit in green white and gold, befitting a national mascot. I dressed him in them as a surprise. Oh it was a surprise right enough. Nigel rarely gets cross, but he was not a happy man and I had to redress him 'properly' at once!

Nigel's older brother used to wield enourmous power over his little sibling and could get him to do things if he used 'the voice of Goldie'. He would speak, as if he was the bear, begging to be taken places, to see things etc. I've tried it - it works!

Goldie is an old gentleman now and doesn't travel quite as much. he prefers to stay at home where he is warm and safe and await our return, surveying his kingdom from the lofty position on the chest of drawers in our bedroom. He is a special bear - though not the oldest bear in our house .... but I save that for another time.

Now I have news of a great fun challenge and free kit. Dawn Inskip is hosting a scrap your resolutions challenge over at Pickleberrypop and you can claim her free kit and enter the resolutions challenge.

I used the kit to make a page about my resolutions

I added bits from her other kits, also available at PBP and at NDISB.

Go check it out. It is funa nd free to take part in.

And finally - here is my POTD

We went to TGI for a final pre-diet blow out.

I just love their Jack Daniels glaze.

So here is my photo

Didn't remember to take it till I was part way through LOL

Christmas Dining Room - miniature size

As people seemed to like looking at the pictures of my dolls' house drawing room all decorated for Christmas, I thought I would share what the dining room looks like for the festive season.

I hasten to add that the dolls house is way way nicer than my real house.

The dolls have better furniture, way better crockery and better soft furnishings LOL

There are two windows in the dining room - the window at the side and the large bay window at the front of the house.

I had the curtain made for the bay window as it was way too complicated for me to tackle. 

I am sad to confess not all rooms have curtains yet as they were so costly. 

You will have noticed the little cat by the table. My dolls' house is filled with cats in every room. I have no dolls - just cats.

In front of the bay window is a little table made by the same people who made the dining room furniture. They were all hand crafted by an artisan in Hampshire. 

I love a couple of bits on the table. The fruit bowl is by a company called Etcetera and they do the most realistic food ever. Each piece of fruit is a work of art  I also love the tiny corkscrew on the table and the miniature Bonsai tree.

There is food set out on the sideboard for the Christmas lunch.

They are very traditional in the house so there is, of course, roast turkey and all the trimmings.

One of my favourite pieces, again made by Etcetera, is the marble slab with the stilton and fruit on it.

This second picture is to show the size - the ring is my wedding ring so it gives an idea of how small it all is.

The dining room table is set for four ready for Christmas lunch.

The crockery was a real extravagence one year but I am so pleased I got it when I did.

There is cutlery and I didn't take a photo but the sideboard drawer at the top is a cutlery tray all lined with green felt and contains the rest of the cutlery.

The napkins each have their own little silver napkin ring as well.

The table as a whole shows that, for such a grand house, they actually have quite a small table, only being able to seat four! Ah well.

You can just see the Christmas tree int he background and it is decorated in white and gold, nust like my real tree in my full sized house.

Sadly that is where the similarity ends!

Finally I leave you with a picture of the room as a whole.

Thank you for looking at my little doll house and letting me share it with you.

If you would like to know more about Show and Tell Friday pop over to Kelli's blog HERE

A Christmas Drawing Room - show and tell

I am loving show and tell Fridays. I love seeing what everyone shares.

If you want to find more out about show and tell then visit Kelli's blog where you can find all the details and go on a real vogayage of discovery as you hop around the blogs

I thought it would be nice to share the way my drawing room in my dolls' house is decorated for Christmas.

The drawing room was the second room I decorated and although it looks quite simple there is a lot of work that has gone into it.

The floor was the first part and I laid strips of wood to make a parquet floor. There are nail holes and everything but they don't really show up on the photo. It had to have coats of wood stain and varnish. Itw as my first effort at this and the varnish is all wrong. But heck. It was a learning process.

The ceiling looks like a proper Georgian plaster ceiling but it is actually a very thick embossed paper which was then painted white.

I papered the walls and then added coving - boy was that fun to cut - I even had to but myself a mitre block and made a right mess of the first few pieces.

I also added a dado rail and skirting board, again all cut on the mitre blosk which I was getting better at using.

I wanted a picture in there that I had painted and it was fun trying to paint something that size (the dolls house in 1:12th scale.

It is not the greatest watercolour in the world but i was quite pleased I had managed it at all.

I decorate the house for Christmas each year - it is about the only thing I do do with it now, other than sit and enjoy it.

I have garlands that go round the fireplace and cards that stand on the table and the mantlepiece as well.

There are lots of little Christmas extra's that go in as well. There are mince pies dusted with icing sugar on the table for guests to share, a bowl of nuts and a tiny nut-cracker and a tiny copy  made of 'The Night Before Christmas" which was a labour of love and it sits on one of the chairs.

I also have a Christmas tree of course.

The tree is special and the fairy lights light up so that when the house is in darkness with just the wall-lights and the tree lights on it looks so pretty.

Thank you for letting me share my dolls house with you again.

The Music Room

I thought I would ahare one of my most outrageous rooms in my dolls' house this week for Show and Tell Friday.

If you want to know more about the wonderful Show and Tell Friday hosted on Kelli's blog follow the link. It truly is something great to be part of.

I had my doll house for my 40th birthday and for three years I worked really hard on it. It is a big big house and I loved decorating it.

I discovered scrapping in 2003 so the dolls house sort of got put on hold. It is a work in progress and I WILL finish it one day. I just can't finance both addictions at the same time.

The Music Room was my fantasy room. The house is late Georgian  and I imagined that the family who lived there were great entertainers and they liked to host parties and musical soirees for their wealthy friends.

They had the luxury of having more rooms than they needed to live in and so had turned one of them over to a lavish music room where they could play music and be entertained by others playing music too.

Everything about the room is over the top and it took me hours and hours of painstaking work to complete it.

There is a faux marble floor and the walls are actually painted a wedgewood blue - I have been unable to capture the colour well in any photo. It either looks too garish or too ornage.

The feiezes around the room are plaster casts and then painted with liquid gold paint, as was the fireplace and the niches ceiling and columns.

That was the work that was really fiddly to complete but so worth the effort.

The house is all wired throughout and each light works independently from a remote control unit. I wanted lavish lights for the music room and couldn't find anything that was quite right, so I bought lights from a fabulous man called Ray Storey and then turned them into chadelliers with plastic thread and crystal beads. It was great fun to do.

The Louis XV furniture was a special find when on holiday in America. We bought it from a doll house shop in Falls Church Virginia and I still feel quite faint when I think about how much I paid for it.

The art deco lamp is not not in the right style but I fell in love with it and so it had to be there.

There are cats in every room and the music room is no exception.

The instruments came from various places at different times.

I had such fun creating the music room and collecting the pieces for it. Over the top it may be, but I love it. I promise the rest of the house is quite sane and plain by comparisson.

I look forward to sharing more rooms in future show and tells.

Two Little Boys

I have a very small show and tell today.

If you want to find out more about Show and Tell then go and visit Kelli's House. You'll stay - it's lovely

These two little boys live in my lounge and they are cheap, poor quality and sooooo precious.

They have been a part of my life ever since I can remember and go back before I was even a glint in my parents' eyes.

My Mom and Dad bought them when they were first married. They didn't have much money and these were very cheap and in a sale as well. They bought them for each other for their first wedding anniversary in March 1957. It celebrated their birth months. My Mom had a July birthday and my Dad had an April Birthday.

I am thinking they must have been an American deisgn, though they were bought in the UK, with the American flag and 4th July connections. Though I guess the April showers is all too British!!!

When Daddy died, Mommy having preceeded him by many years, they were one of the first things I brought home as they just had to be on show. They were so important to my parents and so they are so important to me. They are very scuffed, they don't go with anything else in my home, but they are very precious and something I could never get rid of.

Armistice Show and Tell

I love looking at all the blogs who link and play along with Show and Tell friday over at Kelli's House. It takes me on a fascinating  journey each week. 

Can I say welcome to all of the people who are visiting my little cyber home as a result of Show and Tell Friday.

  I am not sure if Armistice and remembrance Day is celebrated across the whole world or not but here in the UK is is, once again, becoming a big thing. When I was a little girl all the traffic still stopped but then people seemed to forget. Now, I guess becasue we have soldiers fighting on active duty again, it seems to be increasingly supported.

I wanted to share some photos that I have up in my home as they are especially meaningful this week.

Many of them are displayed on the wall in frames, but it is easier to share the scanned images. I scanned all of the old pictures for the rest of my family and we each have out own disc with the pictures on.

This first pocture is of my Grandad and Nana and my Daddy's older brother Uncle Ben.  Grandad was an Old Contemptible - one of the regular soldiers when World war 1 started. He fought in Europe throughout the year and this picture was taken when he came home on leave and they had Uncle Ben christened.

He fought at the battle of the Somme amongst many others and he received a commendation for bravery from the Battle of the Somme.

This second picture is of my Grandad and Nana, Uncle Ben, who is now a little boy and the new baby being christened, my Aunty Connie.

My Daddy wasn't born until much later, long after the war had finished.

I love those two pictures and also this one below which is of grandad and his army pals. Sadly I do not know who anyone is in the photo apart from my Grandad.

 

The next picture is of my Aunty Phyllis. She was the baby of the family and the picture is of her and Grandad (the man in all the previous pictures) on her wedding day.

She was just 16 when she got married at the end of World War 2 and she was a GI bride. She married her sweetheart Uncle Ricky and like so many other girls, embarked on the Queen Mary for a new life so far away from home.

They hadn't been married many years when Uncle Ricky dies, but by then she had two children, my special American cousins, and her life was in the US and apart from one visit home she has stayed in America ever since. And I have been blessed to go visit her and my cousins.

It must have been such a brave thing to do and she must have been very very much in love to have gone all that way not knowing what life would be like.

This last picture is very special. It is my Daddy and believe it or not he was just 18 in the picture. It was taken at the end of World War 2 and by then he had already been on active duty for 4 years!!! He lived in Liverpool and,  at the age of 14 he decided to run away to sea as so many boys in Liverpool did.

He was tall for his age so lied abouthis age and boarded a merchant ship headed for the Atlantic. It was only a few days later, when he was scared and afraid at the war going on around him that he realised quite what he had done. But by then there was no turning back. He was stuck there.

The merchant navy is the service that is often missed out from remembrance day parades etc and yet they fought so hard in World War 2. Thousands of sailors died in the Battle of the Atlantic. At 15 my day was having to man guns on ship and his was once the only ship to survice U Boat attacks from an entire convoy. And all of this before he was 18 years old. I was proud of my dad every single day - he was my hero.

At 18 he left the navy and then joined the army! Clearly there was no stopping him. I might use his daredevil exploits in Egypt for another show and tell.

The last three pictures here, because they are relevant, are pictures of the CD holder and the CD I made for each of my cousins so we all ave all the family pictures. 

It was great fun to make and I also have instructions on my blog on another page of how to make the CD holder. 

They are really simple and great fun to make. 

 Thank you for looking at my show and tell.

I am now off to browse what you have all shown and told.

 

Softie, My Passion and Show and Tell Friday

On a scale of 1 - 10 this week has pretty much been a -5!

I have had better but heck - it's Friday, the sun has been shining, there are more fireworks to watch tonight and the world is looking a whole lot better.

It doesn't matter that I had some of the worst problems of my working life to deal with at work, it doesn't matter that I had chest pains and had to have tests because so far they have been OK, it doesn't matter that my computer monitor blew up last night (because I have pinched Nigel's LOL) or that Kira kept me awake last night because she couldn't get her own way and sleep where she wanted to which was pretty much int he bed where I was trying to sleep.

IT'S FRIDAY - so who cares.

Plus I have had such fun playing with three - yes three - new kits that dawn designed last week. They have been released int he stores at NBISB and Pickleberry pop and they are fab.

One is a kit called Passion showcased in the preview here and the other two are cool alpha sets. One is alled Marvin - just  tease for now - I will show my Marvin page another day. The other is called Puffed up and I used it on the page called Softie - featring dawn's favourite furry boy the Fiki monster.

I can see the alphas are both going to be really really useful for all sorts of things.

The page of Nij - yes I know it is slushy but he really and truly IS my life's passion - was made using the Passion kit which is so versatile and such fun to use. I love the swirl especially, but it really is jam packed.

Tonight we have a huge firework display locally but we can see it from our balcony and it has become traditional to watch from there and avoid the crowds.  I am a real sucker for firework displays - the big organised ones. It is one of the many things I love about Disney and when we are there we try to catch one every night. Usually EPCOT's reflections of earth - but soemtimes others.

Now I have forgotten to do my own show and tell Friday for a couple of weeks and I remembered today and so am posting mine and then jopping off to look at everyone elses.

You can find out all about show and tell friday here

I don't have many old things in my home - but I do have a few and they are very precious - not just because of their age but because of the associations with them.

These three little trinket boxes are over 150 years old. When we moved into the hotel that my parents owned they were there are part of the fixtures and fittings and I loved them. Mom realised they were very old and needed to be looked after. I wanted them dreadfully, because they were old and I felt they had a story to tell, but I was much to young to treat them carefully and so was allowed to 'look' but not 'touch'. One of them had, at some point, been broken and very badly repaired with what I can only assume was nail varnish.

The hotel was an old Victorian house and we unearthed quite a few small treasures from there, but I imagined these belonging to the young beautiful girl I just knew had lived there (My imagination was very vivid you understand) She kept her treasured jewels in there. The ring from her boyfriend, the love tokens he sent her, the brooch from her grandmother. You name it I wove a story about them - those little boxes I could look at but not touch.

I am sure they are anything but valuable and they really are in quite a sad state of repair, but I loved them so much. To me there were a living part of history and so I was delighted when I was 16 and my Mom said I was now old enough to appreciate them and look after them. I have treasured them ever since. They hold small pieces of jewellery, inluding some special things the children have made me like fimo brooches (so only classy stiuff!!!) Like so many things, they are small, inconsequential items with little intrinsic value but they mean the world.

Have a great weekend everyone and stay safe and happy xx

Show and Tell Friday - the Mask

Whilst blog hopping around cyber world I came across show and tell Friday and it is such a wonderful idea and I have had such fun reading posts.

You can find out all about it here

I so enjoyed reading things that I wanted to play so looked around for an interesting object in my home with a story and decided to share my mask.

This mask, custom made for me to go in our hallway, was made by a colleague at work who I sadly no longer work with. We initially became friends because she was a kindred spirit cat lover, having some beautiful HUGE Maine coons. But we also shared a love of crafts.

We were chatting one day about her crafting and she was telling me about the masks she had started to make. I was really interested and when I saw some samples of her work I knew I wanted one.

And so she made this for me and I really treasure it.

There is so much detail on it but it hasn't really all shown so well on the photograph. I am sure I will get better at this with practice.

I wanted one of the venetian masks when we stayed at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas but they were so expensive they were out of our league. Plus the colours would not have been so perfect for the hallway. This just ticked all the boxes.

Thank you for reading my first show and tell and for the pleasure yours have given me this evening.