Mother Goose Project

Mother Goose Challenge

Updated with new front cover photos 11/23

Challenge Accepted

A challenge was issued and it was one I accepted.  I have to like the concept or theme in order for me to accept a challenge.  This challenge was issued by Pam Junk Knapp over on Smaller and Smaller Adventures on yahoo groups.  The challenge was to make a project in 1:48 scale that had a Mother Goose / Nursery Rhyme theme.  In addition to the challenge was the opportunity to participate in a swap.  I also choose to do this swap and I received some wonderful things.
Thinking about this project and how I would do it - I recalled the hollow books I have been playing around with lately.  I had wanted to make a really big book with multiple sections in it. I decided that the book idea and Mother Goose rhymes would fit nice together. 
Here is the completed project:

With children added

The inside of the book

pages side of book

back of the book

View from the top

More pics can be found in the links below and also on my picturetrail site.

Rhyme listing

These links are where I share "How I did it".

Peter, Pumpkin Eater * House Under Hill  *  Mary How does your garden grow?  *  Little Boy Blue  *  Miss Muffet  *  Queen of Hearts  *  Baa, Baa Black Sheep  *  Mary had a little lamb  *  Little Jack Horner  *  Mother Hubbard  *  Hickory, Dickory Dock  *  Pussy cat, pussy cat  *  Humpty Dumpty  *  Piggies  *  London Bridge is Falling Down  *  Three Men in a Tub  *  Row, row your boat  *  The pie man  *  Rock-a-bye Baby  *  Jack and Jill  *  Hey Diddle, Diddle  *  Old Lady who Lived in a Shoe  *  Ring a round the Rosy  *  Mother Goose  *  Three Blind Mice  *  Sing a Song of Sixpence * Pat a Cake

Lessons I have learned doing this project

At some point, I decided that this project needed to use up stuff.  Ideally this meant I didn't buy anything for it, but that wasn't to be the case as I worked with it.  But it was a good brain stretcher to do so.
- This was my first time to build boxes that had to fit together.  There a many ways to do this and it isn't that my way didn't work, but I could have saved myself some time and measuring if I had cut all the boxes at the beginning.  I also think I should have used a layer of matt board across the bottom the full size so I didn't have to later add floors.  This would have likely helped me with the issues I had around size of the whole bottom level.  
- This one was not so much a lesson that was new, more a reminder - keep an open mind about what might work.  This really was where the brain stretching came in.  I have collected so many supplies and swaps over the years that I really need to use them.  I feel really good that I did, but sometimes I had to think beyond what I wanted to do initially as I didn't have the supplies on hand.  Another time was thinking I needed to make a shoe and I concluded that I needed to use my baby shoe instead. Yet another was trying to find an egg shaped solution for humpty - ultimately I was avoiding using clay.  Not that clay is a bad thing.
- When doing multi-levels - use connectors so that the wiring can be disconnected to work on one level and not the whole thing.
- Get ideas from others - when you get stuck or just want to hear how others might do something, ask other miniaturists.  Again, this wasn't a new lesson, but a reminder of how this can help expand my thinking.  We don't have to use their ideas, but it can help us to move beyond what we have been thinking.
- Everyone has their own gifts.  Don't envy the gifts of others.  Let their work inspire you to do better, be more creative, or try harder to do what you can do. Envy will discourage you and can keep you  from seeing the worth of your own work.  This isn't something I typically have an issue with this, but it is a good reminder as well.

Overall I am very pleased to have done this challenge.  This was truly a challenge that I made my own - challenge to just use what I have.  I may have not done that 100% but I am very happy with the percentage I did.  
Psst - I did actually do one thing here in 1:12 scale - see if you can figure it out in the how I did posts I will be sharing in the next few days.