On one o the lists I am on a while back a project was shared by one of my favorite miniature artists – Susie Newell. She makes fabulous Suessy like dolls. In the miniature world, far too often dolls can be so blah, but her’s are so fun and they fit right into her often whimsical structures. But I digress. The project she shared was Alice in Wonderland. As I looked at her pictures, as is often the case, I said I want to do that. And then, as often is the case as well, I said, not right now (if ever).
Fast forward to last week on LittleEnoughNews where I am a co-owner. One of my self-chosen roles currently is to encourage fellow LENies to participate. So I am running swaps, theme months, doing random drawings, etc. One of our current swaps is Whimsy and as the topic grew and was expanded the Alice in Wonderland idea came up. So I issued a challenge – make a AW themed project.
The more I thought about this theme, the more it came to my mind. OK wait – duh. Well anyway…. I was reminded of a cake I saw. Cakes are really good project ideas. They make miniatures as well as we do, just theirs are edible. (as an aside – I can’t do the cake thing, all that time and then it is destroyed as that is its original purpose – not me.) Here’s a link for the cake I liked (BTW, I love Cake wrecks. Every Sunday are the really well done cakes and the rest of the week are those oh no they didn’t or what was that sort of cakes. )
As I think about this project one of the decisions is what to put into the project. This is book so there are many aspects to choose from. Do I choose only one or several? Since the falling down the hole is one of the bigger ones it is what I am thinking about now.
The next day I woke up thinking about a comment by another co-owner that she would want to incorporate the images from the book somehow into the project. The answer goes along with a concept that I am working with another project – altered boxes. The hole could be the intersection of boxes and the images can be on the outside of the boxes. My Mother Goose project was sort of altered boxes. I am not for sure why we are calling them altered. Mine aren’t altered unless you consider all my work altered as I build it and then have to do some sort of altering as I build it wrong somehow. Or change my mind about something. Altered boxes though to me are just boxes that are assembled and then covered with paper and more paper and/or embellishments. Layered. But everything works together. Maybe the papers are color coordinated or the whole theme is coordinated. Maybe altered because it is added to and not just the minis added.
As I was thinking about what to go into the project, I thought about the playing cards in the story. I am making mine in 1:48 scale and so small playing cards may be ideal. I don’t recall having any so I was thinking I need to go buy some. But it occurred to me that they might be hard to find. I really don’t want to spend any new money if I don’t have to on minis. Plus using the cards I wouldn’t use a whole deck so that is wasteful. Not to mention even if I found a deck would it be a style I like. My solution was that I could make my own via internet images and maybe even scanning some larger cards and reducing.
My next thought was about the container. If you have been reading my blog for a while you know that is important to me. For this one I thought of a plastic dome given to me very recently. This was a situation where a friend knew I made miniatures and was helping another friend clean out her house. My friend thought it might be something I could use and I said yes without even knowing if it would or not. I will have to modify the base, but I think it will work.
Next comes my sketches and notes. Rough stick figure type sketches. Maybe I measure now. I also need to decide if I am going to light it and what will be lit. Better to do that now. Believe me I far too often decide later and then have to undo or deal with the how do I hid it now problem.
So I am back to deciding what is going to go in this project besides the rabbit hole and tunnel. I decide I need to re-read the book to find out. This book is available on Google books as it is out of copyright. I started reading it on my phone and I am doing screenshots on the images for any I think I might want to use on the ends or backs of boxes.
Can’t say when I will next post on this. Miniature inspiration can leave me just as quickly as it can over take my thinking. For sure watch this space for future posts about it.
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