The new shoes...
Tillie and the unicorn....
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Someone asked how and where I store my vast collection of doll furniture and props, so I thought I'd take some photos. First the furniture and bigger stuff. It all started out on just two book shelf units in the basement, which it quickly outgrew, so Jan made extra shelf extensions in between.  And that isn't even all of it. There's more horses and doll-size carpets along another wall, and the fireplace and main china cabinet are permanently stored in the dining room. All my smaller props are sorted and stored in labelled photo boxes. The most often used ones are in plain sight on a main floor bookcase shelf....  ..or stacked on my Mom's sewing table in the corner of the dining room...  ..and there's more behind doors at the bottom of a living room bookcase. The clear compartmented boxes contain things like tiny dished, plates, cutlery, small food items, and one of the boxes contains extra hands and feet - all in labelled baggies....  There's a row of pets and other bigger props lined up above my contemporary BIDs and whatever dolls happen to be standing on the drop-down bar (which is full of patterns, laces and trims)  One of the top shelves in the book case has been taken over with stacks of doll books....  ..and this dresser in the dining room is full of doll-related stuff too. The top big drawer is full of miscellaneous props. The next big drawer down, is full of bigger size 9 wigs, and the bottom drawer is full of bags of mohair for making wigs....  The fine china moved out of the dining room china cabinet years ago. Now it houses an old music box collection, some old dolls, my family of Victorian bjds, the smaller Kaye Wiggs bjds, all the Whispering Grass Forest Dwellers, and rows of birthday cakes, and miniature china tea sets, displayed on narrow shelves along the back wall...  So, technically, I'm living in a 'doll house'.
And yes, I do know exactly where everything is. It's been a very unusual spring this year. We are pretty much stuck at home, and as nice as our backyard is, it would have been nice to be able to go out and watch as nature woke up all around us - and take some dolls pictures out and about in it. But now this year. It's been a very unusual spring weather-wise, with temperatures soaring, then dropping below freezing, only to skyrocket back up again. It's like a weather roller-coaster out there, and many plants don't like it much at all. Thankfully the small patches of scillas we have didn't mind the unexpected late snow....  The star magnolia on the north side of the house put on it's usual display....  ..but our big saucer magnolia out front suffered some major frost damage for the first time ever. The flowers were just starting to come out, when we were hit by an Arctic inversion and temperatures plummeted way below freezing and all the flowers froze....  ...and they all turned brown...  Then 'spring' returned for a few days....
  Things started to grow....   Then the first heat wave of summer hit, and everything shot out of the ground so fast you could almost sit and watch it grow. Five days later it looked like this....  It does look very nice, but most of it isn't very good for doll photos, except as 'background' for anything other than fairies. Maybe I should go look for some.....
I seem to have hit a 'wall' as far as creativity goes, and one of the biggest signs that there's nothing going on, is that my 'main floor photo studio' gets to pretend it's actually a dining room table....  I'm not making anything, am not sewing anything, have no photo ideas, and can't decide what to start on next, so it's a good thing I have the 'Smiles for Today' or there'd be nothing to post. Of course the unseasonably hot weather this past week didn't help either.
So, because there was nothing else to do, I spent the week tracing and scanning in some patterns. Now if I can just motivate myself to take the photos for them, then they can get released. Caring for baby Sena. Paige took it upon herself to look after her, on the doll shelf, until she was ready to make her entrance into her Victorian family....  Once upon a time. *More photos here  A lovely couple, all dressed up for a special evening of dinner and dancing....   "I want to ask you something..."
And he got down on one knee....  "Would you marry me??"   "Yes, I would love to..."   And so, sadly, we come to the end of the series. All good things must come to an end. It was fun while it lasted, but our stores shelves are no longer empty, and I quite honestly ran out of ideas. So it's time to move on.... The entire series is now in Favourite Photos, and starts here, at the Toilet Paper Chronicles |
AuthorMartha Boers is an award-winning Canadian doll maker and costumer specializing in fantasy and historical-style costumes. Archives
February 2023
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