Blog Archives

Victorian Family Album

8/18/2026

The entire purpose for taking all the new photos of my Victorian family was to enhance the Victorian Photo album my sister and I were working on. But I got so carried away and took so many new photos that we had to create two albums instead of just one.

This is the first one...

There are 112 pages with 227 of our favourite photos.
These are just a few

Family portraits...

Discovery in the attic...

Lisa's trip...

Iris and Steve's getaway...

Washing & mending their doll clothes...

Steve's office...

In the greenhouse...

Catching tadpoles...

Getting the nursery ready...

The new arrival...

Baby's first outing...

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Seaside Vacation

8/17/2026

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In preparation for their trip to the seaside, I wanted to make a set of Victorian style swimwear for the children. I started by making two for Nyssa and cousin Holly, and two for Eric and his cousin Coco. Then I thought baby Sena could use one too. Then why stop there? So I made some for Lisa, iris and Steve as well. In fact I made two sets for Steve, since the first set was made from the same fabric as the boys and I decided he needed something different. I didn't feel like stripping down Iris or Lisa when making their swimsuits, so Leona and Lonnie offered to be models in their place.

I know inflatable beach toys are not era appropriate, but it's ultimately a time travel story, and cousins Holly and Coco (who are from modern times) were going with Iris and Steve's family, and they brought their own favourite beach toys along. Well, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

I had originally wanted to photograph their vacation on a trip up north, but after that got cancelled, I was stuck with the beach down at the lake. I'd wanted to have taken the photos before July before the schools were out for the summer, but things being what they were, it was the final weekend of June and it was supposed to be a scorcher. Well, I really wanted to get the photos taken and done with, so I got everything ready, and we went down to the lake for three mornings in a row, all before 9am, while the sun was shining in the right direction, and before the beach crowds arrived.
Day one, early on a Saturday morning, and I set up a scene on the beach....

One of the photos...taken straight on at the doll's eye level...

We did go back to the beach again that evening, but it was packed, with no parking spots, and way too many people, so we just left, only to return again early the next day on Sunday morning. I started with Iris in her bathing suit...

Then I set up the family picnic.

I took the photos from a lower angle, so the background looked more like an overgrown sand dune. It was getting very hot, so we called it a day, packed up and left.

We did go back again that evening, but it was even more crowded than the day before. It was getting hotter and more humid every day, and Monday was supposed to break records, but we went again early that morning. I started by setting up the sand castle scene, and then people started arriving at the beach. There was a grandmother with a toddler right by that tree, and another family throwing stones in the water a little further down the beach from us, and I had to take the photos so they'd all be hidden behind the tent...

I photographed the sandcastle, beach combing, and the family walking in the water scenes that morning. But it was so hot that I totally forgot to take behind the scenes photos,

* to revisit all the behind the scenes from the new Victorian Family series
- Behind Victorian Scenes

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the Train Station

8/16/2026

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Right from the start of the new Victorian Family photos project, I'd wanted to do a series of them going on vacation, and I pictured them all waiting at a train station. now, there's not a lot of heritage train stations around, and I'd originally planned on taking the dolls along for a vacation up north, and stopping at the train station in Gravenhurst. But that trip got cancelled for several reasons, so I had to come up with something else. So I did an online search for other heritage train stations.
Then I started getting ready by making some suitcases out of some plain cardboard boxes. I made them to look like they had a lid, even thought they weren't going to open. I painted them, and glued little leather circles on all the corners...

Then I added handles, straps and some fake metal hinges and locks....

There was going to be a lot of dolls posing on the projector stand, and I knew the top surface wasn't going to be big enough, so I got a somewhat bigger piece of plywood, and painted it to look like concrete. At first I thought concrete was 'grey', but it really isn't. I took the wood outside several times and laid it down on our concrete path to check the colour, and it was a lot warmer than I had expected. More of a beige than a gray. Then I splattered more paint all over the board for some texture...

With the board dry, I practiced posing all the dolls on it on my kitchen table...

I had discovered that Uxbridge, just half an hour away, had a beautiful heritage train station. So I packed everyone up, and we headed north. I was a little worried since some of the photos online showed it with all the windows boarded up after the tornado that had damaged it a few years back. But when we got there, it was perfect...

It's the only old railway station in Ontario with a witch's hat roof, and even thought it was right in the middle of town, it was in a wide open area and there was no one there. No people, no cars, perfect! And the tracks and platform were running north/south, which meant the dolls would not be back-lit if the sun was out. So we took everything out onto the platform...

I determined what distance the dolls had to be from the station in order for forced perspective to work, and set everyone up on top of the projector stand...

Then I proceeded to take lots of photos....

The weathered wood of the station platform matched the colour of my painted board perfectly, so all I had to do in post production was to blend them together seamlessly...

After we'd cleaned everything up and had packed it all back into the car, I noticed the train car in the field next to the station. It was in pretty bad shape, but I thought I'd try and use it anyways. So, out came everything one more time, and after determining how far they needed to be from the train car I set up everyone as though they were just waiting to board the train....

Then I took close-ups of the dolls from the back...

I was really pleased with all the photos taken that day.

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Creating the New Christmas Photos

8/15/2026

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When the two Victorian Family albums were first laid out, it became clear that the Christmas sections needed to be expanded upon. So that meant recreating the set from 2018 perfectly, down to every detail.
Christmas 2018....

Christmas 2026. Even the Christmas cards had to be in the exact same places....

The photo cropped in...

For the Christmas Baking scenes, we removed all the modern appliances off of the counters in the background, and I set up the girls on a box on the counter in the foreground.

There was nothing I could do about the stove hood or fridge, Neither of which were period appropriate, so I just tried to avoid showing them as much as possible...

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the Last Day

8/14/2026

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Every morning when the tide was out, the children enjoyed looking for any shells that had washed ashore....

Then they'd sort through them...to choose the ones they wanted to keep...

It was the last day of their vacation, and they posed for one final group photo...

...and Nyssa picked one last bouquet of wildflowers...

...and the next morning it was time to board the train for the return trip back home. It had been fun ... and was over far too soon. But it was time to go home.

*This finally brings us to the end of all the latest photos featuring my Victorian family. The revisit the entire new series from the beginning - Victorian Times

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