JaneLaverick.com

Self esteem.

Posted on 21st May 2025 by admin

Is one of those things that gets into modern conversations quite a bit.

You’re supposed to think you are the best thing since sliced bread.

How weird is it that exactly the people who think they are, aren’t? I can think of quite a list of, for example, politicians and leaders of assorted countries who consider themselves to be World Number One but are obviously, very poor at maths.

One of the aspects of the miniature hobby that I discovered early on was that there are very few of the above type of person in the hobby. I have met one or two but there is something to do with scale that magnifies consequences rather more rapidly than reality. I have interviewed miniaturists who charged very large amounts of money for what they were making but not for long. The reality in this hobby, which helps you to escape from reality, is that the majority of collecting miniaturists have carefully collected pocket money to spend, and, as they are miniaturists and of an enquiring turn of mind, are solidly aware of exactly what is available to buy and, to the penny, how much it costs. Artists who give good value for money are going to last the longest.

What of the stuff you make yourself? I’ve never met a miniaturist who has only been a collector. Sooner or later, everyone has a go.

What do you think of the miniatures you have made yourself?

In the last posting I stopped posting the posting because the horrible plastic shoes of the OH were making crunchy noises in the hall where I had the twelfth scale furniture proceeding from the laundry basket via the carpet to the safety of the Chinese box.

He didn’t say sorry. He complained that sitting outside in the sunshine had made him blind.

So he couldn’t see the small furniture carefully put to one side of a massive gap with just carpet put there to walk on, and instead staggered all over the furniture.

He just shouted at me.

Today he managed to say he was sorry, heavily disguised in a sentence about something else and still shouted.

So I was able today to repaint the two dining chairs and a chest that I glued together the day they were utterly smashed.

This was for the first house I did. I made all the furniture, mostly from kits at first and from scratch later, all to fit in the house which is dated about 1910, which is when it was made by the simple expedient of copying a real house but changing the feet for inches. This made life simple for a beginner because it was true twelfth scale. I was able to start off furniture production by using the German kits that were readily available at the time.

You can still see the crack on the top edge of the chest lid, so I’ll have to sand and paint again but

They’re not bad, are they? This is partly because the kit manufacturer did a good job but

So did I.

It is a very long time since I looked at the contents of this house which have been in the laundry basket since the real house makeover. The installation of better one scale stairs being the reason for carrying the house (twelfth scale) around the house (one scale).

As this was my first house I made this furniture about thirty eight years ago.

Suddenly I have reverse self esteem.

Wasn’t I good?

I knew this was one of the beneficial aspects of the hobby. No matter what you are doing, or not doing in one scale, with the right help, kit, class, material, instructions or just plain inspiration, it’s so amazing what you can do in miniature that I urge you to put away, a house, a room box, a kit you made, and leave it. Go off and do other things and then

thirty eight years later, retrieve it.

Put it at the back of a high shelf. Put other things in front until you have forgotten about it.

Years later find it and be amazed at how clever you were and are.

It’s shelf esteem.

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Posted in About artists. | Tagged miniature furniture | Leave a comment

Decluttering.

Posted on 18th May 2025 by admin

I’m very sorry to start with a rude word. If you are a collector (meaning miniaturist because there are not many ways of being the one without being the other) the thought of downscaling sometimes makes you breathe all funny.

Some of the dust improved round here when the open plan staircase was exchanged for a nice pine staircase with the underside filled in. The open plan staircase nearly stopped me buying this house, 39 years ago.

When I was a child one dreaded feature of the year was the visit to the school outfitters, for many reasons. School uniform was a tweed coat in such a dreadful shade of grey, other schools on the bus used to call us: the elephants. The elephant hide was extremely absorbent, in the rain you could gain a couple of pounds just walking home. Between that and my dreadful Inner Raise shoes for my flat feet, which weighed a ton, I could actually feel myself getting shorter as the day wore on. I know we all do, but in my case it was so noticeable, if I’d lived further away from the bus stop I’d have arrived home on my knees.

There was not a garment in the uniform which was not tickly, scratchy or heavy. For someone so titchy I had good posture, I had been told to imagine I was walking around with a pile of books on my head, but mostly I was just trying to stand in the middle of my clothes.

Additionally to all this expensive misery was the location of the children’s section in a posh outfitters. It was up a massive flight of open plan stairs. Very 1950s, utterly terrifying for someone small, with undiagnosed vertigo, convinced I would plunge earthwards through the slots at every step.

And then there was the horror at the top of being pushed and pulled around, being forced to get changed just in the middle of the carpet, with my liberty bodice and vast grey school knickers on show for all to see as the snobby assistant sneered at my shortness and tried to persuade my mother to buy whatever size they had in surplus quantities.

So I nearly didn’t buy this house when I saw the staircase, I did not like it at all.

The cats, however, loved it. For them it was like a carpeted tree with nice regular branches.

That you could lean through to swipe the feather duster. Such a good game. Here is dear little Cleo playing the game.

She loved the stairs and she loved the big dolls’ house underneath. She fitted in it perfectly.

Today I have not been gardening as planned, I’ve been having a clear out. For a collector the urge to have a clear out is so infrequent, I’m wondering whether I’m coming down with something.

I have been trying to clear a space under the stairs for the big box that contains the items in the shop. It has to be a goodly sized space if I’m going to get the big dolls into it. Something had to go.

For a few aeons the dolls house furniture has been in a huge laundry basket next to the house. This is awaiting the installation of new electric lights. The new battery lights are so much better than the old trailing wires. The grandchildren wanted to play with the house but I wouldn’t let them because the wired lights had a habit of descending unexpectedly and I didn’t think that was safe. A couple of summers ago the GDS helped me remove the old wiring and that was as far as I got.

The house has a back panel missing. Given the age of the house it could well have been missing for a hundred years. I think it was probably hinged to allow any dolls who had got stuck on the return of the staircase to be rescued. I bought the house with no back panel and used the gap to track wires up to the sub- station in the loft where all the little plugs were plugged into a bar of sockets.

The OH has sort of agreed to make me a new back panel, once he has his shed back together again. (The floor has collapsed and the tools are all over the house, waiting.) So there is no point in putting the furniture back in the dolls’ house until there is a back panel.

Today I have been rescuing the furniture from the laundry basket, to put in the Chinese box which is full of unpublished novels and material for dresses I never got round to making and the brown and yellow Doctor Who scarf I have been knitting since the mid sixties. I hate knitting but believe women should possess this skill. Every five years I retrieve the scarf, knit two rows and, once I’m ready to stab any innocent passer-by with the long stupid plastic needles, put it all away in the box.

I can’t now, I’ve emptied the box.

And I will put all the furniture in it once I have stopped being sad that it is all covered in Cleo’s fur.

The antidote to sadness is always writing, hence this.

Meanwhile, have you had a go at the tiny dolls made with a bead, some thread, a bit of ribbon and some carpet fluff (cat fur would be lovely)? Anne in Ballynahinch has had a go. Look at these:

Brilliant!

If you have achieved a small miracle, send me a photo and we’ll all have a look.

Right! Back to cleaning the cat fur off the carpet. (I had forgotten I had needlepointed an entire twelfth scale carpet.) I also discovered that I’d put a working musical box in a grand piano. As you do, well, miniaturists do.

I’d better go there is a crunchy noise downstairs as the OH makes his way not carefully over the little furniture.

Non-miniaturists eh?

Just get busy, they go away eventually.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted in Dolls | Tagged dolls house clear out | Leave a comment

Always present part 2

Posted on 10th May 2025 by admin

The last posting was a summation of all that had occurred over half a month or more. In these weeks I lost, my garden, my privacy and my will to live.

However, the darkest hour is just before dawn. (This is a lie, it’s actually around 1 – 2 a.m.) (If you don’t believe me stay up and look.)

Anyway, having registered my despair, which I conveyed in a way you won’t believe (I went silent and retreated to my craft room), finally, this morning, other members of the archery group arrived to remove the moving targets.

They arrived with the trailer of one of them. The gaffer, who has been resident in the garden throughout, supervising the OH, stood dangerously on the road in the traffic as the company of archers moved the moving targets up my side path, as you do, well, they did.

As you can see the targets are large and heavy. They have to be. They have to withstand people shooting arrows at them. Fortunately the members are archers.

How does this help? I think I can hear you wondering.

Well, archers have massive upper body development. After a few years of bows and arrows and an awful lot of back pain the OH’s shoulders on his right hand side have expanded noticeably.

In Warwick, as in many old English towns established by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there are roads called ‘The Butts’ or similar names, often just outside of old town walls. These areas were for compulsory archery practice. Able bodied men could be required under the feudal system to do military service. Vassals, those men who held land, which actually belonged to the local lord, held the land, which was their livelihood, on condition they would turn up to defend the lord if and when required. Serfs, who were the poor landless servants, didn’t have much choice, or possessions, so were co-opted anyway.

By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, military service meant bows and arrows. The only alternative was to go rogue, like Robin Hood and his band of forest dwellers, which, of course, meant bows and arrows.

If you practice drawing a bow often enough, you will become deformed with massive lopsided shoulders, especially if you are drawing a longbow, which is as tall as you are. The English, possibly thanks to urban development including the facility of places to practice archery, were very good at drawing bows. They were a force to be reckoned with, and were so good that if they were caught by the traditional enemy, the French, they would have their two middle fingers cut off so they couldn’t draw the bow. This is the origin of various rude gestures involving a finger raised to the sky.

The advantage of English archery was so great, that by the famous Battle of Agincourt, which was a turning point in the Hundred Years War, in 1415, the English Longbow Men won the battle. This was in spite of the French having new fangled crossbows. These machines did not require years of training and upper body strength, you just wound them up, put the arrow in the slot and pulled the trigger. However, the French crossbows were huge and took ages to wind up. The French were shooting uphill against the sun and the English Longbow Men, up the hill, picked off the horses, the infantry and a lot of the nobility with ease.

Then they probably all loaded into a trailer and drove home.

Once they’d got all the bosses in the trailer, obviously.

It’s that upper body strength, you see. Enables you to draw a longbow, best the French and carry the bosses the OH has made up the side passage and into the light.

It’s probably a metaphor for something.

Anyway, if you are impressed, so was Shakespeare, who lived five miles from my drive, on and off. He’d have known all about it, it’s why he wrote Henry V (who was the boss of Agincourt) celebrating the King and all those archers who had been practising on The Butts (up the side of the Girls’ School and on the way to the doctor’s).

And Jane gets her garden back! Happy ending! (not necessarily the one Shakespeare wrote, but close.)

Further joy.

Oh yes. While my garden was full of archers likely to break the bird bath, whack bosses into the pots and demolish the fence with massive unstable structures, I retreated to my bedroom and began examining the wardrobe. The contents to be exact.

It’s not my walk-in, it’s the other one. Now the OH has his own bedroom and two wardrobes, his old one has silted up.

What has it silted up with? I hear you ask, or, if you’re very grammatical: with what has it silted up, or even: up with what has it silted?

Dolls of course.

Big dolls.

Years ago, years and years ago (not as long ago as Agincourt but quite a while) there was another Miniatura. Same venue, same organisers, different collectors. It was Miniatura Bears and Dolls.

I took along my little dolls and quite quickly, being me, started making big, original artist porcelain dolls.

Then Bears and Dolls folded and I put my dolls in the wardrobe.

Because I had nowhere to sell them.

And now I have an online shop.

Stay tuned.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Always present…

Posted on 9th May 2025 by admin

When you look out of your bedroom window, what do you hope to see? The garden, maybe a bird or two and some grass? Instead, a couple of days ago this is what I saw

what do you think these are?

It might help to know that the stripey bits are foam, that the thin lines are giant cable ties and the item propping one of them up is a hefty length of wood.

Any guesses?

The one on the left has a dark stripe on the uppermost edge. This is a channel the OH dug out of the foam. Into the channel he fitted another length of wood, as in the sample at the top of the picture.

His friend came round to supervise.

Together they achieved this.

There is now green painted wood on the sides, and, as you can see on the one lying down, stacked on another one, legs.

Does it help you if I tell you these are being constructed to Olympic standard?

Yes indeed, Olympic standard mystery objects in my back garden, without I might add my permission, say so or agreement.

They have taken days and days to get to this stage and then

wheels!

You may add your best guesses here

and here before I show you the next addition

which is

a horse mat, as I’m sure you knew.

If you did know you’re better informed than I.

I knew horses had blankets and shoes, I did not know horses had mats. The horse mat, provided by the friend, cost £60. It is the heaviest rubber I’ve ever seen. It took three of us to lift it on to the trestles. Those horses certainly don’t stint themselves.

Having provided this horse mat, the friend supervised while the OH cut it into strips. After a while the friend became bold and did a bit of cutting himself.

Having cut the mat into strips they were nailed on to the upright

boss.

This is a boss. The thing you put behind a paper archery target. The foam slices absorb the arrows, the rubber strips are to prevent the arrows slung of outrageous fortune and inexperienced archers, splintering the woodwork.

Yes my garden is more full of bosses than a Trades Union conference.

There is no doubt that the OH is very clever to have made them.

Because the floor of his shed is collapsing he has kept his tools in my shed.

The sun room.

And the lounge while matters proceed.

If you are good at the counting (socks off) you will see that there are three bosses. Not quite enough for British Rail but more than enough for my back garden.

When the friend arrived, as he has every afternoon for weeks, a couple of days ago there was talk, now that the archery society has found a field to rent for a few years, that the ideal number of bosses to give all the members a shot at Olympic level shots would be 14.

Can you see my nelly? Or not on it at all?

I have been patient.

The friend has a new car, it needs to be on our drive out of the way of passers by who may wish it harm.

Anything I want to do with my car has to be in the AM before the arrival of the other boss.

The friend is mature, he had his 81st birthday three days ago, same day as me, different decade.

For my birthday I had a trip to the dump, quite early.

To book the visit to the dump requires three different computer screens, ten pages of warnings, at least half an hour’s notice and a print out.

I used to find this annoying.

Now I find it less so.

Interestingly the bosses, so painstakingly made, will need to be disassembled to get them up our side path.

The friend was at pains to assure me yesterday, that urgent, urgent, requests have been made among many members for one with a van.

Or a lorry.

Or a car with a roof rack the size of a small village.

Round about the second day when the wheels were on, the OH asked his 5ft 1inch wife just to hold the back steady while he shifted it a bit, to lie it on the grass.

If I had been standing about 2mm closer, the speed at which the wheels caused the entire assembly to flash past my face, going upwards, would have meant that I no longer had a face.

After this requests that begin : Jane could you just hold… are ignored.

No I could not just hold.

I was just holding the ladder when the tree branch fell and split my head open about twenty years ago.

I was just holding the wardrobe rail up in the air unsupported when he went to get a packet of screws via the pub, thirty years ago.

Learning has taken place. I will not just hold anything.

Amazingly the OH opined that the friend, who founded the archery society, was a loud, bossy old man who thought he was always right and didn’t listen.

Almost a perfect description of the OH, if you add self-righteous and unsmiling.

I have been told I am making a flag.

I have a sewing machine which will do the work.

What kind of flag?

A red safety flag.

Now… 14 bosses, 1 safety flag.

I have my shoes and socks off, the numbers do not match.

The OH, who was getting tired of being told what to do by some old man, not having had half a century of experience at this, told the friend that Jane was getting fed up and wanted her garden back.

Whilst Jane, who never said any such thing, concurs, she doesn’t like being cast in the role of bad guy. Especially when I have made them cups of tea every afternoon at 4.

Not on my birthday, I arrived in the kitchen to find the kettle was hot, they had made their own tea. Happy Birthday.

One of my aphorisms, frequently asserted in times of difficulty, is that you should always present a moving target.

I think the OH probably stopped listening to me round about the second date but something must have filtered through.

Misheard.

Always present a moving target.

NOT

Make four moving targets as a present and promise ten more.

Judi Dench, the famous actress, is famous, among other things, for filling in the gaps on film sets by needlepointing very rude sayings very neatly. **** off and similar.

You could fit a lot on a flag.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted in The parrot has landed. | Tagged archery, humour | Leave a comment

How to make a doll’s doll’s dolls etc

Posted on 26th April 2025 by admin

As regular readers (hello, how are you?) know, I have been a bit obsessed with doll’s doll’s dolls.

I thought you might like to have a go yourself.

You will need : a face coloured bead, thickish thread, very fine silk thread, a bit of ribbon, scissors that cut right up to the edge, tacky glue or similar clear-drying glue, Fraycheck or similar liquid anti fray. Fraycheck all cut ribbon edges and allow to dry before working. You can speed up the drying by blotting on a tissue.

Everything depends on the size of bead which is the head of the doll. Mine is a wooden, uncoated, 3mm bead. The thicker thread (mine is stranded embroidery thread) should be the colour arms and legs you want and should be able to go through the bead and be secured with one knot on the top of the bead.

Doing small knots can be tricky with just your fingers, when you have done the loop, fine tweezers can go through the loop and, hanging on to the end, pull it back through the loop for you, thus making the knot. You could practise, if you like practising things.

When the knot is a top knot, apply a little dab of glue to keep it there. Under the head, across the emerging stranded neck, now knot another length of thread, going sideways, to make arms. Knot and glue the ends of the arms. Divide the stranded thread that goes through the head under the arms to make legs and knot and glue each leg at the end to make feet.

I have additionally made a face with a fine marker pen. You don’t have to have a face at all, if you don’t want to. It will still look like a doll when you’ve finished. As you can see, I have also taken a length of 3mm wide white silk ribbon, folded it in half, sewn a seam up the back, turned it inside out with my tweezers to hide the join and just caught the bit that will go between the legs with a couple of stitches.

Using my tweezers I have inserted the legs through what is now the knicker legs and left the thread attached so I can sew the knickers to the knot in the thread which has now become the body of the doll. You can also see that at this point the stranded embroidery thread is stronger than anything else and pointing wherever it likes. Currently the doll looks like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Don’t worry, we can correct posture with a bit of thread (this is where dolls are so superior to people. All I can say is all those who have spent their formative years hunched over and scrolling will know all about it later.)

Here is the silk floss that I used, you can see the thickness of it in relation to the bead. If you don’t have the right thickness, twist thinner thread until you get there, or remove strands from thicker thread.

Night Fever, Night Fever, we know how to do it…

And the 3mm silk ribbon relative to the size of the doll. Select your knicker ribbon according to the size of your doll, You don’t have to do knickers but after 35 years of making dolls I can promise you that the moment you show the finished doll to anyone, they will immediately turn it upside down to see if it has knickers. The knickers, once sewn on, also keep the legs going down rather than Travoltered.

Now for a dress. I have used a little bit of frill edged ribbon. Any soft ribbon that is easy to bend round the doll and is wide enough to cover from the doll’s neck to the ankles will do. Hold the ribbon against the doll to see where the doll’s arms will emerge and make two cuts down to where the waist will be.

Insert the arms into the holes, turn the doll over, fold in one Frayckecked edge and sew the dress up the back. I have sewed closer at the top and made the fold lesser from the waist down to make a skirt.

Once the back is closed sew over the top of the ribbon at the shoulders to make the shoulders of the dress.

Finally I oversewed round each arm hole, going round twice to neaten the edges up and hide any staining from the Fraycheck. Most anti-fray liquids stain slightly. In twelfth scale you can hide stains in the seams. In smaller scales you have to get creative. You can also cut fabrics a bit bigger than needed and cut the stained edge off, depending on your scissors and your skill using them. One of the advantages of smaller scales is that you are only using tiny bits of ribbon to being with, a fresh half an inch won’t break the bank.

Select some hair from whatever you have to hand. Old thread, tumble dryer fluff, something the right colour off the carpet…

Grasp the neck to hold the head still, apply glue to the top of the head

stick the hair on, trim as required, squeeze a bit harder to make the knot under the head disappear and et voila! a doll.

Mine is a centimetre and a bit tall and was designed to go in the pocket of a 24th scale porcelain girl for whom I had made a pinny with a pocket. For some reason, mainly because I had the garage box at hand and empty, here they are visiting a garage. My little girl is one of the newer ten part porcelain dolls at just over an inch and a half.

If you would like to have a go and don’t have the right thread for sewing it all together, you can buy Japanese silk thread from the big river retailer and various other places but it can cost a minimum of £20 a reel, which makes an almost free doll quite expensive. So if you email me by clicking on ‘Leave a comment’ below asking for the colour of fine silk thread you would like and your name and postal address in the UK I will send you a length of very fine silk thread in one or two colours of your choice for free. I use size 12 sharps needles with the very fine silk thread, you can find them online or in most sewing shops.

If you do manage a doll or two and can email me a photo of your doll I will put it here for the world to admire.

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Posted in Dolls, Things to make and do. | Tagged how to make a dolls' doll, making a very small doll | Leave a comment

Hello!

Posted on 25th April 2025 by admin

Just a brief hello, hello!

If you are a Gem Collector and have found me from a mention on screen, which was very kind of Emily, you are in the right place.

I have been blogging here for over sixteen years. I began this website, despite being the least technical person you’ll ever meet, to help artisans. I have been a professional miniaturist for thirty five years making my own designs of small porcelain dolls for the dolls house hobby. I have an unintentional background in antiques and houses, because my adoptive father was a builder who collected antiques. My treat in the school summer holidays was to go to a building site and then back home via an antique shop. When the hobby, which was starting to burgeon in the late seventies, presented itself to me via a trip to the Carlisle Collection of Miniature Rooms in the eighties, I found I already had a lot of knowledge.

I wanted porcelain dolls as good as those I had seen in antiques shops, but there were none. I wanted glass eyes, separate fingers, removable clothes, doll jewellery, the lot. I was told it couldn’t be done. So I took a one day course in how to make big reproduction dolls and was still told miniature couldn’t be done. Of course I did it. If there had been no furniture available I’d have been a furniture maker…

I have tried glassblowing and every other skill there is in miniature. It is truly a hobby without end. Anything you can do in big, you can miniaturise. The other advantage of it is that you cannot be wrong. You can build a house of any era, any location and none, or fantasy, or just have a collection of exquisite miniature artefacts, or just enjoy looking or build room boxes out of cereal boxes. No one can tell you you’ve got it wrong because whatever you achieve will be your original art, or your exclusive collection. Unlike reality, you call the shots.

There are many aspects to the hobby. There are fewer shops than there used to be and fewer shows. There are some very expensive shows around the world in big cities. There are web shops, there are magazines. I am very lucky to live in the Midlands of Britain, my local show is Miniatura. This world-class show is invited artisans who have been deemed good enough to exhibit there. It was started as a venue for collectors to meet artisan makers in a place that was not too expensive to get to, get in to as a visitor, or stay. It is still run by the same family, who have never lost sight of the original intention, it is for miniaturists by miniaturists and always has been.

I had only exhibited twice at Miniatura when a small lady in a beret came up and took one of my doll kits to trial for a magazine called Dolls House World. She was the lovely editor, Lynne Medhurst. On the strength of the kit instructions she asked me if I would write for the magazine. Thus began my column Just Jane which ran in the nineties and noughties. I also interviewed artists and did reviews and everything I was asked to do for the princely sum of £20 a page. I became aware that some other writers were relying on writing to eat, so I went on strike until the management upped it to £25 a page for everyone. I briefly became world famous in a tiny way and signed numerous magazines at shows, some of which were even the ones in which I had articles published.

I began this blog to help artists. Glossy magazines can have a six month lead-in. Artists complained that by the time the article was published, they had sold the piece, or moved on to something else. So up to the night before the show they sent me a picture and some words. The artist was happy, the collectors were pleased not to miss the latest and very soon I was asked if I could be funny about something other than miniatures.

The actual magazine writing stopped when I became carer for my demented mother. This generated the dementia diaries which collected emails from round the world of people in the same sticky situation. I think the number of demented people in my life is now in double figures and I still get enquiries about this topic.

The caring affected my health, I had two broken arms, cancer, adhesions from the cancer surgery and surgery for that. The last big hospital thing was a couple of years ago and I am hoping to be well now for a long time.

There is sixteen years worth of writing about all sorts of things here. A blog is written with the most recent posting at the top and everything else goes backwards. You can find things to read by clicking on the list at the side, by scrolling down, having scrolled by going left or right at the bottom. You cannot break anything by scrolling, or clicking. It might not be a bad idea to get a cup of tea before a reading marathon.

People who feature in this blog are the OH (the other half, my husband) The S&H (the son and heir to all my debts and a person who has been doing computers since before he could walk and is the wonderful thinker who knows what to do when the site goes banana shaped occasionally). There are grandchildren similarly abbreviated and there was a Step-Mum-in-law who also became demented.

The reason I rarely refer to people by name is that, having done bit of journalism, I would not publish anything specifically about a person unless I had their agreement. When I was first writing for magazines the text used to go back and forward in the post until the person I was writing about was completely happy that I had represented them and their art as they wished it to be. I was writing to make people happy.

You’ll also find reference to the lockdown library that I put at the end of my drive every day, which I also do to make people happy.

I post sporadically. The aim is at least once a week but if there is more to write about, or we are heading up to the next Miniatura and I am working hard I’ll show you what I’m up to. I write less about other artists now but you can find a great deal about the exhibitors at, in my opinion, the best art show in the world, that just happens to be miniature at the show website www.miniatura.co.uk

That’s it for now. If you think I am the Jane who writes silly comments into Gem Collector, I am. If you think I was the Jane who wrote silly comments in to Create and Craft, that was also me. I just like silly little things that cheer us all up. There are those who might opine that I am the silly little thing that cheers everyone up, and I wouldn’t disagree.

Real life can be hard work and, if you watch the television news too often, very depressing. If you spend your life doom scrolling on a phone, that won’t do you much good either. All you’ll get here is old fashioned writing which is mostly either cheerful or informative.

If you’d like to contact me, all you have to do is click on ‘Leave a comment’ just down there. I’ll get back to you.

So Hello! (Well goodbye actually, but only until I post again. We’ll post again don’t know where (yes I do, here) don’t know when (tomorrow or the next day maybe) but I know I’ll post again some sunny day (and also if it’s raining. Actually more likely if it’s raining because I won’t be gardening.)

Where you singing? At this time of day! (You’ll fit right in here, I feel.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted in Site information. | Tagged JaneLaverick.com information | Leave a comment

Upsykle.

Posted on 21st April 2025 by admin

Welcome to the first edition of Upsykle online magazine, which might become a podcast if I can get my mobile out of the back of the sofa.

Upsykle your sofa.

And straight into our first article about what to do with a sofa that someone has taken a long screwdriver to in order to find a nearly new phone that cost a bomb and has my life on it. Lifting the arm of the sofa so the mobile just slides out, or you could have a look, would work, you would think, but it doesn’t. The stuff on the bottom is not just gross, because whoever thinks to clean the bottom of the sofa, but is also made of something really hard. What is it? Leather? Wood? I have no idea, I would google it OBVS. but my mobile is down the back of the sofa, so go figure.

If you are upsykling your sofa it is best not to kick the bottom if you have lifted the sofa up a bit to look because A) it hurts and B) it leaves a mark on your trainers you can’t get off. What is the bottom of the sofa made of? It is browny black and has stuff you can scratch off with a nail if you put your hand under which is dead dead gross.

I have put the sofa down again and now I have lost the screwdriver. Dad will not be pleased. It was quite a big one with a yellow handle. I’m not putting my hand down the gap at the back of the cushions, there is all stuff like off take outs and stuff it is really greasy. Really. Worse than your hair after a week of not washing it. But I need my phone. I cannot get hold of Becca without it, or Jamie.

This crisis has escalated. My mobile is ringing. It could be Becca, could be Jamie. It could be that Elizabeth trolling me again. She looks like an actual troll. I dunno if that is why she is so gross. Now it has stopped. That could have been Mark asking me out. He might some day, you never know. I’ll have to get it. I need something to reach down the back and grab the phone.

The loss of this mobile is epic. If I had it I could google how to get bacon tongs out of the back of the sofa. I think what has happened, I think, is my mobile has slid right down and gone flat. That’s why nothing touches it. It’s lying flat. So, thinking about it, I need something a bit longer.

You would think a ruler would do it, wouldn’t you? It is thirty see M long which is quite long it went down really easy and slipped out of my fingers which were greasy with the take out grease and that. And now the bread knife has gone down there too it is getting quite dangerous to put your hand down. I am going to have to do that. I need a hand covering. There’s a sock on the airer in the kitchen.

If I hide the other sock, does Dad know how many socks he has got? Do adults count their socks? Is it a test, like an exam, like: You are now an adult, how much is in your bank account – even if you say it is empty for stuff which is not proper food but everyone eats – and how many socks have you got?

It was a mistake to put the fried egg turning thing down there. I couldn’t have been expected to know it was going to get stuck half in half out, I don’t think anyone could have predicted that. Especially since it has a silicone coating. Everything has a silicone coating, it is supposed to make things non stick.

Didn’t work with the milk pan.

Now there are two handles sticking up and really really really jammed.

I have lifted one end of the sofa a bit and now you can hear stuff sliding. You would hope it would slide past the milk pan or the bacon tongs and get stuck and just lift out but it doesn’t.

I have only got half an hour before he gets back from work. If I had my mobile I could get Becca to come and help me. We were going to do Upsykle on her mobile and mine and then save it all and podcast it together because she’s got uplighter lights at her house we could take upstairs to her room and point them at ourselves. I think it would be better in my room which has got paint on the walls and not fairy wallpaper. Her Mum refuses to fund redecoration, even though it would be a perfect podcast for Upsykle. I am sure I would be good at painting walls.

I could go round and fetch Becca but her mum gets home early and won’t let her leave until she has done her homework, so, if I walk round there and she can’t come, I’ll have wasted half an hour I could have used for getting the mobile out of the sofa. And the other stuff. I think I really need to get the breadknife out of the sofa. If it has gone down and turned round the point will be pointing up. Anyone who sits on it could be knifed. It’s bad enough getting knifed on the streets in bad places but getting knifed on your own sofa would be big yikes. Very big yikes.

I really need something very very long and either sticky on the end or with grabby bits.

I think the heirloom sugar tongs were real silver. I know they were a bit black but I think they were silver underneath.

I have to get the breadknife out. If Dad sits on it and it kills him I will go to prison and there will be no one to feed Harvey. He will die and then I will have killed my father and my hamster, I will be a double murderer and not a journalist bringing you instant news from round the planet at all. I will not get to report from Washington in an expensive coat or outside of Buckingham Palace with a flyaway hairstyle.

I think the thing that has gone down now is for sharpening the knives.

Three handles sticking out now. You can’t even just look at the sofa and think: How normal! That is very normal, that is.

You can’t even hide the handles with cushions because of the way they are sticking out. You can stuff the cushions between them but it looks worse. I was going to do FEATURES for Upsykle and they do look like features. Having three big handles sticking out of the back of the sofa with cushions jammed between them does not look average at all. They certainly don’t look normal.

Fifteen minutes. What if he is early? I need something long with a big bit at the end to scoop everything else out of the gap.

It is surprising how easily the end of a spade slides into the gap in the sofa when you consider how much other stuff is down there now. What is even more surprising is that you cannot wiggle it. I thought I would be able to wiggle it back and forward because of the handle which is really big. A big handle has leverage (science). You think?

It is also obvious that there is the knife sharpener handle, the egg turner handle, the milk pan handle and a spade handle sticking out of the sofa. It is not a look you can ignore. It is a pity I put the spade in the middle. I would have put it at the end but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I am usually savage and on top of everything but I just rammed the spade down thinking it would be low-key. It is not, it is major effort. It also will not budge. At all. I wonder if you can see all the things sticking out under the sofa because I did hear a bit of ripping but the sofa is getting too heavy for lifting.

Yeet! Yeet! All is well, my mobile hadn’t gone down the back after all. It must have dropped out of my pocket and then I kicked it into the corner under the coffee table. Yeet! Yeet!

I absolutely ate that!

I have my mobile, I am going to call Becca and that is Dad’s key in the door…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted in The parrot has landed. | Tagged humour | Leave a comment

Cutting the ribbon.

Posted on 17th April 2025 by admin

What does this look like to you?

Yes it is a box.

I wonder what is inside it?

Another box. Some numbers and some things.

Not necessarily helpful.

What is left inside the big box?

More things in bigger compartments.

So what is it? Any guesses?

It is the shop, which not only exists online, it exists in reality.

And it’s open!

Sorry, that was a bit informal, I’ll try again.

I declare this shop open, God bless all those who shop in her.

That’s it really.

It takes 25 different actions on my computer to put the photographed, printed pictures of the stock and the descriptions and measurements (which all took a week) on the shelves, as it were.

Fortunately, for you, the shopper, if you wish to be, it is very simple to have a look and to shop.

To begin, click on ‘shop’ in the bar above under the picture in the header.

Lots of little pictures of the stock will appear. Clicking on a picture will bring up plentiful information and you can easily add things to your basket by clicking appropriately.

But nothing is set in stone, you can just as easily remove things from your basket with a click and then a message will tell you your basket is empty. Clicking on ‘home’ in the bar under the header will bring you back here.

If you wish to purchase an item from the shop just click till the till. All you need is a plastic bank card. No one has bought anything yet, so I am hoping the S&H has instructed his mother correctly. If he has, when you complete a purchase I will receive a message in my inbox telling me which purchase you have purchased and who you are and where to post the purchase to.

I will find the item in the shop (which is in the big box) (or, the little box which is in the big box). I will put it in one of the boxes I have made and wrap that and put it in a postal box. I will go to the post office with it and send it tracked to you and email you the tracking information so you can watch it arriving.

It really is fairly simple. I hope.

One thing to note is that there is a flat rate contribution to postage of a fiver. If you buy one thing the postage cost to you will be a fiver. If you buy ten things the postage cost to you will be a fiver. Depending on how things go I may photograph and upload more ornaments. They are proper porcelain heirlooms, some cost about a fiver, so if you add one of those to your basket it almost makes your postage free compared to the cost of just one item.

I will also try when I have recovered from building a shop, to put more 24th scale articulated dolls in the shop because I believe there are very few doll artists making original artist articulated 24th scale porcelain dolls. If you are doing a particular era or project, please email me, I can try to dress some of the type you’d like. It will not be fast but could happen eventually.

The thing to notice about this shop is that it’s you and it’s me and you already know if you click on ‘leave a comment’ below, your message will come to my inbox. If there is something that you know that I make, either from reading about it here, or seeing it when you visited Miniatura, that you would like me to put in the shop, I’ll have a go. I will not put hundreds of items in the shop because I do need to leave plenty of stock for Miniatura.

At present there are 32 items in the shop; it’s not exactly Woolworths. However, everything there is hand-made in porcelain by me. Each item is individually hand-made, photographed and put on the shelves. This means there is only one in the shop, but it does not mean there is only one in existence. If some other shopper got in there and bought the one you’d been fancying, email me, I might have another. I have done items individually because they are individual. I could not china paint or dress two identical dolls if my life depended on it. Porcelain is a multi stage process in the making, individuality creeps in everywhere. So whilst the description of a restocked item might be the same, the photograph will be of the restocked item and not the previous, bought by someone else, one.

I think that’s about it. You cannot destroy anything by clicking around. You can change your mind. If you do it would be lovely of you to empty your basket fairly promptly. You can put the item back in your basket if you change your mind again. If someone else has put the item in their basket and gone though to checkout, email me in the comments section below, I’ll see if I’ve got another.

I have some of the surprise boxes left from Miniatura. They contain a plate and some birthday cake. There is a strong possibility you will get one of those in your parcel utterly free. They will run out eventually but not for quite a while. I will have absolutely no idea which cake and which plate is in your box, it is over a year since I packed them. I will let the scale be the same as your purchase, round about.

That’s all. I declare the shop open. Let there be cake!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted in Dolls, Site information. | Tagged online shop open | Leave a comment

Bear with.

Posted on 13th April 2025 by admin

Is one of those irritating modern partial phrases. It has nothing to do with bears, irritatingly. It has a dangling preposition and, as a helpful comment, is unhelpful. It seeks to disguise the ineptitude of the speaker by dumping the onus of activity on the listener and is trotted out with little apology. I encounter it on shopping television and crafting channels with boring frequency. It makes my teeth grind and my ears go all floppy.

And now I am saying it to you.

Could you please bear with my saying ‘bear with’ and, additionally bear with my ineptitude for the interim, as normal service is suspended on the blog, while I cobble together a shop, until the writing, proper, returns?

Thank you.

The S&H, bless him, came to the Midlands from Wales yesterday, cautiously, in his new car, to assist his technophobe mother with instruction.

At one point the phobic mother, having searched for about ten minutes for a small blue box on the screen, was directed to the bottom right hand corner, where the small blue box had been hiding in plain sight all along. At this juncture the untechy mother laughed for a good twelve minutes, in the manner of those pretending to a specific cerebral activity, having been found to have the relevant area of the brain thoroughly empty.

And that was just the looking.

As the S&H instructed, I wrote everything down, even the bits that might have been interpreted as slightly condescending, on the basis that you cannot descend further than rock bottom.

We did work hard, well, I worked hard, the S&H filled in the boring bits scrolling on his phone.

I believe learning may have occurred, but I wouldn’t bet next week’s rent on it.

It ain’t perfect. The S&H, having invented the shop, has been unable to prevent a section of the item for sale taking over the heading of the blog where the angel with the doll and the half – dressed girl on the laptop usually sit. If he deletes it from the header, it vanishes in the description too.

Further progress in this matter is anticipated, eventually.

Nevertheless the shop is beginning to occur. You can have a look by clicking on shop, above. I suggest you just have a look for now because there are many more items to be put on the virtual shelves. I am trying to show a representative selection. The S&H has only created two categories: 24th scale, and everything else. This is partly because the sample items I sent him were 24th scale but also because I know there are few craftspeople making original artist articulated porcelain dolls. It took me about 25 years to be able to do it. These all porcelain but moveable dolls are real heirlooms, you can undress them with a pair of scissors in the future and redress them as someone else, which you would have difficulty doing with polymer clay dolls with glued on clothing. Porcelain is strong. Kiln fired ceramics of all types are capable of lasting thousands of years.

It will take me quite a few more days to get the first 34 items into the shop, I’ll tell you when I have done so. As I am aware that I am fairly unique in the matter of articulated 24th scale dolls, I am open to suggestions of any 24th scale dolls you’d like to see in the shop.

I am so sorry the shop can only be for UK addresses. International Trade is very volatile currently.

The other worry that inexperienced online shoppers tend to have is that the money is powered by PayPal. You do not have to be a member of PayPal to shop, nor will it cost you anything to use the facility. You just need a plastic bank card. PayPal charge me for each transaction, not you, and there is a buy now, pay later facility which is nothing to do with me, it’s just something offered by PayPal.

The P&P is a flat rate £5 contribution to the cost. I’ve spent a week making the packaging, if you are one of my Miniatura shoppers, you’ll know the dolls come in nice little boxes, which I make. It’s a collector thing, if you never get round to the house for them to live in, they’ll be quite happy in the box. The postage is not the actual cost because I send orders out by Royal Mail, tracked, and I will email you the tracking information so you can keep an eye on your order arriving.

Thank you for your with, this has been the bear, I will let you know when it’s all there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted in Dolls, Site information. | Tagged online doll shop | Leave a comment

Is there a shop assistant?

Posted on 7th April 2025 by admin

Not like the Microsoft assistant, or whichever operating system the assistant belonged to. If there is a shop assistant here, it’s me.

I’m really just popping up to tell you, Modom (or sir) that if you have been fancying buying something in the shop to sit on your hands for a bit.

The S&H will be coming to help his idiot mother (also me) with instructions on how to stack the shelves, in a few days or so, after which there will be much more to choose from if you fancy a bit of shopping.

There will never be tons of stuff. Miniatura always comes first because it has for nearly four decades and I am very set in my ways. Having first been a visitor and for about three and half decades, an exhibitor, I know the importance of having plenty of choice. It’s the joy of the day. I like to take about a thousand items to the show and that takes a bit of doing, I also like to have new things each show. By this I do not mean two new dolls, I usually mean a whole display, this time it was the doll’s dolls in history. I have a great idea for the next show which I am bursting to get on with after a couple of big doll orders.

So doing a full massive online shop like the big river retailer, or a vanishing high street department store squashed into a computer, will not happen here. Having twenty or thirty things to choose from if you couldn’t make it to the show but still live in the UK, will happen.

I am very sorry, posting to anywhere other than the UK where I am based, or, as we used to say in English, where I live, is increasingly unlikely, thanks to a dynamic international trade situation.

However there will be a little shop here soon. Click on ‘shop’ above to see what there is. There are other words such as ‘cart’ about which I do not have a clue, though once the S&H has patiently explained to his idiot mother (still me) all about it, I will have a clue which I will attempt to pass on to you.

Later. As the kidz say. I am down, in fact I’m losing height alarmingly as I age, but with the kidz, probably not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted in Site information. | Tagged online doll shopping | Leave a comment

Self esteem.

Decluttering.

Always present part 2

Always present…

How to make a doll’s doll’s dolls etc

Hello!

Upsykle.

Cutting the ribbon.

Bear with.

Is there a shop assistant?

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