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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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 , | 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.)

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

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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 | Leave a comment

Cutting the ribbon.

Posted on 17th April 2025 by admin

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What does this look like to you?

Yes it is a box.

I wonder what is inside it?

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Another box.  Some numbers and some things.

Not necessarily helpful.

What is left inside the big box?

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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.

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

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Posted in Dolls, Site information. | Tagged | 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 | 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.

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Up.

Posted on 4th April 2025 by admin

You know I said I would tell you when the shop is up and running?

It is!

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The shop rides again.

Posted on 4th April 2025 by admin

After some experimentation it looks possible that the shop may return.  I had a shop years ago which vanished when I got a new laptop. 

Subsequently the S&H designed a new shop for me, the icons for which you can see above but he never got round to showing me how to do it and then forgot.  However, I have done a bit of photography which alarmingly shows considerably more than you’ll ever see with the naked eye and the S&H has added a zoom tool which enables you to almost see the atoms.

I recall years ago at a Miniatura, exhibitors being scared witless by a visitor walking round some way behind a magnifying glass the size of a cathedral.  It is a worry when you’ve looked at anything you’re making, to have someone who didn’t make it scrutinise it atomically.

These days not only am I rather more accepting of my imperfections, I have now interviewed actual hundreds of artisans working in all disciplines and know that hand made is just that.  Moreover I believe that, unless the upcoming generation value the skill of hand and eye, we’ll be in for a future where things are made by robot controlled  by AI and everything will look perfect, be orderable by the thousand and mean nothing.  There are enough instances of this in the commercial world for you to sniff out the truth.

I look at my own collection which never reached a dolls house but lives in a twelfth scale breakfront cabinet on my one scale mantelpiece.  Each hand made item contains a bit of the soul of the person, each of whom I know or knew and is them in an artefact.

If the shop gets made and is there for use (and you’ll know quite soon) everything will be a one-off, even if it’s been demoulded from my moulds.  The moulds are made from my sculptures, which come out of my brain via my hands.  The subsequent six or seven steps ensure that the doll photographed is the only one like it.

There are two disadvantages to the shop.  The first is that I am going to add postage and packing to each order.  Under normal circumstances I work for about 40p an hour.  If I add tracked postage that will mean I’m working for about half that in some cases.  I do want to add tracked postage so you can see the parcel on the way but I’ll do a flat rate which will be a contribution to begin with and much more of just a contribution if postage rises.

The second disadvantage is that I’m only going to be able to post to the UK.  I am very sorry but the situation with international taxes, import duties, trade tariffs, reciprocal doodahs and the whole nine yards of selling in another country just make life impossible for one pensioner selling the dolls she’s made to anywhere else in the world except up the road.  It would be awful if a dear little doll got impounded at customs or the packaging ripped apart.  I would be so upset and so would the buyer.  All I can suggest, if you are an international reader, is that if you had a friend in the UK,  or knew someone who lived here, other than me, they might be able to buy you something from the shop as a birthday present, for example, and send it to you.  I do have friends in other countries who are regular recipients of gifts from me and the only problem I have had  is that I never allow enough time for the Christmas post. 

There won’t be many items in the shop.  The shop is not a commercial venture.  Depending on how long it takes me to photograph the item, write it up and transfer all that to the computer and given that each item is a one off, and allowing my generous 40p an hour wage to the employee (me) it might well turn out that I’m working for nothing.

So why am I doing it?

Really for you.  I get wishful emails from people unable to visit Miniatura who have read the blog and want a blogged doll.  I’ve been getting them ever since the last shop closed.

I’ll tell you when we’re up and running, don’t hold your breath, a lot has to happen before then.

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The eclipse

Posted on 30th March 2025 by admin

Close your eyes and grope around for some sunglasses, or, if you haven’t got sunglasses a bit of cardboard, ideally with two slits cut in it.  A cereal box would do, though, obviously do not try to cut the cereal box with your eyes shut.

Having assembled the necessary eye protection, you could squint briefly at this

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Yes it is the eclipse of the sun that happened yesterday.  I appear to have got the camera upside down because, of course, I couldn’t look at the sun to see where it was.  It was, in fact, up in the sky as usual but you can’t look at it and keep your retinas as well.

I hadn’t thought to provide a filter for the camera either, which was very unprepared of me.  I did think subsequently that this would be a good idea and fetched a blue plastic folder and got another similar photograph, just a bit darker.

I have now edited the photograph and dimmed it considerably to save your retinas, I wouldn’t want you to read this column and go round blinking all day.

You can actually see bottom right a slight dent and also a con trail of an aeroplane that was showing off and getting in the way.

Let’s face it my heart is not in this astronomy lark.  I’m sure you recall when the OH was into it and bought a telescope that sits in the sun room gathering dust, that I was very keen but quickly discovered that the major drawback of the interest is that you have to do it at night.  I quickly discovered that the most important accessory for the interest is very thick knickers.

Similarly, recently, when everyone and his dog was going on endlessly about seeing the aurora from their garden shed, I realised that the easiest way to do so was with a smart phone.  If you are a regular reader (hello, how are you?) you’ll know I think smart phone, foolish user, and refuse to outsource my thinking.  So I spent many minutes for several evenings staring upward without so much as a whisp of pale green, slight pink or even diluted orange juice.

When I lived in South Shields the main component of the sea was coal.  Grains of it washed up on the shore and had to be dried from between your toes after a plodge.  Now they tell me there are dolphins frisking beyond the Groyne (a lighthouse) and probably shopping up Ocean Road too.

I should have known.  Every indication was there when I was a teenager.  I heard that Cathy Mcgowan was going to open a Biba boutique in a department store in Sunderland.  I hopped on a bus, entered the store, rushed upstairs, burst into the ‘boutique’ corner (several rails of clothes standing against a black drape with glittery bits) and joined the queue.  When I got to the front, she went for lunch.

It seems that I am fated to just miss it, whatever ‘it’ is.

But not miniatures, I was there with a ringside seat and I still am, so after I have finished the tidy up of the packaging trolleys and made some cards, which are running low, I will get on with some dolls.

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Miniatura

Posted on 21st March 2025 by admin

I think I might be beginning to recover, mainly from lack of sleep.

I never sleep the night before Miniatura and I believe few other exhibitors do either.  The organisation required to build what is basically an entire shop on a table top is extreme.  Plus, this is Miniatura.  It is not any old show in a church hall, it is the premier craftsman show in the country, and, as this country has, in the current iteration of the hobby, been regarded as a world leader in craftsmanship – for goodness sake John Hodgson’s chairs were presented to Queen Elizabeth the Second, Terry Curran’s miniature pots were in a coffee table book of full size potters of importance of the twentieth century – we are good at this.

There are more original artists at Miniatura working in any medium than anywhere else you can find.  If they were expanded to full size and each had a room at Tate Modern, or any other museum, it would be the most famous exhibition of art on the planet.  The hall is full of people who can bring an idea they have had, which is just some electrical impulses in their brain, into actuality and put it on a table for you to buy.  And, because the shoppers are sensible people spending their pocket money, there is no rubbish.  If you attempted to exhibit a wrapped cliff or a pile of bricks or some ‘found’ art, first you wouldn’t get into the show anyway, but if you did you would spend the weekend watching the tumbleweed roll past.

It’s Miniatura, the visitors are as bright as the exhibitors and they know what they want.

Therefore many of us spend the night before the show wide awake, trying to remember what is it we forgot to do.

Sleep, mainly.

It takes me all of the allotted three hours in the hall on Friday afternoon to achieve a partial set up.  I am putting out about a thousand items individually.  I never finish on Friday.  I get home at half past seven, eat something, check I’ve left my clothes out and the card reader is charged, then go to bed absolutely knackered having had weeks of eighteen hour days to get ready, I close my eyes and whoosh have I put the little bags behind the ornament stand, have I got enough dolls of many lands, are the easels secure…

It’s a relief when it’s five to six and I can switch the alarm off and get up.  This time, dressed and outside to spend twenty minutes scraping the ice off the car.  The frost got to my hair, which took on the aspect of a dandelion clock, so by the time I was actually in the hall working at speed, I was beyond exhausted, fatter than I have been for months from lack of exercise and looking like an explosion in a hair factory..

at which point the Observer magazine turned up wanting to interview, video and photograph me.

The photographer took an hour trying to photograph my face and proved singularly incapable of improving it in any way, though I give him credit for trying.

The journalist was absolutely lovely not least because she is a miniaturist.  I can’t tell you how rare this is.  The normal situation for anyone reporting on a show is to say at some point: these are dolls houses but you are adults.  Or, the lady from the local paper just looks at you and you know the show is going to appear in print as quaint at best.

The recent emphasis on metal health has been quite helpful to us and our interests.  For nigh on forty years I’ve been explaining in various locations and to my extended family why having such an absorbing hobby is a good idea.  Every now and then someone appears at the show looking very puzzled.  Elisabeth Causeret Bettler was told for years at full size pottery shows in France that she was doing it too small, then she came to Miniatura and found out that not only was there nothing wrong with her, she was a virtuoso miniaturist, she had just been exhibiting in the wrong show.

It is normal under stress to forget everything you know.  When I was photographed, did I set the right dolls up nicely, as I’ve been doing for thirty three years?  Don’t be silly.  I was utterly consumed by the horrifying fact that someone wanted to photograph my elderly face, the one with the huge scar, the massive dark spot and, after a sleepless night, big enough eye bags to carry all your luggage home in.

However the journalist is a miniaturist and I found what I had found in fifteen years of interviewing exhibitors at Miniatura: we both speak miniature.

The world would be a better place if everyone spoke miniature and sweated the small stuff instead of invading Poland and similar pastimes.

Under normal circumstances on the Saturday night I sleep the sleep of the just exhibited.  This time, of course I stayed awake with the adrenaline trickling out of my ears

So it has taken until today for this parrot to have landed.  Having achieved splashdown and shuteye I now have to get everything ready for the next show.  First I have to repack the table cloths, properly, and now I am concentrating on the boxes which I need to remake and the carrier bags I need to reorder.  I have bought new rechargeable music lights and spent any other profits in various ways and when I have finished making boxes will start to examine the dolls and repack and make lists.

Before that I am going to get the shop here up and running in case the article does get printed. Having written for magazines I know that what gets printed is reliant on many other factors.  The cardinal sin for any publication is to be boring; right now a lot of very interesting world news is occurring and changing, daily.  But, just in case, the OH has volunteered to help me get the shop up and running and once he has learned how, to teach his elderly, wrinkled, scarred, sleep deprived mother, the one with the awful hair, how to do it.

So watch this space, I’ll tell you if as and when the shop is open, if as and where the article or (horrors) video is and then

and then it will all go back to normal, which is good because I have a couple of absolutely cracking ideas for the next show.

Just like every other exhibitor.  If you are good enough to exhibit at Miniatura you will have wonderful exhibits, insufficient sleep and ideas you can get out of your head and into existence.

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