Memories Are Made of This....

Childhood memories, old family homes, past times - are all favourite nostalgic themes and often inspire vignettes, dolls houses and room boxes and I'm fortunate in often being asked to provide a character doll for one of these special projects.
Market Town Miniatures - our dolls house club here in Thame likes a challenge.........

It will come as no surprise that members of this club as well as many others up and down the country create the most amazing and beautiful, accomplished pieces that we are all lucky enough to see at exhibitions and fairs from time to time. Our club exhibits every year at The Thame Dolls House and Miniature Fair and it always draws a crowd. So the challenge this time is to produce 'A Childhood Memory' or 'A Nursery Rhyme' in a cardboard box...any cardboard box...any scale!
I've seen some as they begin to take shape and I know there will be some wonderful scenes and all very different.  If you  follow Celia Thomas on her journal, ktminiatures.blogspot.com  you can see the beginning of hers - 'Twinkle , Twinkle, Little Star'.  In odd moments I've been working on mine too.

If you have been reading my blog you'll have gathered that I've not got as much miniature work done as usual in recent weeks so new and commissioned dolls have been very thin on the ground - real life and all that has rather got in the way.....
However when time (and energy) is in short supply, it's surprising how many weeds you can pull up in the odd ten minutes in the garden to cheer yourself and recharge the batteries and even ten minutes every now and again can eventually create a whole field of poppies!

 

'Childhood Memory - The Poppy Field'.  Growing up in The Vale of the White Horse, looking towards the downs, poppy fields were a stupendous sight and meant summer was here.

The blue cardboard box is 4" x 4" and approximately 2" deep and the three dimensional poppy scene is in 1/12th scale.

The lid is finished with a reproduction of a vintage family photograph and trimmed with a little red braid. 
It's a little difficult to photograph right inside the box but hopefully you can see that the poppies and field do go all the way to back of the box.

It's raining today after a nice sunny Bank Holiday weekend but the Aquilegias (Granny's Bonnets, Granny Nightcaps) are looking terrific in a variety of colours and crosses, so I took a pic. anyway.
I think this one looks like little fairies, their frocks glistening with raindrop jewels.

Thank you for looking
Robin