This is a tilt-shifted time-lapse video by Keith Loutit, called Beached. Tilt-shifting is tilting the lense of a camera to get a very shallow depth of field, making things look miniature. Then, you time-lapse all the images together and you get a bunch of mini people running around. Pretty neat.

Claudia was kind enough to take some photos of one of her Blythe's with the Miniature feltidermy! Isn't is sweet!? Oh and the adorable outfit is just one example of the cuteness you can find in her shop! Be sure to go check it out!

Now there are two more available in my shop!

Gray Miniature Bunny Rabbit Feltidermy or Brooch

Antique White Miniature Bunny Rabbit Feltidermy or Brooch

The "or brooch" part is not a mistake...I decided to put a pin back on the backs of these. The pin back can be used for the hanger and the miniature feltidermy can also be worn as a brooch!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Ciao

DivaZ

Ciao

DivaZ

My grandpa was a handy guy, a plumber by trade but also a skilled woodworker. When I was a baby, he gave me a little blue chest for my room. My dollhouse used to sit on top of it. Grandpa made two pieces of furniture for my dollhouse: a beautiful round kitchen table with turned legs, and a replica of the blue chest. Neither is a fancy piece of furniture, but they are my favourites. My grandpa died last year and I have thought of these pieces frequently and wanted to keep them close at hand, but knew they were packed up somewhere in my parents house.

I unearthed these pieces of dollhouse furniture over the weekend and found that the chest was still filled with glass and china dishes. The chest had suffered some wear & tear over the years, with the pin on one hinge coming undone and the nail on another lost. Thanks to some crazy glue and two straight pins, I successfully macgyvered the hinges back into working order.

Now, on to find the rest of it and my tin of 1000 marbles!

View More

Miniature Painters used various substances for coloring their drawings, namely- minerals, vegetables, precious stones, indigo, conch shells, pure gold and silver.

Example of miniatures in the Mughal and Rajasthani styles exist from the 16th century on when there was an efflorensence of the art theme…. countryside, the hills and shrubs, the forts and gardens and dunes of the desert.

View More..

It's a vintage (antique?) cast iron 'crescent' cook stove. I found it at my local second hand store and was pretty amazed with it :) It has all moving/removeable parts, all made of the cast iron. I found another, exactly alike, here. They want $75 dollars for it - I paid $4! :)

Charles Matton (and here)

Not easy to take in from just jpegs on the internet, so here's some key info: These are miniature spaces, not more than a few feet in any direction. Matton is apparently more known in Europe, not as much here. Not at all midwestern, just wanted to post it.  Maureen Mullarkey's a fan. More images after the jump.

Lost at Sea... no.2

Lost at Sea... no.3

Lost at Sea... no.4

Each was created using a combination of Pilot Hi-tec C pens, Windsor and Newton Watercolour, Faber Castell India ink and/or gold flec ink on either Arches watercolour paper, flower petal textured paper or cream coloured heavy cardstock.

Size of each original illustration is 3.5 by 2.5 inches / 8,9cm by 6,4cm

Each is an ACEO which stands for Art Cards, Editions and Originals and are each available in my shop. Some of the originals have already sold. Reproductions of each are available in ACEO mini print and 5x7 inch size.

Ciao

DivaZ

I'll be taking a jewelry class later on this month.  One of the items on the list of supplies was a suede sandbag for hammering against.  Normally I would just go out and buy it.  I already had a little bit of suede I've been saving.  The guy I bought my sewing machine from claimed that it would sew leather.  I decided to give it a try.  I think my sewing machine salesman was wrong.  I really think I needed an industrial sewing machine for sewing the leather.  At least I finished it...next time I'll just buy the sandbag.

I did buy a bag of steel shot so that I could do some small copper hammering. I use a form to hammer my copper shades.  I'd like to try my hand at a vessel later.  The sandbag might come in handy for copper forming as well.

Mini Bottle Charms (camera with flash)

My soldering iron came in the mail yesterday.  I was busy most of the day yesterday, so I didn't get a chance to try it out until this morning.  I decided to finish up my miniature bottle charms.   The only problem with I had was that my soldering tip is very large and the bottle tops are very small.

View from the top

I decided to roughen up the bottle tops a bit by wrapping wire around the top and soldering it on.  I added a brown/black patina to the solder.  I think the rough solder and patina makes the bottles look like they have been sealed up for a while.

I have a lot of little bottles.  One of these days I'm going to have to buy some other tips for my soldering iron so I can do some finer work.  For now I'm quite happy with my bottle charms.

Ciao

DivaZ

via OhGizmo!

DivaZ

Cross : Hwra Lava Burst(Hwra Mini Primi x Rodriquezia secunda) whereas,

Hwra Mini Primi(Rodontocidium Primia x Leochilus oncidioides)

I got a segment of this orchid by division from a friend recently. Her plant was not doing very well and to avoid loosing it totally, we try proprogating it.

Geeze!! The Howeara Lava Burst is grossly dyhydrated in my opinion cause the roots are all dried up and the leaves are yellowish green.

After I brought the sick orchid home, I soaked it into a pot of water for hours, then I tied it up on a fern root slab with mosses to give it more moisture. (The original orchid was planted on fern root slab too.)

In the meantime, I started to research on the web.  I have no difficulty to find information on Howeara Lava Burst at all. It is a very popular, award-winning hybrid in American.  The cherry red flowers look stunning too. I have updated its culture information into this post and it  will act as good reference for nursing the sick Haweara back to health. It will definitely be a rewarding experience should my friend or I be able to revive the orchid.

Intro:
Howeara Lava burst ‘Puanani’ has award of merit from the American Orchid Society. This plant is an intergeneric hybrid between Leochilus, oncidium and Rodriguezia. This is a compact plant (about 10 inches in height) that produces multiple sprays of deep red flowers that are long lasting. These plants flower twice per year when grown correctly.

Light:
Medium light between what a phalaenopsis and a cattleya might receive. An east window is ideal or a window with bright diffused light.

Temperature:
Intermediate to warm temperatures.

Humidity:
50% or higher is ideal.

Water:
Water as the mix approaches dryness but do not allow the mix to become completely dry between watering, especially during flowering. The pseudobulbs can be your guide. If the newest bulbs start shriveling and become noticeably thinner increase the frequency of water.
Overwatering can cause several problems such as root rot and infectious bacteria/fungus in the potting medium.

Flowering:
This plant can bloom a couple of times per year whenever new growths mature. The one inch flowers emerge on 10 to 12 inch tall spikes that can branch. One should never cut the spikes until they turn completely brown as they can sometimes put out secondary sprays.

Repotting:
Repot this plant either before or after flowering. Use a medium grade bark or coco husk mix.

Simple (this one is totally lame, I am aware.):

Miniature:

Enlighten: 

Bugs:

Words:

The game's not been released yet but having played a game of it a recent Gen Con the mechanics seem to be a faithful reproduction of the MMO computer game's combat system. Actions that your miniatures take time to cooldown and become ready again. This 'time' is represented in terms of ticks and each miniature is to be fitted to a base that tracks its ticks and health. There is a blog post that already explains the game system better than I can.

The miniatures themselves are a little over the top. Yes, they hold a lot of detail and have that cartoonish look that is so Warcraft but they'll look out of place proxying creatures in other miniature games. From UDE's FAQ, the miniatures are designed to 40mm scale... that's a whole centimetre taller than most miniature games. I think UDE is forgetting the practicality of bigger miniatures - we don't all have masses of space to store these miniatures and CMGs tend to invite punters to invest in large collections. I have some bias on this - I like having miniatures from several game system to look good together.

Purely on gameplay, I liked this game. It felt fair that the most powerful actions miniatures could perform, whilst causing large amounts of damage, would cause them to be sitting ducks. It feels a lot like the MMORPG the game is descended from with appropriate cooldown times and miniatures being resurrected at graveyards.

The fact that UDE has created a vast amount of artwork for their CCG and then based the models for this CMG on that gives the game a style that couldn't be touched by other rivals.

The only major gripe is going to be the pricing - from what the guys at Gen Con were saying, this game is going to priced higher than most geeks can afford. Firstly, you must buy the base set, then each miniature pack is going to include only three miniatures (rivals include around five). Not good.

It remains to be seen if this takes off but I think it'll be a collectors only game.

Tenenboym (Michael Chabon)

When it first came up, I thought it looked like corn but wasn't sure. As it matured and its little tassels showed up, I let it stick around and wondered if I'd get to "harvest" something that maybe looked a little bit like the baby corn that usually gets tossed into bad vegetarian Chinese food.

But one day I got tired of looking at the broken-necked sunflowers and ripped them out (thanks, Mr/Ms Squirrel), and when I came back to the garden later I found this:

I don't have a spycam but I'm just going to take a wild guess and say that the pissed-off squirrel, not finding any more sunflowers to break/devour, decided to see if the corn was worth gnawing on, ripped it out, took one bite, and tossed it. Either that or it has weirdly accurate perception of which plants I like, and decided to show me who's the boss in the garden (after what I learned about crows this week, I wouldn't be that surprised). Oh well, it probably wouldn't have been edible anyway.

Aujourd’hui, je vous fais découvrir le travail d’un photographe anglais (vu sur Trends and Co), qui met en scène des personnages miniatures dans un monde grandeur nature.

Slinkachu investit les rues de Londres avec ses petits personnages peints à la main et leur fait vivre toutes sortes de situations : rendez-vous amoureux, accidents, jeux d’enfants… C’est un regard étonnant sur la ville à l’échelle lilliputienne, empreint d’une certaine poésie un peu triste.

Chaque série de photos se focalise d’abord sur ces personnages, petits soldats de plomb confrontés à une vie trop grande, puis s’en éloigne peu à peu pour les perdre dans le décor urbain.

Le photographe présente ses Little People sur son blog et en a fait un livre : « Little People in the City », publié aux éditions Boxtree et disponible sur Amazon et la fnac.

From Boston.com's 'The Big Picture', a collection of beautiful photos from countries celebrating this holy month;

Muslim faithful throughout the world are currently observing the holy month of Ramadan. Observant Muslims participate in fasting (sawm), one of the five pillars of their faith, this entire Lunar month (this year it extends from September 1st to the 30th). Eating, drinking, smoking and sexual activity is prohibited from dawn until sunset, when the fast is broken with the evening meal called Iftar. Local customs define varying traditions, including differing types of food used to break the daily fast. The fasting is meant to teach a person patience, humility and sacrifice, to set aside time to ask forgiveness, practice self-restraint, and pray for guidance in the future.

View the other 30 photos here.

(via ffffound)

Bobby Fischer

Nell'immagine un grafico che rappresenta la "rete sociale" degli avversari di Fischer nella Partita Spagnola, da un lavoro di David Newth.

Ciao

DivaZ