Hortensia

This workshop kit from VaRIAatjes has been laying around in my house for almost two years. When I first opened the box I thought I could never do it, and so I put it away! But this holiday all of a sudden I had all the inspiration I needed to take it out of the closet, blow of the dust and start making it!

I've been working on this for many hours! But I'm very happy with the result. My desk turned into a mess and I've been trying to decide between many vases, but finally I finished all the flowers and leaves, and I arranged it in the vase I least expected to be right for the job!

building progress

Haven't posted for a while, real life has been very busy.
But during the holidays I found some spare time to work on the 'castle' with my dad.
We've been drawing and sawing every now and then since the summer and now it finally started to come together! We put some walls together and here are some pictures of the first results. (they aren't very sharp but they where taken with a cellphone)


What you see is the front of the first level of the main building. The back of the building will stay open. Just for now I've put in the front door and kitchen window. The walls of the baywindow aren't in place yet, this big open room will be the dining room one day! :)


If you compare this to the finished building on the website where I bought the building plans, you can see that it's only a very small beginning but my imagination is already running wild on this! :D It'll be so different from the ones on the website, more inspired by the beautifull german mansions and castles I've seen on holiday.. but that's still very far away! First I have to build the other 3 levels, the tower, porches, bay windows, 3 leveled west wing...... you get the picture ;)

More from Germany, and from the Arnhem dollhouse fair

This beautifull little plate I found in one of the souvenir shops in Schwangau, the town near Neuschwanstein castle. There isn't a building there that hasn't been turned into a restaurant, hotel or souvenir shop. It did spoil the romance about the castle a little, all those tacky souvenir shops... But we didn't let it spoil anything for us, we just went with it and laughed at the silly things they sold there.
But this little piece caught my eye and I thought it could make a nice walldecoration in my new dollhouse. It's very detailed and quite pretty I think.

The castle and the whole vacation in the forests has enchanted me as you can see by the number of posts I've allready made about it :P

Here is a picture of some of the things I bought at the Arnhem dollhouse fair, a whitewood bed, a ebony turned wooden cup, a real silver candlestick, a net of oranges and one that's beeing peeled open. The crate with beerbottles is one of the brands my boyfriend actually drinks. And offcourse you see the souvenir plate from Neuschwanstein. All sitting on top of my new favourite book.


In this book I found this picture, I like it very much and I think I'll use it as inspiration for the library in my new dollhouse.

Wonderfull books from Germany

I promissed to show the books I bought on my holiday in Germany. I visited Neuschwanstein and was so impressed. I didn't want to forget all the things I saw but taking pictures wasn't allowed, so I bought a book about Ludwig2 and all his fabulous homes and castles. (Möbel fur den Märchenköning is also known as furniture for the dreamking). I bought it at Schwangau but I couldn't find it on the internet later on, sorry about that.
The other book is filled with pictures and information about beautifull German castles, mansions and other buildings. The following two pictures are from te first book.







These pictures are from the book Möbel fur die Märchenköning

guess where I've been

Last week was the fall holidays, and my boyfriend and I decided to go on a last minute vacation to the amazing forests in our neighbour country Germany.

We spent a whole week in a little house in the middle of the Bayerische Wald. Large parst of this old forrest are Urwald wich means there hasn't been any intervention or medling with nature from humans for centuries! The birth, growth and decay of trees is all regulated by nature itself. The most beautiful surrounings you've ever seen! You can walk in these forests for hours, find many idyllic scenes with little creeks, crooked trees and secret paths, and not see a single person on your way. It is not so strange that the German forests are the birthplace of the brothers Grimm fairytales!

The wonderfull forests are not the only nice thing about Germany! Beside the good food and the very kind people there are also countless castles and other beautifull old buildings.
If you think France is the only country with refined and pretty buildings and interiours, think again!

We visited Schwangau, where king Ludwig 2 his unfinished fairytale castle 'Neuschwanstein' is built. Rumour has it Walt Disney based his sleeping beauty and cinderella castle on Neuschwanstein. And this is probably the part where it gets interresting: pictures!

King Ludwig 2 his bedroom in Neuschwanstein castle:


King Ludwig2 his fathers castle, where Ludwig grew up:


Later on I'll show you the books I bought, filled with pictures from the interior of the castles Ludwig2 has build. (yes he had many, beside Neuschwanstein!) Wich form a great source of inspiration for my dollhouse that I'm building now!

What did I get myself into!

That's right, I got myself into trouble! Clicking and browsing... I found the most enchanting dollhouse I've ever seen... and now? Now I want it!


The kit is way to expensive for me so I'm buying the building plans, and together with my dad we are going to build it from scratch!....
What did we get ourselves into!?

The pictures are from the website: http://earthntree.com/miniatures/
Where you can buy the wood kit and the finishing kit or the building plans.

I decided to buy just the plans and use the very affordable euromini windows and finishings, but since euromini's is going to stop producing by the end of this year, and their stuff is selling out fast, I had to be quick! Or else this project will turn out to be a half finished disaster! Luckely I managed to get everything on my shopping list.. now I have to be patient and wait for everything to be shipped....

I'm all giggly and nervous now! Patience is NOT my forte :P

the reason I haven't blogged for so long

The reason is that I had a big summer break from school. And I have to use my computer a lot for school, so when the summer break from school started, I turned off my computer.... and only turned it on every now and then to check my mail or something quick like that.
I've had a wonderfully lazy summer, the weather wasn't great but that doesn't really matter much. I started cross stitching again, because it's so time consuming I usually only do it when I have days and days of free time. Here is one of the things I made, a scissor fob and a biscornu in the making. I also made some 1:12 cross stitchings, but I'll show those later ;)