The V-Dub Spectacular came to town........

..........and on Saturday morning, Nambucca's main street was crammed full of Volkswagens of every shape, size and colour (rumoured to be 400 in number)!

They ranged from the beautifully restored........

to the restorer's dreams........

to the downright characterful..............

The main street was jam packed with cars and people - and oh what a beautiful day we had for the event!

This is winter for us!!

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Some new stuff...............

.........I've been working on.  They've taken just a little longer than expected to complete, though I must admit that I had to wait a couple of days for Peter to finish making the undercarriage for me.  Oh what would I do without him to do all the easy bits for me!!!!  So, very pleased with the results all round....what do you think?

Front view of the lidded shopping trolley.

Another view - just in case!!

Open shopping trolley.

And another view!!













I hope you like these trolleys - they took a while to complete but were well worth the effort in terms of satisfaction!

Hope you all have a great week.   Until next time, take care everyone and enjoy whatever you are doing!

What I've been working on recently...........

......are a couple of rocking cradles.  One is for a friend and the other is the start of my stock pile!
They are made to fit a little Belly Button Baby - they measure 60mm long and 35mm wide.  The sides measure 25mm from the base and the hood stands 55mm high.
Hope you like them!

AND THE WINNER IS...............................

WOW - where did that time go?    We drew lots last night and the result was..........

CIRIA !!

Congratulations!  

Please e-mail me (lidistroud@yahoo.com.au) with your postal address and I will get your parcel in the mail first thing on Monday morning!!  Hope you will like it!

The Hedgehogs' Home!

I've taken time out today for a little playing!  I have been buried in basket frames and working gods-eyes until I'm blue in the face - and still a ways to go yet.  So I thought I would re-do the hedgehog home to scale and house a couple of hedgehogs in it!  I think the hedgehogs are just gorgeous - Annie Willis of Fine Design made these and they are just perfect!

The house measures 35mm at its widest and stands 20mm high. The board measures 75mm x 80mm.  I'm quite pleased with the outcome!

I hope you have all had a wonderful weekend!  

Something Pretty.........

well - as pretty as I get I'm afraid!!  I just wanted to play with something totally different after my frustration with the lid of the previous basket!!  So I played with this Moses basket.  What do you think?

This moses basket is made to fit a little Belly Button Baby!

Picnic Basket Give-away ...Ready-Set-Go!

OK - it took me a little longer than expected - and there's always something to go wrong when you want a job finished isn't there!  One of the lids did not want to behave at all - but.........well, it's as done as it wants to be!

Some pics for you:

Showing the God's Eye!

Showing detail on handle.

End View!











So - usual rules apply - be a follower of my blog and leave a comment on this post!

I have nominated Friday July 13th as the drawing date.  That's not all bad - as well as being Black Friday, it is also the Tennant Creek Show Day in the Northern Territory - and that MUST be good for something..  For those of you not living in Australia - that's somewhere in the middle (of nowhere!)

I shall be using a random name selector to do this job for me - so GOOD LUCKY EVERYONE!!

Update on picnic basket give-away!!

I know - the count got to 300 a little quicker than I expected.....but rest assured that the basket is nearly complete.  I have the lids to make and attach and then I shall take photos and post!!  Sorry......but I'm going as fast as I can.  I have been busy weaving all day so I'm really quite pleased with progress.  Lucky I already had an almost completed basket form to start work on!!  Until tomorrow!!

OMG....it's almost time for a giveaway!

I can't believe that I'm at 294 followers!!  Thank you all so much for taking an interest in whatever it is I do!  Time also to welcome new followers - you are very welcome here!  And a big thank you to all of you for the comments you leave,

So I'm thinking (and this doesn't happen often, believe me!!) that at the 300 mark, I shall give away a lidded picnic basket.  I have started making it already so I shall have lots of time to finish it!!  And I'm learning:  the usual rules will apply - such as you must be a follower of this blog and leave your name in the comments section so I know you want to enter the draw!

Now we have to wait for the big 300!!

Have fun everyone and take care!

And some Old Stuff.........

.....which I promised to do a while back.  Some internal shots of the Fisherman's Cottage!  The pics are not brilliant - but I hope it will give you the general idea!

The living area - we pretty much made everything - except for the cat on the chair (hard to see!) and the pottery.

The loft area is tiny - thus the hammock!  Just enough room to swing that - but not the cat!

Some new stuff........

......so new that I haven't even written the notes up!!  On new and more complicated items, I always work on what I call my "proto-type" and then I can get down to the nitty-gritty of counting rows and stakes!!  So here we go.........

This is a little hedgehog house - and I can hardly wait
because I have asked Annie Willis to make me a
hedgehog to inhabit it.  Well, maybe not in this one, but certainly in the next one I make.

I'm still working on the fine details - but I don't think
it's too bad for a first attempt.

I found a pic of a real size one on the internet and
thought it would be cool to make one.

A little rocking cradle.  I sized this one to hold Allie Beans little belly button babies and the design came out of my head!

As a proto-type I find that I need to make it just 2mm larger all round to give the baby just a tad more room once in it.

A new technique mastered while making this too!  I
used a 3 x 2 plaited border and am tickled pink with the result.  As you may (or may not) know, I do not glue borders on to my work.  All my borders are worked as in RL baskets (and I won't go into the details of how here) so I'm very pleased that I managed to master this one!!  I've been working on it long enough!

Back view

And that's my post for today.  Tomorrow - weather permitting, I will do the photography on the internals of the fisherman's cottage.

In the meantime, I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.  Take care and mini hugs to you all.

My Fisherman's Cottage......

.....some of you may not have seen this before, so I thought I would share some pics with you.  Again, this was a Rik Pierce kit - the witches cottage.  But I prefer to do my own thing as a whole, and this is what I turned mine into.  Hope you enjoy!!

I added some fisherman's stuff too!!

I am currently multi-tasking - working on yet another paperclay project - and designing my wicker rocking cradle and a wicker hedgehog's home.  When these are finished I will have some show and tell!!

I hope you are all well and mini-ing hard out there in blog-land!  Whatever you are doing, have fun doing it!

The Great Mini Get-Together.........

.......and what a wonderful day it was!  Susan (minichrochetmad) and Sandra (Snippets from my Studio) called in for a cup of tea - lots of show and tell - and an exchange of gifts along the way.  And what a beautiful day it was too - sunny, warm - just perfect.

Little Belly Button Baby dressed in one of Susan's gorgeous outfits!  Isn't she the cutest?

Trying to show some of the detail - but it is so difficult to do justice to this lovely piece.

And here she is in her little moses basket, cuddling her teddy (also made by Susan)









And there is more!!

This layette is stunning - the petticoat which is worked into the garment is as gorgeous as the outer skirt.  The dress measures 52mm long, the bootees are 8mm long, the bonnet is 17mm x 18mm and the knickers are 18mm wide.

How do you do it Susan!









Get-togethers with fellow miniaturists are rare in our part of the world - I wish it could happen more often.  So it is indeed very special when we get the opportunity to talk minis.

Sandra's show and tell was her quarter scale house that she is working on - and I could kick myself because I didn't get my camera to take some pics.  The  quarter scale furniture she is putting together is also amazing - I would never have the patience!

Back at work again......

Now that the mad preparations for the show are all behind me, I can get back to doing what I love best......making baskets.

Here are a few I've just made...........

A  market basket

A stack of hampers

Square storage boxes

Left - worked with beads and a bound border

Right - finished with a commercial border and follow-on trac

I'm currentlly working on designs for a rocking cradle, a lidded shopping trolley to name a couple - and I'm so enjoying myself!  I haven't had a lot of time for designing new stuff for the last 6 months and it's so good to have the freedom to do that again

I hope you all have a wonderful week.

The Sydney Dollshouse & Miniatures Fair......

.....and I can hardly believe it's over for another year!  The whole weekend seems a blur now, so yes - it was very busy for us and me, myself, personally had an absolute blast - meeting old friends, making new ones and prowling the stalls whenever I could get away from our sales table.

Traders busily setting up in between hounding other traders for the pick of their crop!!

Peter is always my "patsy" as far as photo's are concerned!!  Here he is at our stand!!

Plants by Diane Cottrell - she has a large order to fulfill for my Venice Canal House rooftop garden!

Some Kim Murdock magic.  She also has a large order to get ready for me.  She's making Ezio for the Canal House as well as some other characters for Indianna Jones' house!  I'm very lucky!











I'm afraid photos are very limited - I didn't have Jessica with me this time - she was at home, sick with suspected whooping cough - so my photographer was missing in action!

As you can see from the photos - the show is not "huge" when compared to the likes of Miniatura or Kensington - but it is the largest in Australia.  It is held at Olympic Park in Sydney on the first weekend of May each year - the venue is great and parking is free.  There are also several miniature shows throughout the year held in other capital cities.

The dollshouse and miniatures hobby suffers badly in Australia because we don't have serious winters to keep us indoors for half a year!!

And that's it for another year!  I have come home armed and ready to work hard for another year!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

Welcome to new followers............

I would like to welcome all new followers of my blog.  It is so gratifying to see that people find my work to be worth looking at and commenting on - thank you all so much.

We have had so much rain lately and here is the end result!!



All the frangipani are at their best at the present time  - so colourful!

The Hoya vine is also in full bloom - the scent is so sweet it reminds me of the scent of the sugar refinery that  we drive past occasionally!   Yummy!

Getting ready for the Sydney Miniatures Show....

I've been working steadily for the show - both on the market hall and making some more baskets.  I will take some photos of the completed market hall once it has been set up at the show - there will be much more room and perhaps some better lighting!!

In the meantime, here are some baskets that I've been working on recently in an attempt to up my inventory just a little.  I have been concentrating so much on the market hall that I've not had a lot of time to work on "new" things.  No matter, once the show is over, I can focus on my baskets again - and I really look forward to that!

To market-to market......

....well, nearly there now.  I just have to throw some straw and "stuff" on the ground and finish up making bread to pile on to the empty table and I shall call it done.

And now I must move on to the upper floors.  The mid level will be quite easy at it is the "meeting" room of the Guild and will be relatively neat and tidy!  The upper floor is the store room - so a lot more scope up there for a bit of mess etc.  Back to the drawing board!

And I must pause a moment to welcome new followers to my blog!  Thank you for stopping by and I really appreciate any comments you may care to make!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week.

Another Job Done..........

....but not by me!!  I commissioned Pete with this job.  Told him vaguely what I wanted by waving my hands around, and this is what I got.  I did have some input - with the paint brush, but that is all!  I consider myself to be lucky in that Pete is a great miniaturist - it sure helps!!

Now I am left with the job of filling it!  That should be fun too.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend - filled with family, friends and lots of chocolate!