Treasury Thursday: In My Tiny Kitchen

Tiny sweets and treats for your itty-bitty house.

'In My Tiny Kitchen' by cursiveart

Food and decor for a dollhouse kitchen.

Miniature Cake Stand Do... Marisha612 $12.00	Dollhouse Accessories -... miniaturepatis... $26.90	Dollhouse Miniature Kit... FripperyFactor... $12.00
Miniature shabby chic p... viliaminiature $18.00	1 mini rolling pin, you... honeyandbee $8.50	Miniature 3-Tier Fruit ... littlethingsby... $26.99
Dollhouse Miniature Cup... littletimewast... $25.00	Grandma's Hand Pain... AtomicBlythe $10.00	Making Strawberry Tarts... sarahmaloney $35.00
Ladurée Pink Wedding C... HummingbirdMin... $370.00	Modern Minimalist Dinin... AmazingMiniatu... $20.00	Miniature Cleaning Supp... mulberrymoose $7.95
Set of Three Kitchen St... ParisMiniature... $35.00	Miniature Doll House Pa... dalesdreams $12.00	Dollhouse miniature foo... Cutetreats $20.95
Pie alavenderdilly $3.50

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Less Talk Tuesday: Dollhouses

http://www.toideloi.com/stackhouse.html

From crumpledenvelope.tumblr.com

From daisypinkcupcake.blogspot.com

From brincadada.com

Also from brincadada.com

Treasury Tuesday: As the Mermaids See It

I so love Oiseaux's mermaid bookplate (you hopefully remember her from yesterday's spotlight), I decided to do an entire watery, mermaid themed treasury. Everything looks blue to them, you know.

'The Mermaids Saw Everything in Blue' by cursiveart

...as they swam the seas, collecting trinkets from the land, and daydreaming of land....

Sea Glass of Hawaii AQU... SeaGlassFromHa... $26.00	Mermaid Kisses Fragranc... fragranceoil $2.25	Ocean Mermaid Bookmark ... beachstring $15.00
Aqua Blue Nesting Plate... NewMoonStudio $250.00	Sea Bliss Bleu Fish Doo... AlacartCreatio... $18.00	Mermaid Art Print - 8x6... thefiligree $10.00
Moldovite, keishi pearl... Lilhouette $82.00	Aqua Sea Salt and Shea ... opheliasapothe... $7.75	hand dyed sparkling sup... wildhare $28.00
1896 World Elevation Ma... SurrenderDorot... $30.89	ISADORA - Feather Headb... bethanylorelle $34.00	blue seagreen small res... whizzbangle $25.00
Aqua Blue Japanese Glas... GlassLynx $15.00	Underwater Sisters by H... starlitnest $22.00	Vintage Mermaids Person... oiseaux $15.95
Mermaid Waterling Lady ... beautyflows $8.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Monday Spotlight On: Shelley Kommers of Oiseaux

Oiseaux means "birds" in French and with her shop of the same name, Shelley Kommers has managed to create something as equally beautiful to the eye and with as many flights of fancy as bright songbirds in flight.  I stumbled across her bookplates through an Etsy Taste Test and fell in love with the way she has taken vintage illustrations that might have been lost to most people and made them something new and beautiful.  Shelley lives in a woodland cottage (I imagine to be something out of a fairytale, personally) with her husband, five year old daughter and a baby on the way.  She had an extensive collection of vintage children's books (most inherited from her grandparents). When she isn't runnin Oiseaux, she is "making art and being happy." (At sometime in the future, I may have to re-interview her about her stunning original works).

Vintage Castle Personalized Bookplate

Tell us three random things about yourself.
1. I love peonies so much I could eat them.
2. I didn't like my first name until I was twenty-seven.
3. I make an amazing margarita.

You make vintage children's book art into beautiful bookplates. How did you get into that?
I made my first set of bookplates for a friend's daughter as a birthday present. She was one of these children who already had everything, so I was trying to come up with something unique. I've always loved bookplates and vintage children's art, so combining them seemed natural. The bookplates were such a hit at the party that I decided to go into business several months later.

What's your favorite thing you've made? 
My favorite bookplate is also my shop's best selling image: the Blue Bird bookplate. The image comes from the end papers of a children's hymn book that my mother used to sing from when she was a child, and the book was extremely worn and water-stained.  The design took a long time to create, but it was well worth the effort.

Personalized Vintage Bluebird Bookplate

As a bookplate maker, are you a big reader as well? 
I love to read. I have piles of books around the house and a well-loved Kindle. My favorite thing to read is fiction, but I also love poetry, art books, blogs, magazines, and reading children's books to my daughter.

Name one piece of art you wish you'd created and why? 
The interior and facade of "It's a Small World" at Disneyland.  I once saw a museum show about Mary Blair's concept art for the ride, and it blew my mind. Mary Blair was a master of color and magic. My cheeks hurt when I look at her work because I can't stop smiling.

What do you spend your time doing when you're not reimagining beautiful illustrations into bookplates? Making art, puttering in the garden, hanging out with my husband and daughter, cooking a little bit. I've challenged myself to "create something every day" this month, so most of June has been spent making art!

You paint and create these plates.  What would you pursue if you had to give up those mediums and pursue another? I'd like to try great, big silkscreens. My bookplates and art all tend to be small; I think it would be fun to go huge.

Does your art tends toward the same vintage look as the bookplates? Where do you get your ideas from there? My art uses a lot of vintage elements, especially in my collage work, but it looks nothing like my bookplates. My ideas come from nature, and my daydreams (which are colorful and many) and my life in general.

Vintage Mermaids Personalized Bookplates

What’s your favorite part of the process?
It's receiving feedback from folks who love their items, and emails from people who have found my shop and have been transported back to their own childhood through looking at the images. For me, those things are the best.

What modern children's book would you love to use the images from to make bookplates (or what children's illustrator) if you could get away with it? Oh gosh: the work of Mary Blair, certainly, and the wonderful art of Leonard Weisgard.

One random thing you think people should know.
If I had waited to be "inspired," three-quarters of what I've made wouldn't exist.

Your shop, blog, Facebook and all that good stuff.
Shop. oiseaux.etsy.com
Blog. oiseaux.typepad.com
Art shop. oiseauxnoir.etsy.com
Website: shelleykommers.com

Mr. Fancy Fox Personalized Bookplates

If you could be a character in fiction, who would you be?
Alice in Wonderland, when she's singing with the flowers.

Stuff I Love: It's the Little Things

The whole "small windows" thing really got me thinking about my art and the things I love visually.  The truth is, I've always loved the idea of being teeny-tiny.  When I was little, my best friend and I even wanted  to turn into mice and live like Stuart Little (we thought this could be best possible thing that could ever happen to us).  Even today, the idea of being miniature carries into my art work, as there are often a lot of little tiny figures surrounded by massive foliage.  Here are a few things from my favorites list on Etsy that echo that daydream.

Miniature Tellurion

This mini tellurion not only makes me envision scientists the size of peas standing around it, taking notes, charting the movement of the starts, but also reminds me of "The Dark Crystal" in which a very similar (and very much larger) instrument is seen. Beepalix has more cool miniature stuff for intellectuals including globes and dollhouse sized books.

Shelf City No. 269

This is the kind of thing I would scatter on my bookshelves and occasionally play with on rainy days (in spite of the fact that I am a grown woman), and tell stories about the inhabitants, who farm the letters from the books on which they live.  TheOakLeaves have all kinds of beautiful tiny cities and buildings to make up stories about.

Okay, technically, this isn't a miniature anything.  It's a photograph of a train model, placed in a created scene that is comparable to his size. But it's wonderfully surreal and I feel it encapsulates that same feeling, as though this guy lives in that tiny village pictured above and this is him visiting the lakeshore (a puddle in the dirt).  All of ErinTyner 's photographs are equally breathtaking.

Check out the shops above, and next time you come across something in miniature, think about how difficult it might have been for the creator to make something so small in such detail, and think about the story they were trying to tell, or the one you'd tell with their creation.