On Smaller and Smaller Adventures yahoo group, we were challenged to make a Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes project. As part of this project we were asked to join a swap. This was the first time ever that I joined a swap and I knew what I wanted to make immediately. I made the Dish and Spoon.
The 1/12th scale plate with legs made my Dish. She is pretty excited that she is running away with the Spoon. I made him from cooper sheet and eyelet for a hat.
The second thing I knew about this project was that I wanted to use my very own baby shoe.
I really enjoyed making this project. It was such fun to figure out which nursery rhymes to use and to fit as many in as reasonable. Having swaps helped me to pick many of the rhymes. It also helped to have a container to put the project into.
Rhyme listing
These links are where I share “How I did it”. Peter, Pumpkin Eater * House Under Hill * Mary How does your garden grow? * Little Boy Blue * Miss Muffet * Queen of Hearts * Baa, Baa Black Sheep * Mary had a little lamb * Little Jack Horner * Mother Hubbard * Hickory, Dickory Dock * Pussy cat, pussy cat * Humpty Dumpty * Piggies * London Bridge is Falling Down * Three Men in a Tub * Row, row your boat * The pie man * Rock-a-bye Baby * Jack and Jill * Hey Diddle, Diddle * Old Lady who Lived in a Shoe * Ring a round the Rosy * Three Blind Mice * Sing a Song of Sixpence * Pat a Cake * Mother Goose
More notes on my planning and electrical.
I also made a book including the rhymes and How I Made It. Read about that here.
I also made my own children’s book. I made it a 2 for 1 flip book. To see that check out this link.
Lessons I have learned doing this project
At some point, I decided that this project needed to use up stuff. Ideally this meant I didn’t buy anything for it, but that wasn’t to be the case as I worked with it. But it was a good brain stretcher to do so.
– This was my first time to build boxes that had to fit together. There a many ways to do this and it isn’t that my way didn’t work, but I could have saved myself some time and measuring if I had cut all the boxes at the beginning. I also think I should have used a layer of matt board across the bottom the full size so I didn’t have to later add floors. This would have likely helped me with the issues I had around size of the whole bottom level.
– This one was not so much a lesson that was new, more a reminder – keep an open mind about what might work. This really was where the brain stretching came in. I have collected so many supplies and swaps over the years that I really need to use them. I feel really good that I did, but sometimes I had to think beyond what I wanted to do initially as I didn’t have the supplies on hand. Another time was thinking I needed to make a shoe and I concluded that I needed to use my baby shoe instead. Yet another was trying to find an egg shaped solution for humpty – ultimately I was avoiding using clay. Not that clay is a bad thing.
– When doing multi-levels – use connectors so that the wiring can be disconnected to work on one level and not the whole thing.
– Get ideas from others – when you get stuck or just want to hear how others might do something, ask other miniaturists. Again, this wasn’t a new lesson, but a reminder of how this can help expand my thinking. We don’t have to use their ideas, but it can help us to move beyond what we have been thinking.
– Everyone has their own gifts. Don’t envy the gifts of others. Let their work inspire you to do better, be more creative, or try harder to do what you can do. Envy will discourage you and can keep you from seeing the worth of your own work. This isn’t something I typically have an issue with this, but it is a good reminder as well.
Overall I am very pleased to have done this challenge. This was truly a challenge that I made my own – challenge to just use what I have. I may have not done that 100% but I am very happy with the percentage I did.
Psst – I did actually do one thing here in 1:12 scale – see if you can find it.
Happy miniaturing!
Preble
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