Art Nouveau roombox.

It's been such a long time since my last post, sooo many things had happened. These two months were very busy, I had no free time at all! I have 1000+ unread messages in my Google Reader, I'll be happy just to look through some of them.
I took part in two exhibitions in Moscow, the first one was "Art of the Doll" ( it was said it was the biggest doll exhibition in the world, hehe) - it was very, hm, unusual event. Lots and lots of beautiful dolls, only 2 or 3 stands with dollshouse miniature, and I was one of them.

On such kind of exhibition people there are for dolls, so some of them saw the miniature for the first time, they were asking if it was some kind of interior decoration or just a toy, why it's so expensive (actually, any price was too high for them :)). So we felt that were at the wrong place in the wrong time. The second exhibition in December was almost the same thing :)

Anyway, it's been fun to meet some very cool miniature enthusiasts who came just to see my furniture and roomboxes, so I can't be ungrateful. For these two events I've made several items.First of all, I've finished my art nouveau roombox, well, for me it's never finished, I just love adding new things from time to time:

 I've changed the mirror, this one is more "art nouveau"-ish to me :) It was very simple to carve it, it's made of mahogany.  I also changed the carpet:

 I've added the painting, and couple more details:

 The room looks very romantic to me, hope you'll like it. I'll show the new great piece of furniture tomorrow and 3 shadowboxes later:)

Butterflies

It's been a while since my last post. I've finished the table, also I'm going to make the sofa and couple more items:

Aand another table:) It's very cute:

 

 Butterfly net is included. For marquetry I used mahogany, cherry wood, etc. for legs - pear wood.

 Among other news - there will be the I International Moscow Exhibition "Art of the doll" (their website is here), and I'm among exhibitors!:) I'm very excited -  this is the first time I'm taking part in such events.I'll be showing my art nouveau roombox and my furniture, I have a small stand there.There's not much time left till 29th of October, so I'm trying hard to make all the items I was planning to.  Hope to post about them soon!

    Sorry for being away from blogging for such a long time. Some real life events kept me busy, thank you all for the kind words of support about the fires in Russia. To be honest, I wasn't going to post about it until I received today the comment from Karin Corbin -  well, we get so many contradictory news and reports, I decided that it would be better to write about it. As usual, sorry for my English.
As you know I live in Moscow, for the last week we had terrible toxic smog. That's what you could see just a day ago:

      It was hard to be on the street, hard to breathe, you could hardly see the buildings just 300 meters away.You were going outside and it felt like it wasn't  real, like it was some Silent Hill. People had to wear facemasks. The death rate in Moscow reached 700 a day (!). You can imagine what a nightmare it was - especially for people who had no air conditioning at home: you can't open the windows because of smog, and you can't keep them shut because of the heat: it was about 40 C outside. What made me mad and sad is that our Moscow mayor was not in the city, he was on holidays somewhere in Europe and had no intentions of coming back. He had no time for us, but found time to save his bees (He's a bee's keeper, apiarist).We were said that Moscow government opened several social centers for all who were suffering from such weather conditions, they promised air conditioning and food and everything, but in fact NONE of these centers had air conditioning, only few were open at all. Madness.
     It was even worse outside Moscow, still is. Not enough people to fight fire, not enough equipment, you won't read it in newspapers, just from russian bloggers -they write in their blogs that in some regions people don't even try to put out the fires. Only now our government admitted that some are out of control.  You feel really helpless seeing that our prime minister or president have to go to the suffering regions themselves just to try to control the situation. But seems like they can't do it. So anger is growing, nobody can't stop it.
    My Mom came to visit me these days, and we basically had to stay at home. Thankfully, the smog has gone for now, but now the town I was born ( it's in Urals region) is suffering from smog.
      Here (official site of Prime Minister) you can see web cameras from the villages that were destroyed by the fires. They were installed to control the reconstruction and rebuilding.  Somehow there's no such link in English version of the site.

Some updates.

Still working on my graduation work, I'm close to finish it.  Yesterday I've visited Moscow Fair. Lots, lots of people. Too many teddy bears, wonderful dolls, almost no minis. But I was lucky to buy some.Not the best quality as I expected, I do hope that one day all the problems with our Russian Post will be sorted out, and I'll be able to order exactly what I want. I saw some lamps too, but didn't like it at all.

I also bought a doll (inch scale too), but I think I'll make some new clothes for her before showing it to you.  I hope to use these minis for my house and some for roombox.
I'm really sorry that I don't leave comments on any blog now, I have some time only to check the mail recently. My apologies.
Btw, if you use website Goodreads.com - you can join Mad Miniaturists Group there. It's brandnew, so no discussions there now. It was created to discuss the books about miniature, which you'd like to recommend to  others. Jolie from http://joliesancturary.blogspot.com/ is the creator of this group. I hope she doesn't mind I mentioned it:) So, everyone, you're welcome to join the group!:)

Quick update

      I haven't posted anything for a week - my hubby and I caught a flu, not N1H1 fortunately, so I couldn't do anything but staying in bed. Sadly,I didn't finish windows. Just the table (sorry for the pictures):

 

      The legs are made of pinewood, the rest is oak. My husband was helping me, he became interested in miniature more lately. So we started from the simple things. The only problem was to fix the legs - somehow it's almost impossible to find four-sided glue jig in Moscow! Maybe we are looking at the wrong stores.
     So, we thought of another way to glue the legs and stringers (do I use the right term?).  Tricky trick:

     We glued both sides of the legs to the pattern, so it would be perfect right angle. Then you glue the stringers and take off the paper on the upper side. I was surprised but it worked.

     The second update - I changed the layout of the blog, so if something not working, drop me a line. I'm quite happy with the new look of my blog, I used the picture from the old album "Motifs de'l architecture  russo".

      Besides, I have my first tutorial published on the Russian site dedicated to dolls and dollhouse miniatures. I was offered to make the article about mini lathe so I was happy to share some experience. Especially, when this kind of hobby - miniatures - is not popular in Russia, and it's considered more like hobby for kids.

So here it is (Warning it's all in Russian:)). I hope to write something else to find more people, passionate about miniatures.

   Прошу прощения, что не писала целую неделю. Все семейство заболело гриппом, потому все эти дни я провела в постели, с трудом выбираясь иногда на улицу. Потому окна еще не закончены, только сделали стол. 

   Ножки стола сделали из сосны, остальное дуб.  В общем, начали с простого, постепенно будем усложнять задачу:) 

   Из других новостей - я поменяла оформление блога и очень им довольна. Если что не работает - пишите. 

    Что еще, да, давно надо было выложить ссылку на мой небольшой урок по миниатюрным токарным станкам, вернее, по основам работы с ними. В общем, статья тут . Буду рада написать еще статью,  надеюсь, что людей, увлекающихся миниатюрой станет больше.  Вообще, давно подумываю о том, что надо бы на русском блог вести тоже. В общем, идей много.