Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween to you all! I hope you all have lots of wonderful parties to go to, we are staying in with some nibbles and the TV lol Both parties we were invited to are at least 3 hours away! I do love Halloween and I am reminded of some very strange parties from my teenage days ;o) with some even stranger costumes!

I was going to make pumpkin soup or pie but no pumpkins left in the shops! That will teach us to wait until the last minute. It is odd to see Halloween become ever more popular in England but it is a good thing!

Have a spooky time whatever you are doing!

Griselda

Griselda is now for sale in our Etsy shop - All very new to us! I hope you like her ;o)

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=33528798 it is unusual for us to list dolls as we mostly sell them at shows or on a commission basis but as it is Halloween tomorrow we thought we would offer our last witch for sale - we do have lots more witches planed - we love making them!

Welcome to our new followers, almost 5o now! Thank you to all our followers for taking an interest in our work =o)

We had a great day yesterday, went to Bury Market with mum and had tea and cakes, saw my gran and had more tea and cakes lol then we made a surprise visit to Julie and Ruth's dolls house club (only Julie the organiser knew we were going) we had talked about it in Arnhem but they thought we had decided not to come. We had a wonderful night and yes, more tea and cakes lol

Julie's dolls house collection is just fantastic and it made me ashamed of my empty houses back home lol I must try to get some work done on them over Christmas! She has spent years collecting the perfect miniatures for every scene and the little bear and pram she bought in Arnhem finished the little girls room off perfectly - they were worth all the money they cost!

Thank you for such a warm welcome girls, I just wish I lived close enough to be a member but going off last night, we would never get anything made lol see you all at Pudsey!

Arnhem

Well, we are back home! We had a fantastic weekend and it was well worth all the effort to make the show.

We left on Thursday from Newcastle to Amsterdam, I didn't quite get seasick but I went to bed very early feeling quite green lol the 2 tablets I had, just about managed to keep me from actually being sick!

We woke up bright and early and after a much needed coffee and orange juice we disembarked in Amsterdam. None of the roads matched the map so we found the fair by dumb luck rather than by skill lol

But Aidy managed the drive really well and remembered to drive on the wrong side of the road lol We found the venue and I was given a really sweet miniature Russian doll to celebrate our first time at the show - I always wanted one of those!

We were placed facing Lynn (Matlock Miniatures) Bob (Country Contrast) and Doreen Jeffries so we had a laugh with them all weekend as we see them at all the English fairs. Every time we looked across to them they were all either laughing or eating something lol Aidy kept them entertained with his antics.

We were not too far away from Pat kay and Dream In miniature so it was really nice to see friendly faces.

As the show opened, One of our regular customers came up to us (we knew she was going to the show) and she asked if we knew where her hotel was, well we were delighted to find we were all staying at the same place, although we had failed to find it earlier.

Ruth, told us she had been to Germany and back looking for it so we said we would all go together at the end of the show, it took us 2 hours to find it as we spent most of the time stuck in a one way system lol We were all ashamed to realise the hotel is 8 minutes from the show! We were so happy to finally find it, but had to make do with a sandwich and drink from the bar as the restaurant was closed ;o)

The next morning we all had breakfast together and Aidy and I were having so much fun we nearly missed the start of the show! We had a great day and sold some dolls and lots of other bits. I was sad to see Gwendolin and Percy sell, but they are going to Denmark and the lady who bought them was lovely! We sold our gardener to her friend so that was really nice.

Our work got a fantastic response and we now have a some new customers to add to our ever growing fan base. We ran out of all our postcards!

We had a lovely meal with Ruth, Dot, Julie and Robert, but we all missed Ruth's daughter Julie who had stayed back at home in England. We had a very funny waiter who loved the fact he could make fun of us English lol so we never laughed so much for a long time, we all had a great night!

We managed to have breakfast with them again and then another mad dash to make the show, we had another great day and we were sad when it was all over.

We had to rush to catch the ferry home but made it with time to spare and the crossing was not too bad going home, we even had a nice 3 course meal on board.

We can't wait until next October when we get to do it all again and the best bit is that Ruth, Julie, Dot, Robert and Julie (Ruth's daughter) are all thinking of going again too! They made our weekend more than just a show, so thank you to you all we had a ball!

Check out ooakdiddydolls...

Check out the wonderful work of Lesley Hughes http://www.ooakdiddydolls.moonfruit.com/ She makes such fabulous dolls! Since her recent appearance in a miniaturist magazine she has been inundated with commissions which is fantastic to see as she is such a lovely person and she has been a very good friend to us.

We met Kev, Lesley's husband for the first time at Miniatura and he is just as lovely as she is! I am sure you will agree Lesley's work is very good! Please take a look at her all new and improved website which now has an online shop.

She will have work for sale at Pudsey and Edinburgh as part of the D-A-M-E table.

Keep up the great work Lesley!

Getting ready for Arnhem

(Pictures - A closer look at the Battish Airways Characters)

Well, we are getting ready to do our very first show abroad ;o) in Arnhem. We were supposed to do this show last march but I had an operation just a week before and I was not fit enough.

Better luck this time! We leave on Thursday So, the ferry is booked, hotel is paid for, we have a stand at the show, Sea sickness tablets are bought lol. All we need to do now is finish 6 dolls and pack the car and then we can be on our way!

The most important thing is our cats Cilla and Elvis and they are being looked after by some very good friends who will stay at our house for the weekend so that is one less thing to worry about!

The nice thing about doing this show is that not only are a lot of our friends from the British fairs standing but one of our favourite customers is also going to be there so that will be really lovely and it is her first time at the show too.

It is a 3 day show, well, one evening and two full days! Lots of well respected names from all over the world will have stands so I am going to have loads of fun looking at all the wonderful miniatures - you never know if we have a good show, I may get to buy some lol although I always buy things for our dolls such a fancy fabrics or unusual trimmings and not for my own collection!!! Mind you it is nearly Christmas...

It looks like a great event and we have heard only positive things about it so we hope to have a really nice time. It feels like a mini holiday anyway! We will take lots of pictures to bore you all with when we get back and we will give a full show report :o)

http://www.arnhem-poppenhuisstad.com/us/us.html

Miniatura

Battish Airways!

We had a wonderful show, it was great fun and went by far too quickly! Well, here is our show piece 'Battish Airways' it took all summer to make but the response we had was well worth all the hard work! It moves up and down, the bats flap their wings and it lights up lol

Aidy had to carry it up and down the show to take it to the 'studio' to have pictures taken by the magazines, miniatura and the local paper lol so his hands were killing him by the end of the weekend as it is heavy! It does all come apart and pack neatly away inside the boxes it stands on but there was no time to keep on packing it away ;o)

It was so nice to see peoples reaction to it and a lot of them thought we must be daft (which we are) to come up with the idea in the first place! We have had lots of really nice messages today telling us it was the best thing at the show and that made our day as some very talented people loved our work. We also had interest from some shops who liked the idea of having it as the window display!

We hope to have it on display at Arnhem, Pudsey, York and Kensington so if you are around and would like to see it please come and say hello. It is for sale but we would like to have the chance to add a few more finishing touches to it first as we ran out of time!

We also had a great time as we were surrounded by all the girls from D-A-M-E and Helena of Solway miniatures so lots of laughs in our corner of the show! We all stayed at the same hotel and 5 of us had the same room so you can imagine how much fun that was too lol good job we get along so well! Edith from delicious delights also kept on popping by to say hello as she did not want to miss anything ;o)

D-A-M-E had a fantastic and well deserved response from everyone who stopped to have a look at our display - The members really did a good job!

We would like to say a huge thank you to the following people, Bev, Lesley, kev, Helena and Simon for helping with D-A-M-E and all the D-A-M-E members who sent work to display or came to see us all at the show.

We would also like to thank Andy Hopwood who also continues to offer great support and encouragement to both D-A-M-E and Lilyelf and obviously works so hard to not only to help run such a successful event, but to promote the hobby to anyone who will listen!

Roll on march!