Autumn Halloween pumpkins

Well it feels like I've been away from my miniatures for an eternity and I'm finally getting ready to start working again. In the last few weeks I have moved house and I completely underestimated how much work is involved. We decided to move everything ourselves by hiring a smallish van. BIG MISTAKE! There was so much furniture to move that after the first two trips my knees were creeking unbearably and I felt incredibly tired and stressed with it all. Well luckily that was two weeks ago now and I'm now settling into my new place and getting things organised ready to start working again. My two cats haven't adjusted as well though. They skulk around the house and jump at every creek and bump the house makes (it's a lovely 1930's build). There seems to be many other cat lovers around here too as many cats have curiously wondered into the garden to say hello, much to the annoyance of my two. It's been a very busy time and not only have I moved house but have also undergone surgery this week which has rendered me unable to walk very far. It's going to take a few weeks before I get back to normality but I'm hoping that making my miniature furniture will take my mind off that. We've only just broken into summer and already I'm thinking ahead to the Autumn (my favourite time of year) and the wonderful colours that go with the Autumn months. The golden and red leaves, bright orange pumpkins, bonfires, Halloween, hot baked potatoes and sticky toffee apples...etc my mind is awash with all the wonderful things Autumn has to offer that keeps me inspired during my work. I've recently made a new batch of miniature pumpkins which you can see in the photo and soon they will be for sale in my Etsy shop and on ebay.

Please feel free to leave a comment or just to say hello! Would love to hear from other miniature enthusiasts :)

Pumpkin dollhouse tutorial by Tori West

A few weeks ago I stumbled across this amazing tutorial that shows you how to make a pumpkin dollhouse from scratch using paper clay. I was totally amazed at the finished house and thought it looked fantastic, a real work of art. This is something I'll definitely be trying at some point this year. The good thing about this tutorial as that as the house is built from scratch you can customise it to look like anything you want so lots of scope for the imagination. The tutorial doesn't have many photos although many of the steps are cleverly illustrated which really helps. Here is a link to the tutorial so you can have a look and maybe think about building your own pumkin dollhouse :

http://www.minimotion.com/HOWTO/quarterpumpkinhowto.html