Welcome to Samhain Sweets

I finished my entry into the Undersized Urbanite competition at 2AM this morning. Prepare to be bombarded with LOTS of photos.

Located smack dab in the centre of the village of Samhain (pronounced so-wen) where every day is Halloween.

The Outside

I was lucky enough to have a nice sunny day today for taking pictures. The last few days have been rainy but today was lovely. Using the good camera and natural light makes quite a big difference to the quality of the photos, who knew? Well probably everybody but me.

 The bricks, stones and concrete pavers were all made from egg cartons. The shingles came with the kit and were individually painted before being applied to the roof.

 The garbage bin houses the battery for the lights. Unfortunately when I got everything plugged in only 2 of the 3 lights worked. For about a minute then 1 of them died. So only the light above the door works. I'm not sure what I can do about it. For now I'll take the Scarlet O'Hara approach and think about it tomorrow.

 The plants were made using aquarium plants, florist wire and acrylic paints. The planters are made to fit over the legs of chairs but when I saw them they looked just like terracotta planters so that's what they are now.

 The Kitchen 

 The kitchen looks quite bare to me. I had to skip over many details I had planned for this room. I started the build 10 weeks ago but about 5 weeks ago the real world decided to interfere and demand my attention. Then the flu hit. I was unable to do anything mini for 3 whole weeks! Sometimes reality sucks.

The Shop

This is my favorite part of the building. Each of the cakes, cookies and lollies were hand made from polymer clay. The "factory" packaged products were made by printing images of wrappers and folding, gluing and stuffing each package.

 I did buy a few things but most of what you see was hand made. In many cases I used tutorials by some of the many talented miniaturists kind enough to share their experience. I will be thanking them individually in an upcoming post, it's going to take me a short while to compile a list. I really need to post this before I manage to lose the photos or somehow destroy the internet completely.

Having said that there is one person that I must thank right now. My talented and patient daughter Christine (christinevalentine.com) Thank-you not only for designing the store logo, the chocolate boxes and lolly packets but for putting food in front of me 3 times a day and making sure I ate it. For putting up with my mood swings when I didn't think I could get it completed. For not complaining that every conversation you have had with me since the beginning was about miniatures. Most of all Thank-you for not once saying "It's only a doll house". I Love you.

To those of you who made it to the end of my very long post Thank-you.

Now I'm off to see to my 1:1 scale house, oh boy, what a mess!