Today is Day 4 of Halloween in Miniature 2015
Miniatures and Fiction a Little Bit Spooky
(The story features my part-zombie girl Becca from my book, GIRL Z: My Life as a Teenage Zombie facing one of her biggest fears and solving a mystery - who's taking all the dogs?)
Most of us had been too busy surviving, and
trying to avoid the roaming hordes of ravenous undead, to notice something else
was going on.
Yeah, like the rest wasn't bad enough? It
was, but this new thing nearly did what the mutated Z virus didn't already do—kill
me.
The morning started great when my Uncle
Franco brought this beautiful, year-old white German Shepherd puppy over for us
to meet. Unlike my first dog experience (more on that later), the puppy bounced
around, played, barked, and most important, didn't make me afraid.
Call it love at first lick.
For once, I forgot all the zombie stuff
that had plagued me for the past year. I threw a ball and laughed at how she
ran and brought it right back. “Ooh, she’s so cute and smart! I’m going to call
her Fluffy! Is she mine? Can I keep her, can I?”
I begged and begged, though I knew my Tia (Spanish for Auntie) Imelda already
loved her as much as I did. Then we heard the yells outside. My uncle's cries
of “look out!” came too late. My cousin Carm opened the door and jumped back at
sight of the chaos in front of our house. Our neighbor Mr. Thompson screamed, “go
back in, shut the door!” as two of the zombies came at him.
In the last few months, most of the full Zs
had been rounded up and exterminated, but a few wanderers like these kept us on
our toes—at least they should’ve. My uncle grabbed his gun and fired at the
monsters. The excitement was too much—the puppy panicked and pulled out of her
collar. I screamed as she darted out the door and ran off in the opposite
direction.
“NO-NO!” I yelled and tried to catch her,
but she was gone. I would've followed if not for the strong arms of my cousin
and aunt holding me back.
“No, Becca
honey, let her go,” Tia implored. “She'll
come back or someone will find her.”
“No, she won't,” I cried. “She won't!”
And she didn't....
** Get the book to find out where Fluffy went and what's happening to all the dogs! Is it zombies... or something worse?
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Today's Spooky Miniaturist!
Today I wanted to introduce you to some talented artisans who enjoy putting a "little" scare in their miniature work and who contributed to this year's Halloween in Miniature 2015!
First up is UK artist Linda Cummings. I've admired her work on Facebook and invited her to share some of her amazingly realistic (and sometimes creepy) miniature food. And no drooling! (Okay, I know you can't help it!)
Linda is a Fellow with the International Guild of Miniature Artisans (IGMA)
who sells her minis under the name Linsminis (and Linsminiartform.) Check her
Etsy shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/linsminis
/) or see her website, www.linsminis.com. You can see more of her work on her Pinterest page.
She has been making miniatures for 12 years and says she is “never bored by it,
there is always an absorbing fascination in seeing a piece come to life. Often
the finished piece is nothing like the way I imagined when I start it, but
somehow “evolves” as I work!”
While
she was home watching the kids and her husband was working nights at the
nightclub they owned and ran for over 20 years, Linda eventually began looking
for something else to do once the children were in bed.
“With
nothing on the telly to keep me entertained, I turned to counted cross stitch
& watercolours,” she says. “Sadly, there are only so many walls in a house
to display art so it was a timely birthday present from my mother that began
the miniature obsession. She had given me a kit for a two-story house & one
miserable, rainy day I decided to actually build it. (It had been sitting unmade
in a cupboard for a few years!!)”
That
house became a Victorian cake shop filled with her first attempts at making
miniature food. “At that time, before the real impact of the Internet, the only
miniatures I could find to fill my shop were hugely out of scale and poor
quality plastic imports,” she recalls. “So, I decided to make my own. I still
have some of those original pieces and now when I look at them I laugh and
can’t believe just how much my work has improved over the years!”
She
credits her youngest daughter with urging her to sell her handmade creations. ‘One
day she said to me, ‘you know Mum, those are fantastic, you should sell them.’ At
the time she was at Bath University and there was a wonderful doll’s house shop
in Bath run by Caroline Neville. My daughter dragged me there with a piece of
my work, a basket filled with veggies, to see if they’d be interested in
stocking any. The basket never made it to the owner as a customer in the shop
asked to look at it and bought it there and then! I was so embarrassed, not
only did I have no idea of what to charge for it, but I was stealing one of the
shop’s customers! eBay was in its infancy in those days and in early 2004 I
started selling from there….the rest is history!”
Linda works
with “the usual materials” - polymer clay, air dry clay, artist’s pastels,
wood and linen threads for the baskets. She says what she likes best about
working in miniature is the detail.
“I love the challenge of getting as much
detail as I possibly can in a miniature which is why I prefer 12th scale, as any smaller and the minutiae is lost,” she says. “I still very
occasionally work cross-stitch, but to be honest, between my ever growing
family, big garden and game birds, I have very little time left over. I am
usually found in my workshop in the wee small hours, desperately trying to
catch up! If someone could give me another 24 hours in every day I would be so
grateful!”
While
some miniaturists often sell their creations and aren’t collectors, Linda does
have three houses in her collection: “I
have the original cake shop that started it all, a thatched farmhouse that is a
home for my feathered game birds and a Victorian ladies’ outfitters. I collect
silver miniatures and have some oh-so-tiny, perfect pieces made by Mike
Sparrow. I have a fascination for tiny teapots and just can’t resist the
gorgeous work of Loredana Tonetti, who works in cold porcelain.”
And if
she had to pick a favorite miniature (or two), what would it be?
“My favourite piece is an
art deco silver ashtray, complete with the tiniest cigarettes in silver holders
and lidded cigarette box with a double opening lid, made by Mike Sparrow.”
* Come back tomorrow for more Halloween goodies and miniature artisans!*
* See Day 5 - Happy Halloween!! *
