Miniature sightings in Ravena, NY

My fiancé and I went on a leisurely drive yesterday and stopped at a couple of smallish shops south of Albany since we were in the mood to do some antiquing.

I had seen a couple of fun dollhouse/miniature-related items I'd like to share with you.

First, there was this cute dollhouse:

And this cute shadow box:

I didn't pick anything up, but as usual, it was fun looking around! Oh, if you're in the area, these items were at the Leisure Time Flea Market in Ravena, NY. Lots of treasures here!

Road Trip Day 2: Chautauqua, NY

Hi everyone! Happy Mother's Day!

So, we left the Buffalo area this morning and drove down to Chautauqua to visit our next stop, Chautauqua Miniatures. What a GREAT place! It was recommended highly by other members of the Greenleaf forum so I knew I was in for a treat. The owners have actually two shops in one: the miniatures store and the Two Chixx Gift Shoppe! The latter has decor, antiques, scarves, lotion, etc. Lots of cute and fun things!

If you go to the website above, please know that what is on the website is only a fraction of what is in the shop. Both shops are in one 5000 sq. ft. two-story barn. There is so much to look at here, so if you stop in sometime, do give yourself plenty of time to look around and take it all in!

I had to really focus on what I was looking for here...stuff for the historical society, beds to dress, etc., and I definitely came away with some great finds! One awesome part of the shop were the clearance items. I found some great pieces there! They also had a section of back issues of Nutshell News, American Miniaturist and other dollhouse mags. I have some reading material for the trip now! ;)

Anyway, here's what you've likely been waiting for - the pics!

On the left is a resin figure who would make a wonderful curator of my local historical shop. Also for the shop is the barrister book case to hold reference materials and some local artifacts. Below that is a wine bottle for the Glencroft kitchen, and on top of the book case is a cute basket perfect for a number of applications.

I added another HoM kit to my collection! Also a book on wine and a wicker frame which matches some other pieces I have.

This is a cross-stick kit for "Chautauqua Lake." It was a unique piece local to the area (yay! souvenir!) and was a bargain at 3 dollars.

These are some of the clearance pieces. The cabinet was very detailed and would go well in several possible places including the Glencroft kitchen. It was $4.00. The bed was only $8.00. I want to dress it up and add a mattress.

Lots of reading material and useful projects!

They threw in this pen. :) Jay bought a few items too (Mother's Day gifts!) and gave me his pen. I think one might go in a giveaway box. :)

I did very well at Chautauqua Miniatures and am close to getting all the pieces for my historical society! I can't wait to start building now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So we are in our hotel down in PA and will be visiting Volant Miniatures and Lynlott Miniatures tomorrow. :-D Stay tuned for more!

Road Trip Day 1: Western NY

Hi all! It's been an awesome day, and a long one too! We drove from Albany to Buffalo and stopped not terribly far from Rochester on the way. I took lots and lots of pictures which I am going to upload to Flickr and/or facebook at some point, but I will share some here, too. At least the mini-related ones!

Today's journey took us to two shops: Lilliput Miniatures in Fairport, NY and Niagara Hobby and Craft Mart in Cheektowaga, NY.

Lilliput Miniatures (web)

This shop is run by a really friendly guy and his family. Tom is the name of the owner (I think) and he chatted with us while we shopped around. He does a lot of custom work on dollhouses that folks bring in, which are shown throughout the shop. He carries mostly Real Good Toys houses, and there were a few others I didn't recognize, all seemed to be made with the cabinet grade 3/8" plywood. One in particular was a HUGE house that someone started to build with Houseworks Plans and that he plans to sell for about 80 bucks. If I had the space and the time, I think that would have come home with me...

As for accessories, he really does have a little bit of everything, including some items I hadn't seen before. I picked up a number of items, some for the historical society, and others for grab bags and some other projects. ;)

Here's what I bought:

Niagara Hobby and Craft (web)
We had plenty of time, we discovered, left in the day, even after checking in to our hotel, to visit the Niagara Hobby and Craft Mart in Cheektowaga. So we did! :-)

Now, if you're looking for a HUGE selection of dollhouses and accessories, you might be a little disappointed here. However, this place has an amazing railroad selection - all different scales, with several in-store train displays - as well as a respectable dollhouse department (for a shop that carries a wide variety of crafts!). Their prices were pretty reasonable, too.

Here's what I got:

That trunk is part of the Lincoln Line of furniture, which I would like to collect as someday I'd like to build the Lincoln Springfield Home from RGT. :) For now, I think it will go in the historical society. That little white thing is a stepladder (so cute!) and of course another kit from the Daisy House. I love their kits - they are relatively easy to assemble and look great when finished.

Also, at Niagara Hobby I found flyers for some upcoming events that may be of interest:
42nd Annual Toy Show - Oct 28, 2012 at the Hearthstone Manor, 333 Dick Rd, Depew, NY (Sponsored by Motoring in Miniature Association, Ltd)
The 31st Annual Greater Buffalo Train and Toy Show - Nov 17 and 18, 2012 at the Event Center on the Fairgounds in Hamburg, NY (Sponsored by the Western NY Railway Historical Society)

Road trip plans

Yes, this is mini related!

As I mentioned in the previous post, I will be visiting as many upstate New York miniature shops as possible and a couple in western PA! It gives my fiancé and I a perfectly good excuse (not that we need one) to visit some towns we've never been to, see some new sights, and check out some new restaurants, too.

So far, here's the list of shops we'll be visiting:
Lilliput Miniatures
Niagara Hobby and Craft Mart (which I discovered after watch MsMiniLover's video on Youtube)
Chautauqua Miniatures
Volant Miniatures
and Lynlott Miniatures

And unrelated to minis, because we like anime, Godzilla, and awesome Japanese things, we're also going to visit Joy's Japanimation in Greensburg, PA. :) Then off to my parents in central PA for some nice, relaxing family time. My mom just retired so we will get to spend lots of time together!

During the trip, I will be blogging each day about the on-road experiences, goodies I picked up and maybe some hints at a future giveaway! ;)

Speaking of giveaway, don't forget to check out Linda's Minis facebook page and LIKE it if you haven't already. At 50 followers, I'll announce a giveaway!!!

Summer is (almost) here!

Now that the semester has ended this month, I plan to do a bit of traveling. I'd really like to go to visit my family in PA. But I think I might take the long way...there's a string of mini shops along I-90 in NY, one in Volant, PA, and one in Pittsburgh, PA. I think it would be fun to go on a "mini" road trip. If I do this, I will definitely blog about the experience, with information about each of the shops, and maybe even pick up a couple of things for giveaways! I'll likely post more info on this as I plan it more thoroughly. What would you like to know about the shops if I pull this off?

If you haven't checked out Linda's Minis on facebook, please do so! We're at 30 followers (yay!) and there's a coupon code for my shop there. When we get to 50 followers, we will have a giveaway there (you have to "like" the page on facebook to participate)! So please stop by. The site is: https://www.facebook.com/LindasMinis

Hmmm, what else...I am dreaming up some new stuff for the etsy shop as well as planning my next project.

And because I like to include a pic with every post, here's a photo of some fern fiddleheads on a class field trip a few weeks ago! Happy spring!

My next project(s)

In my last post, I hinted about my next project. I guess I can elaborate a little more on that here. :) I've had the Canterbury in a box for a while and have been trying to figure out what it's going to be. At first, I thought about turning it into a library, a tea room, a bakery, or something like that. Then it hit me! I love history and one of my favorite places to go visiting, antiquing and learning about the area is Lancaster, PA and the surrounding area. This part of Pennsylvania is full of Amish farms and museums, as well as lots of Pennsylvania Dutch history. (For those unfamiliar with PA Dutch, these folks lived in PA around the 18-19th centuries and were actually German Descendants. The word Dutch here is actually an alteration of the word "Deutsch," the German word for, well, "German." My ancestors on my father's side were PA Dutch and Irish, and the PA Dutch side had lived in the Lancaster County region at one point).

Anyway, I digress... for my next project, I want to build a historical society of a fictional town in the Lancaster area with lots of PA Dutch, Amish, and historical artifacts. This is going to be a lot of fun. I foresee a tiny meeting room, a research area, and an upstairs museum. I know the Canterbury is small, so I won't fit a ton of stuff in there, but I think I have plenty of pieces already (and in kits) that will work. Plus, this house comes with its own furniture too, so I can fill in the empty bits.

I've already picked up some stuff from an antique shop in Cambridge, NY: tintypes (to frame and put on the wall) as well as a wooden nickel as an antique advertising piece.

We have a color laser printer again  and I am going to make some hex signs, advertising and more historical photos. I've also picked up a little working wooden filing cabinet (for the research room) from Mainly Minis.

 

I can't wait to start on it. I've been itching to build lately and this particular kit is small so there's actually room to display it and I may even finish it over the summer. This build also gives me an excuse to hit the antique shops for more ephemera. :)

One more find in Cambridge is a gorgeous Japanese box:

I think I am going to turn it into a room box and perhaps sell it on Etsy. Hmm, we will see. :-)

Real-life inspiration

Here are some pictures of RL houses I took in the Lake George region for inspiration. If any inspire you, let me know! :)

2 stories from the mini hunt

1. I was digging through an antique store in Fort Ann, NY today and found two Dollhouse Miniatures issues which I purchased. The awesome thing? One of them was once owned by the very same Carolyn Curran whom I blogged about yesterday. What are the odds???

2. In that same shop I saw an unopened Brimble's Mercantile. Tempting, but I already have a shop and don't need anymore dollhouses. Really. (Not until we move into a bigger place, at least. ;) ). Anyway, on leaving the shop, I said to Jay, "Well if that were one of the dollhouses on my wishlist, like a Westville or Harrison, I would have totally picked it up."

Fast forward to about half an hour later, we found a small flea market-type shop in Whitehall (Carol's Collectibles and Antiques). From the front of the store, I spied what very much looked like a dollhouse in the "taped-together-but-unfinished" stage. And...it was a Westville. Even more interesting, there was a Westville still in the box on the ground, though it looked like it had been opened, but taped back together. I came SO CLOSE to bringing it home. Also in the same area were boxes upon boxes of old dollhouse kits (Walmer, RGT, to name a few) as well as building supplies, and how-to books. I did pick up some books, but I was very good and didn't grab any dollhouses (again, little room, little time).

I have been on the ball lately with finding exactly what I've been looking for...whether or not I buy it.
 As we got out to the car, Jay says to me, "Okay, from now on you need to either dream about or talk about finding cheap Godzilla collectibles when we go antiquing." :)

Unfortunately no pics of the goodies this time, but I have a lot of stuff I need to unload from my camera that I will be posting on the blog (including some inspirational home pics and other things!)

Pottery from Carolyn Curran

I noticed I have 101 readers. Welcome new folks!!! I am going to announce the blog giveaway on Sunday, so stay tuned!

This weekend, I am treating my significant other to a weekend in the Lake George area for his early birthday present. We visited a few lovely antique shops and had a lot of fun today.

One particularly awesome find were these lovely little stoneware miniatures created by IGMA fellow Carolyn Curran.

Apparently, she used to live in this area (Warren County, NY) but has since moved down to North Carolina. I found her autobiography on her eBay page here: http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=carolyn-aka-cncpottery

Apparently, her work has been sold by the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City and the Smithsonian. I am very excited to have found out about this artist and her work as I haven’t heard of her before. I love this kind of stoneware pottery in 1:1 scale, and finding it in 1:12 scale was pretty awesome. There were many more pieces of pottery like these in the antique shop but my bank account would have hated me for picking up everything! :) 

However, I am tempted to go back and pick up a couple more pieces and do a display...

Would anyone be interested in getting one of these pieces for themselves? I am here until Sunday and could pick some more up…

The general store is now in New York!

We have a new addition to the Albany apartment. I brought over the old General Store (you may remember from this entry ) from New Hampshire. This will be an antique store with a hip cafe on the top level. This is the plan:

1. Continue giving the shop a thorough cleaning inside and out. I got most of the dust out of it, but there are still areas that need some detailing.

2. Remove and replace the bannister going to the upstairs rooms.

3. Remove the wallpaper from the upstairs rooms. I tried one room as the wallpaper was already starting to come off, and it left a gross residue. Time to apply the Goo Gone!

4. Refinish the floors with art paper or planking

5. Refinishing the walls - paint? wallpaper? boards?

6. Convert the horse stalls into flea market stalls. 

7. Redo the signs on the outside...remove or cover the existing letters.

8. Add in windows and doors (possibly handmade).
9. Electrify or not to electrify??? (Or perhaps get those battery powered lamps that miniatures.com sells...?)

I can't wait to work on this piece. Currently, I am still shingling the Glencroft, but this is a slow process, and I figure moving the General Store/Antique shop over will at least let me work on some miniature stuff in the meantime. I really like the flat roof, which will provide more storage, as well.

For the hip cafe feel, I have been brainstorming a list (and have asked the help of facebook friends as well!). We've come up with quite a few ideas and I am exciting to make this as fun, funky, and realistic as possible, while preserving the uniqueness of the original piece.

Oscar stands in the antique store-to be (he'll be the owner, at least of the downstairs portion - isn't he dressed appropriately?):

Not really sure what the thing is that he has his hand on - perhaps the original owner had something hanging there? I'll probably remove it, especially since I snag my hand on it every time I reach into the shelves along the back wall (ouch!).

Hiya!

Well, it certainly has been a while since I have posted, but so much has happened in the past few months.

1) I got a new job! I am now a professor, teaching biology to undergraduates.

2) Because of #1, I moved from NH to NY. I live in the Albany area. It's very nice, though I do miss the ocean quite a bit.

3) I went to Hawaii about a week ago for a symposium, and that was pretty awesome. :)

Due to all the craziness in my life, my hobbies have been on the back burner, but now that I am settling in, I hope to finish up some projects and start some new ones.

Hopefully this week (or at least within the next couple weeks), I will have shingled my Glencroft (finally) and finished off the rest of the work I need to do for it (add the front door, finish the chimney and attach the front yard).

I also want to explore some of the mini shops in my area. Apparently there is Lord Jim's Dollhouses in Schenectady, Linda's World of Miniatures in Greenville, and Judy's Tiny Shop in Delmar. I hope they are all still open so I can go and check them out. Have any of you been to these shops? I'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

Jason still lives in NH (in fact, I am there visiting for the weekend), and this has proved convenient (but still a bit of a bummer that we live so far apart now) because I didn't have a lot of time to move and was able to just move what I need. I'll be taking the Glencroft with me and a box of minis I left behind.

So hopefully I will post more updates soon!

Cheers, and thank you for following my blog!