A Trip Down Nettlebed Lane

Before I head off to Blighty (UK) for a month for the holiday season, allow me to take you on a trip down Nettlebed Lane...

The witches of 'Good Witches Bad Witches' are going up in the world, starting with an attractive new street of shops. Nettlebed Lane will have a pet shop (for all their 'familiar' needs), a tea room (well, naturally) and a Tudor grocery store. And that's just to begin with.

I've started constructing this miniature model set in 1:12 scale and you get to see the first glimpse. There's a video here with the shortest of clips (I quickly filmed what I've built thus far as it sits on my workbench) and here are just a very few photos as well.

In other news...

What's the deal with the book, you ask?!

Many of you may know that I talked about an 'Art of Good Witches Bad Witches' book which I had hoped would be out this year in time for the holidays. I hate to disappoint, truly I do, but due to some legal issues and some commission work Tall Tales had to take on during this busy time, the book had to get pushed back. I feel terribly sorry about that and am making it up to you by adding pages and another tutorial to the book which was not originally going to be in it. So there - you get extra stuff for the same price! I hope it goes some small way to show that I am sorry for letting you down and really mean it. Your continued interest in my work means a lot to me and is never taken for granted.

There will be an announcement about the book in January when I am back from Europe and I may take pre-sales at that time. We'll see! I'll keep you posted. :)

In other other news....

I leave sunny Southern California for beautiful England, and yesterday I made fudge as gifts for all in my huge family. There are many differences between England and America, and just another funny little difference I recently found out is that our fudge is not at all alike!

American fudge is chocolate in flavour, brown in colour and smooth / chewy in texture. English / British fudge is what we would describe as 'fudge coloured' and has a 'fudgy' texture. That's because fudge is such its own thing we'd really use the word 'fudge' as a descriptive adjective! Our fudge is creamy and slightly caramel in flavour, 'camel' in colour and smooth, dense and ever so slightly granular in texture. Fudge was invented in Scotland, where they call it 'tablet'. In the UK all fudge is made the Scottish way and American style 'chocolate' fudge is largely unknown, although chocolate flavoured fudge does exist as a variant, along with clotted cream fudge, whiskey fudge, cherry fudge etc etc. I filmed the cutting of my fudge as the only way I could show the texture. Play video below.

~ Recipe ~

397g can condensed milk

150ml milk

450g demerara sugar

115g butter

1. Place all ingredients into a large non-stick saucepan and melt over a low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

2. Bring to the boil then simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring continuously. 

3. Remove the fudge from the heat and beat until it’s very thick and starting to set (this should take about 10 minutes).

4. Pour into a 20 cm square tin lined with baking parchment and leave to cool before cutting into squares.

See you in 2017! Have a wonderful Christmas / Happy Holidays everyone!

People are Strange

Waking up in the wee hours of the morning, 3 or 4 hours before the alarm is set to go off can be a blessing. Yes, I'm tired after 3 hours sleep, but waking up suddenly and with energy makes me feel like I've stolen time. Magically I have an extra 4 hours to work on something I wouldn't otherwise have had. However I probably wouldn't be writing this drivel if I were better rested and more switched on.

In my stolen time this morning I quickly (emphasis on quickly) finished off that blasted watercolour (mentioned months ago here) which was such a relief. I hate unfinished tasks, plus it was good for me. I'm so completely out of practice (at painting anything and with any medium), so it's good to get back to it, even though the painting isn't what I wanted it to be. I've included some image details, plus entire painting in this post. Last image is just a 5 min mock-up for 'The Handbook to the Hidden World' -for fun.

Found out today that scanning large artwork in LA costs a small fortune, so I captured my painting in a series of photographs taken with my Canon DSLR and then 'stitched' them together in Photoshop. Brought the background to pure white but didn't edit it in any other way. Wondering if I should try to enhance it using Photoshop? Advice on the topic would be great! 

The past week's been fairly eventful. I was granted my Greencard on Monday and met Nicholas Cage and Chris Sanders that evening at a party on Sunset Blvd. On Tuesday I met the remaining members of my all-time favourite band - 'The Doors'. John Densmore and Robby Krieger told stories about how Jim Morrison wrote 'People are Strange' whilst hiking up Laurel Canyon at dawn. He had been feeling completely depressed but that creative outlet - coming up with that song - turned his mood around. Sound familiar to any other creatives out there? Certainly does to me. Next day I met Joe Letteri at a pre-screening of 'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug' and enjoyed hearing him talk about the making of the film, despite the fact that Weta abandoned miniatures after the LOTR trilogy. Had the pleasure of meeting Ralph Fiennes last night and hearing him talk about directing his second film 'The Invisible Woman'.

I love LA.

Feeling Bookish

It's been a really busy but a brilliant week. I gave my first interview / feature for a Russian magazine ('The Art of Miniatures'), sold a lot of Halloween themed miniatures to collectors worldwide and started on a commission for a Sorcerer's library. The miniature cookbooks I had made a month ago (but never bothered to mention on this blog) created some hype and I was asked to make leather-bound spellbooks (or 'dragonskin' books) and a library to house them. See the cookbooks at the end of this post.

Here are some fun photos of it all in-the-making.

I also got a great new toy to use to help me work with leather (see photo). The books shown here are less than 3/4" in height. The fireplace you see below was wooden (I have made fireplaces before, such as the one used in the Christmas 2012 magazine feature) but this one I acquired in unfinished wood and I painted it to resemble green marble.



Now I better get a move on... doing another magazine cover and the deadline looms... ;)

Magazine and Books

Another little feature to share - this one's from Dec of last year (2012) and I just received my hard copy in the post. Ashdown Publishing (US) put out their usual Christmas issue of American Miniaturist magazine and included a 2 page piece on my work. They used photos from 2010 including the famous Santa's helper elves at the conveyor belt and some holiday food.

Click the magazine cover on the left to be taken to their site.

I was featured 3 times in December last year (front cover and full feature in UK magazine - post about that here), this feature and an appearance in Spanish magazine 'Miniatura' which I'll share tomorrow.

Aside from magazines... Ashdown Publishing have put out some new books. I did the front cover work on two published at the end of last year - Halloween and Christmas themed books about the art of miniatures. You can find them at iTunes and on Amazon as Kindle editions. Just follow the links below.

Here's some larger images of my work used in this magazine. Guess those elves don't get old do they? They've been featured in the UK, US and Spain several times over the past 3 years!

Here are the two books published by Ashdown. Please note that I contributed photography and some editorial but that was the extent of my involvement. The books are a collection of work by several miniaturists assembled and edited by Ashdown.