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What do you collect other than miniatures?


Guest Happy Heart

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On ‎1‎/‎12‎/‎2015‎ ‎5‎:‎36‎:‎51‎, Sithiche said:

I used to start to collect barbie dolls about 25 years ago... as a kid I loved to collect old, antique children books... now I have some dolls standing around (BJD's)

I don't collect anything other than miniatures, but when you said old antique children's books, I had a large collection as youth, and for some reason when we moved my mother gave them all away thinking I had out grown them, but there was something so wonderful and nostalgic about them, the artwork for one, I really appreciated them even as a teen, I wanted them back most of my life.

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Debora, I scoured ebay several years ago looking for books I had as a child.  I wanted the specific pictures that I remembered. I even have a keychain version of Candyland that had "my" pictures. I spent an entire day one summer when I was about 13 looking for "The Ghost of Opalina" in my local library. I had gotten it from there before and wanted to read it again. It took me more than 25 years to find it on the internet. It's long out of print and totally out of my financial reach if there is a copy somewhere, but a kind soul posted the text. I can read it whenever I want now :)

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39 minutes ago, chapchap73 said:

Debora, I scoured ebay several years ago looking for books I had as a child.  I wanted the specific pictures that I remembered. I even have a keychain version of Candyland that had "my" pictures. I spent an entire day one summer when I was about 13 looking for "The Ghost of Opalina" in my local library. I had gotten it from there before and wanted to read it again. It took me more than 25 years to find it on the internet. It's long out of print and totally out of my financial reach if there is a copy somewhere, but a kind soul posted the text. I can read it whenever I want now :)

That's great, this made me recall a book I later found on Ebay, It was a lenticular front, hard bound Hans Christian Anderson Little Mermaid, book, I remember as a tween, I wanted this book so bad and stopped to look at it all the time at the local drugstore, but was unwilling to pay the enormous price out of my paper route income, $15. LOL. I found the book on Ebay in 2003 and paid a much higher price $100 but I wanted it that bad.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

I just bought a Halloween music box! Halloween music boxes are quite rare and hard to come by but I found and bought three this year. The first is a water globe of Charlie Brown and has bats when you shake it and plays The Sorceror's Apprentice. The second is another water globe of a bear and rabbit trick or treating while passing through a graveyard and plays Funeral March of a Marrionette. The third is a witch flying on a broom over a jack o lantern and plays Put On a Happy Face.

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  • 2 months later...

While I was taking a break from building miniatures,  I got addicted to the horse collection Trail of Painted Ponies.   I started with one horse that I found in a consignment shop not knowing what it was and now have about 25!    Its an art form started here in New Mexico and I can't get enough.   If you are interested here is their website but it has so much more history than just buying horses.   Are there any other collectors in our forum?  

Here's one of my favorites!    I hope its ok to post this! 

http://shop.trailofpaintedponies.com/

keeper_of_dreams_front_4.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

I collect bird nests. We have a lot of tall pine tress around our home and the nests blow out after winter storms. I am fascinated by the intricate weaving and the materials they scavenge to create such perfect little homes. My favorite nest is from a Hummingbird.

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The freshly built ones usually fall out in the wind :(, so they're not crusty with poop. (I think that is what cements them??) I just have them wrapped in plastic grocery bags and stored in cabinets in the laundry room.. I've made a couple shadow boxes for house warming gifts and painted' Welcome to our nest on the box'. I buy the the little wooden eggs and put the same number of eggs in the nest as people in the house. I paint the eggs a pale, speckled  pink or blue for male or female.

I guess its kinda corny?

The ones made out of pine needle, I spray with varnish when I use them.

Edited by Mid-life madness
typo
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I was wondering how you destroy the mites & teeny parasites the birds are infested with that shed into the nest as the babies fledge & leave.  I collect up itty cones & seed pods and mosses to use in minis and I wrap them in foil and alternately bake and freeze them several times just to be sure that whatever is living in them is gone, and if they seem a bit fragile when unwrapped I give them a bit of lacquer to keep them together.

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  • 3 months later...

I bought a few more dolls and music boxes for my collections. My personal favorites of the ones I've gotten since December are the Clown and Ballerina music box which is exactly the same as the one a family friend had when I was little, the two fiber optic music box lamps, the Thomas Kincaid decorative lamp music box, a Goebel Christmas doll limited to 250, the Goebel doll commemorating my favorite doll artist's retirement, the Totally Hair Blonde Barbie Reproduction doll, a Goebel fox doll dressed like a fox hunter limited to 250, and this adorable music box of a cat dressed like a Grandma sitting in a rocking chair knitting with a piece of rope made to look like yarn attached to a small separate kitten with a ball of yarn that plays Memory. The best part is it rocks back and forth ad the music plays!

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I've noticed some dolls in thrift stores that look a lot like the dolls in the magazine ads.  I got one a month ago that looks like  middle aged lady whose clothes were nasty and faded, so I brought her home and made her a new wardrobe.  This week I found a little girl that looks to be in scale with my lady, wearing pink fuzzy slippers and dressed in a batiste nightie.  She is also in need of a new wardrobe, and also some hair care, when I get my work space cleared and the rain lets me back out to the workshop to rummage through my fabric stash.

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  • 1 month later...

I collect Rosebud 6 inch Thumbsucker dolls from the 50;s,I have about 130 of them. I have my husbands collection of Rupert bear stuff everything you could imagine but most important we have  the Rupert Bear Annual books, we have everyone going back to the 1st issue in 1936. I have a huge collection of Cherished Teddies Figurines.. Dolls mostly original antique and many repro antiques I  made myself  from copies of original porcelain molds, I use to teach that and still have my supplies and kilns. I collect lace handkerchiefs, I have the complete collection of British Radley Signature picture handbags, they bring out 2 ,sometimes 3 a year and I have then all back to the start in 2003 . I collect fabric, knitting wool, antique silver sewing items. Copper cookware , ,Le Crueset cookware , crafts of every type, Shetland Christening Shawl patterns and any books about knitted cobweb lace shawls .  I save and collect seeds, over 800 tomato varieties.. It just goes on and on. I have a vast collection of items related to slavery and the abolition of the same,I came from the town that William Wilberforce was born in and his museum became a big part of me, I have studied the slave trade for many years. I want to do a William Wilberforce museum  dollhose and recreate some of the stuff that is there

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I just received the four Goebel doll and three music boxes I bought on eBay yesterday. One of the music boxes is one I've been searching for on eBay for awhile now after wanting it since I saw one like it in a store around 2003 but not having the money to buy it. It's hard to find. I paid $32 plus shipping for it but it was worth it. It's shaped like a bar with a lazy Susan holding a wine glass and two liquor bottles and a bar maid that moves side to side while it lights up and plays Für Elise. The other two play songs I've been wanting to add to my collection.They are Sukiyaki and Variation on a Theme of Paganini.

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  • 5 months later...

I’m currently bidding on a musical wooden Dolly Dingle doll. The doll artist who made the doll is my favorite and she made only four different musical wooden Dolly Dingle dolls and I’m only interested in two of them because of how they are dressed. The one I’m bidding on right now is wearing a blue floral print dress and the other one I Want is dressed in a sailor girl outfit with a naval print on it and has a sailor cap and holds a little toy boat.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is my collection of circa 1900 Thonet bentwood doll chairs. The rocking chair is a new acquisition but the other pieces were my grandmother’s. The beechwood is in very good condition but two of the chairs need to be re-caned. I have no clue who can do this properly, so it’s never been done. Now that I have the complete set and no 3 year olds tempted to sit in them, I’m hoping to permanently display them somewhere in my house.

8D915F2B-3DDC-474E-8594-CF69B724EA03.jpeg

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Wow, caneing on a very small scale, sounds like a challenge.  I have a very old chair with clawed feet and arms, and I caned it but I can see how much more difficult it would be to do it that small, using tooth picks for the plugs?  I guess the first problem is getting cane that small, is it real cane?  seems like it would be if it were that old.

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11 hours ago, Goldenrodfarm said:

Wow, caneing on a very small scale, sounds like a challenge.  I have a very old chair with clawed feet and arms, and I caned it but I can see how much more difficult it would be to do it that small, using tooth picks for the plugs?  I guess the first problem is getting cane that small, is it real cane?  seems like it would be if it were that old.

Actually, they are doll chairs about 12” tall so they use regular sized cane.  Maybe I’ll start looking at YouTube tutorials and see if I can do it.

Edit: I watched tutorials on the two different ways to do caning. The first one was the easy way using a premade webbing. Unfortunately, my chairs are the hard way because I’m going to have to hand weave it in order to maintain the antique value. Luckily, re-caning them doesn’t take away from the value like refinishing would. But I have to use the original method. I’ll think about this some more.

Edit: I just found a number of  caning professionals in the Ft Lauderdale area. Gunna go this route.

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Back hen the Sobols were doing DIY articles for The American Miniaturist magazine one of the articles was how they do the caning for their itty 1:12 chairs.  A card pattern is cut to match the shape of the piece to be caned and with a needle holes are punched all around the piece halfway between the edges.  Using crochet thread (or I think heavy quilting thread might also work) Millie weaves the "cane" and when it's finished it's given a couple of coats of varnish that both colors it and hardens it.  The card is carefully removed and the caning is ready to go into its chair.

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