NEW - Mouse house display units!

Over the last few weeks the mice have been busily working away building these special "Mouse Houses" and finally they are ready for you to enjoy!  We have 3 sizes to start off with: Small, Medium and Large but there are others being constructed as you read this. We do hope you enjoy this new addition to The House of Mouse. 

Mouse House!

I just love it when my customers send me photos of my mice in their new homes. Thank you so much to Laurie for allowing me to share her photo on my blog. All these little mice look so happy in their wonderful home!

Redecoration Photos

I promised you photos and here they are. We have started work on 2 rooms at once, the master bedroom and a small box room that we use for all our computers (when you are married to a computer geek you need a whole room for them)

Here is our bedroom before we started work on it. We had very dark red walls on all 4 sides, blond parquet flooring and an imposing wardrobe... egh! I love the red on the walls, but there was too much of it.




So we stripped off the remaining wallpaper, pulled up the parquet flooring and carpet that was underneath it. We primed the walls and then plastered the lot. Plastering is so messy but the result looks great. We also boxed in the pipes for the radiator. In Holland they just leave the pipes showing in this kind of house, but being British I can't stand them so they had to be hidden away.


We painted 3 of the walls in a beautiful cream and one wall is back to being red again. I love a little drama in the bedroom ;) It will look less overpowering when it is broken up with furniture and things on the wall.

I hope you enjoyed a the little tour around our home, more photos for you soon.

Hand picked favorites - Home

They say home is where the heart is, and I absolutely love all 6 of these items on the theme of house, home and garden. Perhaps it is particularly good choice of theme because we have been renovating our home a lot recently.
I hope you enjoy my choices this Tuesday.

Laundry Day
by atwhim

Birdhouse
by DoorCountyWoodworks

Tasket Set - Our House
by JennMaruskaDesign

Penguin Love. magic terrarium no. 04
by lapomme

Baba Yaga's Chicken Leg House
by MelissaSue

Chasm 1
by MKBartstudio

Artist Interview - Petit Plat

I have always had an admiration for anyone who can produce miniatures with realistic detail. The skill involved in working so small is just amazing. This weeks Featured Artist has this skill in abundance! I am blown away by the detail in her tiny creations! I hope you will enjoy her interview and marvel at her tasty art.

Berries in Pink on Cupcake - Silver Sterling Earrings

Tell us a little bit about yourself

I’m Stéphanie and I live near Paris. I’m a happy mix of origins going from Russian to Polish, through German and French, but my nationality (the one on my passport) is French.

Other than creating art, what else do you do?
I’m still studying architecture, if everything goes fine, I’ll finish in a bit less than 2 months. I don’t intend working as an architect right now, though.

Have you always been an artist?
I see myself more as a sort of artisan. But since I remember I always crafted a lot, drawing, painting, knitting, …

Actually I wanted to become a painting artist when I was little :)

Tell us a bit about your creative process

I work in ‘our’ bedroom/room/living-room on two tables, which don’t have the same height. The higher one is good when I work on miniatures so I can sit straight. The other ‘normal’ height’ table is both for architecture and miniatures. Miniatures are always lying a bit everywhere, because I mostly don’t know right away how to arrange them.

I don’t have a weakly planning on when I miniaturize. I just do when I feel down or have time.

Selection of Breads on Bakers Tray - 1/12 miniature

How did you learn to create such detailed work? Are you self taught?

Yup. Self taught. But my friend google helped me a lot in my research of the best miniature work so I had a lot to look at in order to make my owns.

After this first google phase I bought the book Making Miniature Food from Angie Scarr. It’s a very well known book among miniaturists. I also got her second book which was published in April.

Are there any foods you particularly enjoy making?
I used to love making doughnuts, but that vanished. Now I would say breads and fruit tarts. Fruit tarts are a life time favourite I guess :)

I also really enjoy making “preparation boards” and gingerbread houses!

Ok chocolate is great as well!

Which of your creations is your favourite?

It really has to be this one

I really do love that salmon board and I’m still thrilled that my first attempt at making salmon turned out that great!

Where can we find you online?
Gee! I’m just everywhere, it’s hard for me to keep up!

So I sell on these sites:
PetitPlat.etsy.com
PetitPlat.artfire.com
PetitPlat.dawanda.com
cdhm.org/user/petitplat

And you can see my work on:
PetitPlat.110mb.com
flickr.com/photos/_sk
PetitPlatBySK.blogspot.com

Chocolate Orange Supreme - 1/12 miniature

If you would like to be considered for Featured Artist, please leave a comment under this post and tell me which Stéphanie's creations of you love the most! (you can pick more than one, I know it is hard to choose)

I've been Tagged!

As you might have noticed, blogs have been getting tagged all over the place recently! In fact, I am the one of the last people I know to get tagged. (which says something about my blog promotions, I think I need to work on that...)

I was tagged by Sassy Soaps and Such She makes handmade soaps and dolls. I couldn't resist this mousy soap! (I wonder why!)





So here are the rules of being tagged:

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are 7 random facts about me!

1. When I was little I wanted to be a teacher
2. In my spare time I perform improvised comedy (like "Who's Line is it Anyway?") on stage in Amsterdam City Center.
3. My middle name is Juliet.
4. When I am sewing I have to have a dvd or audio book playing or I get bored quickly.
   
5. I made my first mouse exactly one year ago today.
6. Before I made mice I was a professional oil painter www.annagreaves.com
7. I was born with hypermobility in all my joints. This means that all the joints in my body flex further than a normal persons do (different from being double-jointed). This makes me very flexible but it also means that my muscles have to take a lot more of the strain on every day movement, so I often suffer from muscle pain and RSI.

Now to tag some of my blog friends...

1. My little Bird
2. ArtMind
3. FleurFatale
4. Daydream Glass
5. PinkPatrice Boutique
6. Sock Monkey Jungle
7. Beads in the Belfry