New Laser Cotton Lace Romantic Grouping

One twelfth scale Kit of Laser Cut Cotton Lace Romantic Grouping

Here is a new kit I have just finished thinking of Valentines Day coming in February. Included in this kit are 5 lace pieces for Valentines or another romantic miniature scene. These would look nice in a miniature setting on a dining room table, side table, dresser or on a chair back from vintage to modern I really enjoyed designing these. I am also showing a Romantic Photo Album that is available in Etsy as a digital download to make the album with many of my French postcard images. The 2 porcelain pieces I made and china painted years ago.  I will also sell this kit in quarter scale in 2 sizes as well.

Thanks for looking, Mini Hugs, Jean

Valentine Free Printables

Hi Everyone,

Look what I found in an antique Needlework magazine I was looking at this morning!! It was such a coincidence with Valentines just around the corner. I thought someone might be able to use them for a tiny greeting, scrapbooking or other printable uses. The middle one was in the magazine and I fixed it up a bit then colourized the others. I hope everyone treats themselves well and has a wonderful Valentines.

Hugs, Jean

Romantic Rose mini Album digital project and other new digital downloads

Here are some of the new French Postcards that are up in my Etsy shop. I have really enjoy working on these, painting and trying to bring them to life in Photoshop.

Today I finished a Vintage Romantic Rose miniature Photo Album digital download project which is now on Etsy here.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/178999350/vintage-romantic-rose-photo-album
I have included many of these postcards in miniature in the Romantic Rose Project. The frames are cut out and the antique images are placed behind the cut out shape to give a realistic look. The cover was a scanned image from my antique albums but I made the background rose.

Happy Valentines to all of you. Hugs, Jean

2014 Calendar and Valentine Free Printables, New AIM Supplement out now.

The most recent AIM Project Supplement is now available on Scribd.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/205104250/49-February-2014-Supplement
There are so many interesting projects plus the 12 Makes of AIM Christmas are included for handy downloading. For this issue, I designed a miniature Calendar for a dollhouse or miniature scene with vintage images from my postcard collection in 3 scales. I also designed some miniature Valentines from some old Valentine Cards that I thought were so lovely and I used some of the images for Valentine paper as well. You can right click to save these images to your computer.
I hope you each have a special Valentine's Day, always great to treat yourself to something special too, like flowers or other romantic gifts of your choice.

Happy Valentines Free Printables and New Years Resolution

A lovely friend of mine gave me the sweet Valentine card this year that is the first image and I just had to share it with everyone. She knows I love vintage cards. I am also offering a larger version of thee Valentine Gift card that I offered in 1910 that you can also find on one of my blogs smaller as a previous free image. You can right click on the images to same them for printing.
If you do a search on my blog for Valentines, you will see other freebies I have offered for Valentines in the past.I also put a larger version of the first Valentine gift card if you prefer to right click and save.

My New Years resolution this was to learn something new in Photoshop and my other programs everyday. I would say that this resolution has had the largest impact on my life of any I have made.  I usually use the same painting techniques and creating techniques in the programs. Corel Draw, Photoshop, Painter and Corel PSP are my favorite programs and each has so much to offer. To learn some of the techniques, I creating photomontages and collages from stock photos in Photoshop recently. It has been very exciting and so creative. I use Photoshop all the time for my digital downloads but like any computer program there is always so much more to learn. Here are a  few I have been working on, the last is a freebie Valentines card too.

New free 40th issue of AIM Magazine

Hi Everyone,

The new 40th edition of Artisans in Miniature is now available for you to enjoy. There are great articles and projects from our 300 members. I'm still enjoying my roll on the Editorial team of AIM but have had to cut back a bit on what I do because of my essential tremor. My tremor is mostly in my hands so sometimes formatting is more difficult. I have included a free printable in three scales of miniature French Postcards and will try to get it up here in a pdf file so you can have more detail. I also enjoyed working on the Gallery, always such a pleasure to display such wonderful minis.
Hope you enjoy it.

Mini hugs, Jean AIM Imag 40th issue

Some of My Valentine Miniatures and Robin Betterley's Valentine's Party

Valentines is soon going to be here so I thought I would share some Valentine Miniatures I offer through either eBay or our Website. The above photo shows some of my Queen of Heart books and Valentine books. Hanging on the cabinet is a Newborn Valentine Kit. Below that is a Newborn Queen of Heart's Kit that comes with the book cover as well. The image I used in my design is from my original Queen of Hearts book.

Miniaturist Robin Betterley's Blog  is having a wonderful Valentine's party and I thought you should all here about it. She has projects for crafts and miniatures, recipes and other very fun ideas. If you enjoy Valenines you will love this party. Party on!!!

The photos below are more of my Valentine kits.

Half Scale kit

Baby Kit

Apron Kit

Shows two of my Quarter Scale Fabric Furniture Kits.

Free Printable Valentine Cards, B.C.Winter Olympics, My Mom's Cookie Recipe, New Kits

First I would like to thank all of my followers, such an inspiration visiting your blogs and knowing you care if I'm here. My apologies for not listing in Dec., we went on a wonderful three week, four continental cruise. We visited Italy, Spain, France, Gibraltar, Morocco, Canary Islands, Brazil, Barbados and Dominica and then home from Florida on time to celebrate Christmas. Everywhere we visited was so special, took so many photos that I hope to share.

It is very exciting here in BC as the 2010 Winter Olympics is starting in Vancouver today. I live in Victoria which is really close. I wish I had tickets but it is great to watch it on TV. Right now I'm watching the Torch Relay as it makes it's way to Vancouver. As the Poppytalk blog mentioned "Go Canada Go"!

I'm offer free Valentine Printable postcards and cards shown above, the first should print in one twelfth & quarter scale and the second set of images is larger. There are beautiful cards from a lovely postcard album from 1910 I bought last year and couldn't resist sharing them.

The next three photos I've shown above are new kits I'm offering through my eBay store and my website http://jdayminis.com  January and Feburary are my favorite design months as my mini business is often slower but that hasn't happened this year. To make more time in my day we've started waking up earlier and going for walk, it has worked well.

One kit shown above is called Newborn Queen of Heart's Baby. One customer mentioned she was going to use it for an Alice on Wonderland scene which I thought was a terrific idea.
I designed it using images from my vintage childrens Queen of Heart's book.

The apron kit is called Vintage Ginger Spice Apron. I have inherited many beautiful vintage aprons my grandmother and mother used to wear. I wanted this to look like an old apron from the 20's to 50's. I designed the gores and square bodice with a bias tape look as was used in so many of the designs or that era.

Today was my mother's Birthday and I miss her since she passed away. I've been thinking of how she really gave me a love for baking. She always said she loved blending the butter and sugar by hand and I do too. In memory of mom, I thought I would share her favorite cookie recipe that I enjoy making too. Since I need a gluten free diet, I just substitute for the 3C flour...rice flour and tapioca flour. The blended raisins really help to hold the gluten free cookies together. It is a lovely moist recipe.

Mom's Raisin Cookies

Blend with a spoon: 1 Cup butter and 1½ C. white sugar until smooth

Blend in a blender until the raisins are pretty well liquified:
2 eggs
3 T. milk
1 C. raisins

add: 1½ t. soda
1½ t.cream of tartar
½ t. salt
1 t. vanilla
3 C. flour

Spoon onto baking sheet and bake until golden brown and still moist. Bake at 350° for 8-10 min. or 325° in a convection oven. I like to add 1 C. chocolate chips, nuts or raisins or all.

All the best,
Mini Hugs, Jean

Free Images, More Valentine Cards 1920's 1:12 & 1:48

Here are a few more of the Valentine cards from my collection, the middle image is in quarter scale, the first is a larger version to give more detail if you want to scale it down and the third image, if you click on it to print, it should be one twelfth scale. It is lovely to be able to share these unusual images.

I was visiting the Fairydoor blog with beautiful sculptures by Daniela Messina, the most recent shown was the sweetest mouse sleeping in a teacup, just adorable! If you scroll down the page you can see her lovely babies and children.

Cheers, Jean

Free Images, Valentine Cards 1920's 1:12 & 1:48

Quite a few years ago when I was visiting antique shops in Seattle, searching for Victorian children's books, I found the most amazing scrap book from the 1920's to 30's. It was filled with the most beautiful cards from a daughter to her mother, mostly Mother's Day cards but many others. All of the cards seemed to be illustrated by the same illustrator but I've never been able find out who it was. I've reproduced a few of the Valentine cards her for you as printables. Two of the cards I was able to open into so they can be folded into four parts, the others are postcard style. If you click on the link you can print them out in on twelfth scale for a miniature scene. The first set is for a quarter scale scene. You might not want to fold a card in quarter scale but you could cut out the main images. Love the scottie image.

Thank you so much to those who have linked to follow my blog, it is so much fun to be able to click on a face up in the right corner of my blog and visit your wonderful blogs, so much talent and very interesting! I was delighted today to be given an award and a lovely write up by San,
Day 20 of her blog Doll House Diaries http://sansdollhousediaries.blogspot.com/ I can't believe the Maharajah's Palace she is undertaking, I love her passion and all the wonderful detail she is putting into her project.

I've recently found the most amazing resource blogs for Vintage images, if any of you love digital or other scrapbooking as I do, or make smaller images for a miniature scene and for those who enjoy making mixed media collages and art pieces. One I love is The Graphics Fairy http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/ Karen's vintage wall paper from her collection is beautiful. On the right side of her blog are links to the various themes, there are 83 French images and beautiful labels for those making fragrance sets. Another blog is The Vintage Moth,
http://thevintagemoth.blogspot.com/ Abbie and Karen both put images up nearly every day, imagine the dedication that takes! They both also have inspiring blogs of images and art work. Abbie's is called Down Abbie's Road and Karen's is Fleurish they both with wonder photos and works of art.

Cheers, Jean