NEW BOOK: Miniature Mania II By Sue Passmore

 Remember Sue Passmore’s Miniature Mania Book that came out a short while ago in 2020, which featured part of her dolls house and miniature collection?

http://ktminiatures.blogspot.com/2020/11/miniature-mania-by-sue-passmore-new-book.html

Well, with the ink scarcely dry on her first book, I am delighted to tell you that Sue has now brought out her second book - Miniature Mania II.

Miniature Mania II By Sue Passmore

This second book is different from her first, in so much that the second half of her collection is more eclectic, plus it includes some more recent examples of houses, as well as one or two not so recent. The book is split into the following sections: Houses, Shops, Room & Shadow Boxes, Box Files, Book Scenes, Entertainment, Modern Plastic, Paper houses, pop-Up Books and then finally Odds & Ends.  

Sue's Prefab House, made from a magazine project.

Sue's French Book Shop made inside an old wine box. 

Among some of Sue’s creations featured is a prefab that she made using instructions from a dolls house magazine project, a French book shop made from a wine box, a furniture warehouse, a school room inspired by one seen in a book, and so much more. 

Sue's Dowlais House complete with "Mrs Jones, her mop, duster and packet of Craven-A.

Dowlais House started off as a Chinese wall decoration that Sue found on an animal charity stall, which she then turned into a 1/24th scale Welsh terrace house. ("Mrs Jones" is instantly recognisable as one made by my old mate Robin Britton of Coombe Crafts, from many moons ago).

Sue's model of a crofter's cottage. 

Sue’s Crofter Cottage was inspired after a trip to the Hebridean islands, complete with sea rounded stones to weigh down the roof and protect from high winds!

Back Cover Of Miniature Mania II

If like Sue, you love dolls houses and all things miniature, and enjoy seeking out bargain mini treasures to collect or use creatively, then you may find this book useful.  Sue’s lateral thinking and ability to adapt all kinds of containers and objects into clever tiny abodes or scenes is rather inspiring, and this book may help you kick start your own ideas, whether you are new to the hobby or a well-seasoned collector. Sue has also included some more modern miniature dolls houses in this book such as Fisher Price, Sylvanian, etc. 

As with Sue’s first book, this second book is only obtainable direct from the publishers lulu.com.  

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

A Little Special WW1 Creation With A Story Attached

 I have been away up north for a couple of days folks, so my apologies if you have been trying to get hold of me by email or phone! Am now in the process of catching up on the backlog of emails. However, if a lady in Australia called Leila is reading this...sorry but my emails to you are bouncing back with the message "domain has no valid mail exchangers". I have no idea what that means as I have not come across that before but the only immediate solution that I can think of is if you could please contact me via a different email address?

Ok...now for something inspirational!

A delightful email with a photo from a customer called Sue Passmore popped into my inbox the other day, which utterly bowled me over!!! Sue, an author of several local history books, has been a customer of KT Miniatures for so long now that I simply cannot remember exactly when we first met! She has very kindly allowed me to share her photo and story on here so the following text is in Sue's own words.....

"This August our village - New Quay in Cardiganshire, staged an exhibition to commemorate those who served and died during the First World War. 

In a KT Miniatures newsletter I had seen advance notice of the dugout designed by Celia and Robin, in Dolls House & Miniature Scene magazine, and simply had to make it for the exhibition. The instructions were very easy to follow, I had to adapt it a little as we were planning for ours to be a dugout during the war, rather than revisited later. How accurate Celia and Robin's dugout proved to be, as was demonstrated by the discovery among the artefacts lent to us of a postcard showing King George V outside an identical dugout! 

So we displayed the two together. 

Everyone found the exhibition deeply moving. We are a small community, and the relatives and descendants of all the people named were known to us. My father and four of his 5 brothers served in the war and so we were able to include more than just photographs with items like his diary, and there were personal stories from many others too. Touches like the dugout helped the children to understand and in the prisoner of war section, we also had some real live lettuce as the prisoners struggled to grow their own food in biscuit tins for want of decent ground, which also impressed. Our visitors' book was full of appreciative comments from strangers as well. And several children said to me that they wanted to have a go at making their own dugout, so I told them where to find it." 

A big thank you to Sue for taking the time to send me this photo and story, and for letting me show it on here. If anyone else out there has been inspired by our WW1 project and gone on to make the dugout, do please get in touch....both Robin and I would love to hear from you.