Closed for the Holidays

Hello everyone,
You may have noticed that I closed my shops (this one) and (the other one)...! for the holidays so that I can fly home to England and spend it with my family. I'll be back in Jan 2014!!

Until then - stay in touch and make sure you don't miss updates about new products, competitions and when big discounts will be announced (the big one is coming post Christmas).

So... here are my 3 Facebook pages! Find Pixie Dust Miniatures below, click on over and 'like' and you'll get the updates. Same for my other brand, and finally, the third Facebook page below represents my miniature movie making... one not to miss!

Pixie Dust Facebook page here

Other brand Facebook page here

Miniature film-making company Facebook page is here

Winner Announced!

A gigantic THANK YOU to everyone who entered this year's Pixie Dust Miniatures competition (the Elves and Gingerbread Competition which ran from 20th-30th Nov 2013). I was so pleased and flattered by the amount of interest. I'm also thrilled that it led so many of you to take a look over at my little studio in which I have started making films using my scale miniature set pieces and miniature characters.

I drew a name out of a top hat at random. See the winner announced, (and find out if s/he chose an elf or a gingerbread house) in the video draw! Click here or below.

To thank everyone who entered, please accept this coupon for 10% off any purchases for the rest of this year. The coupon code is THANKS. You would simply enter this coupon code at my shop's Etsy check-out after you click to buy, but before you pay.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing everyone (well my American friends at least) a Happy Thanksgiving!

Promotions and Competition News...

I am running a big Black Friday discount tomorrow. It will be applied to my online Pixie Dust Miniatures Etsy shop and is of course valid to all customers - not just Americans!

The first 5 customers will receive 30% off all in store.
The next 5 customers will receive 20% off all in store.
Everyone else will receive 10% off all in store for the remainder of the weekend.

Sale starts tomorrow at 10 am (Pacific Standard Time) and runs all weekend (ending at 10 pm on Sunday). Check the Pixie Dust Miniatures Facebook page here to see the announcement of the coupon code (this will be announced tomorrow morning just before 10 am).

And of course, don't forget to enter the Pixie Dust Miniatures COMPETITION which ends at midnight on Saturday! Details here.

As many of you know, I am English and live in California - so I was not brought up with Thanksgiving. Instead, in Britain, we had the Harvest Festival and of course our biggest November event is Guy Fawkes Night (or Bonfire Night). Today was my 4th Thanksgiving, but the very first time I have roasted my own turkey for the occasion. I took a photo and included it in this post (lame - yes, definitely!)

A Free Miniature

Just a few days left to enter the competition.....

Click here to be taken straight to the Pixie Dust Miniatures Facebook page and you can enter right away!

Featured - Read all about it!

It's always enormous fun getting featured in a magazine - especially when my work is put on the front cover! Take a look at the article below and see my fairytale pumpkin image on the front cover as well. This magazine issue is from Nov this year, and came out just last month.

PS Competition time! Don't miss out on the competition which is currently running right now! Name will be drawn in just a few more days... winner gets their choice of a Pixie Dust Miniatures Christmas item worth up to $200. Enter the competition HERE now!

(More info about this competition is also on my previous blog post here).

Elves and Gingerbread - a COMPETITION

My work station was getting a bit messy as I have been so hectic creating Christmas items for my other blog and so forth. I enlisted the help of my Christmas elves to try to create some order... they're not too bad at putting paperclips away but that was about it.

Anyway - some of these elves are available for sale at my online Pixie Dust Miniatures Etsy shop, and so are the cute little whimsical candy gingerbread houses.
A lot of you love the elves and only 3 are left (the rest sold out), so I thought I would let one of these cute little guys be the prize in another competition......!




* Win either a Christmas elf, or a candy gingerbread house (you decide)! *

* To enter this competition...

1 - Hop over to my Pixie Dust Miniatures Facebook Page (here) and 'like' the page.

2 - Leave a comment on the Facebook wall which simply states your name, and what you would like to win (use the chart below to pick an item. For example 'D' (Pooky the Elf)

3 - Hop over to my Tall Tales Facebook page (here) and 'like' the page.

4 - Then do the exact same thing - Leave a comment on the Facebook wall which simply states your name, and again write what you would like to win.

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You will be entered into the competition draw (I will pick a name out of a hat at random in 10 days time on Nov 30th 2013) and contact you if you're the winner. You will be awarded your chosen item (either an elf or a gingerbread house).


How to have a *better* chance of winning...!

Get a friend to follow the rules and enter, and your name will be entered into the draw another time (doubling your chances of winning). Just make sure that your friend mentions in their post that they were forwarded by you (or leave me a message so that I know).

Every friend you get to enter the competition gets you entered another time. So if you get 20 friends to enter, then you'd be entered in a total of 21 times!

Good Luck! xxx

Please note that if your favourite elf sells out in store before the competition runs its course then you will be given your second choice of prize. :)

The Trendy Witch's Kitchen!

Do you remember when I wrote about the retro kitchen for the modern witch that I was building?!

My work-in-progress blog post about it was here.

It's finished now - ta-da!





Behind the kitchen
As many of you know, I work as a miniature maker in Hollywood, creating miniature scale set pieces for film, TV, commercials as well as creating one of a kind miniatures for collectors. Well on my own time I am slowly and quietly working on a short film which I wrote, called 'Myrtle the Witch'. The sets are massively fun to design and create - her house for instance is built as a roundhouse in the depths of a forest with trees interwoven amongst her Aga and welsh dressers. It's a fairytale construction that I just love to be part of.

Having spent a lot of time working towards Myrtle and her witchy world, I felt like a change and was all too willing when I was asked to build a 'modern' clean and bright kitchen with a fantasy twist. So I created this kitchen which has design elements from the 40s, but is also fairly modern and certainly unconventionally 'witchy'.

Have a look at the photos below and let me know what you think!

In the Press!
I am delighted to say that 'The Dolls House Magazine' took an interest in this project and published some photos of it and a little write-up in their current issue. Great UK magazine, and you can find it here. The article itself is at the end of this post.

My Workspace - Quills and Inkwells!

Do you remember my quill and inkwells from back in 2010?! Well they sold out aggggggges ago and I kept meaning to re-make them. At last that time has come. I have spent a couple of days creating many new quills of all kinds - some which are more naturalistic (like swan, raven and owl feather quills) which can be used in a realistic miniature environment. The others are fanciful, colourful and magical - to be used in miniature fantasy scenes...

I will photograph them properly this weekend and make them available for sale in my online Pixie Dust Miniatures Etsy shop, along with the new dragonskin spellbook range.

Also, take a look at the last image. I have been hand-painting a wooden writing desk in an antique Japanese style... I am showing it on this blog but I think as it is not strictly fantasy, I will end up making it for sale at my other shop. :) So look at for that one as a finished piece there.

Russian Magazine Feature!

Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween! I haven't been on here much in the past few weeks as I have been vacationing abroad with my family (UK and Canary Isles). 
Hope you enjoyed the Halloween items I listed this year including the new Tutorial for a 'Spooky Pumpkin Fireplace' which will continue to be available in store all year round.

I flew back into LA 3 days ago and was ever so excited to see that I had been featured in a Russian magazine called 'The Art of Miniatures'! It is for November 2013 and has been out since Oct. I am 1/8 Russian so it meant a lot to me. My other miniature brand was featured in a different Russian miniature magazine and you can read about that here. 

Here's the full feature below. Hope you enjoy it.

(Anyone interested in reading a bit more about me and what else I do aside from Pixie Dust Miniatures, then please feel free to find my personal blog here.)

New TUTORIAL available! Spooky Fireplace...

Want to learn how to make a spooky old stone fireplace and fill it with your own handmade pumpkins? I've created a special tutorial with 27 step-by-step instructions to teach you exactly how to create your very own fireplace fit for a miniature fantasy / witch's home and filled with colourful pumpkins and jack o' lanterns.

This tutorial comes in PDF format and you can download it instantly from my online shop. Just click here to find it at the Pixie Dust Miniatures shop.









Exactly what you will learn how to make....

- A 'stone' fireplace with mantelpiece,
- Several pumpkins / gourds (some which glow in the dark),
- A Halloween vase,
- Halloween bunting flags to hang across it.

Techniques taught...

- How to create realistic brickwork, aged stone slabs (with my special aging technique),
- How to sculpt realistic pumpkins / gourds,
- How to paint a realistic pattern on pumpkins / gourds,
- How to sculpt a vase, including an special tip for a tidy finish.

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Shop announcement

The PDF tutorial is available right now, but as you will probably notice the rest of my shop is currently on 'vacation mode'. I am out of the country for 1 week having a holiday in Lanzarote with my family, so will not be able to ship miniatures until I am back. However PDF tutorials are electronic so you can download them instantly - even when my shop is on 'vacation mode'.

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This is what you'll learn how to make!

 

My Tutorial in DHMS Magazine!

Guess what?! A new Pixie Dust Miniatures tutorial which details step-by-step how to create your very own Crate of Dragon Eggs is now published in the current issue of 'Dolls House & Miniature Scene'!

A bit about 'Dolls House & Miniature Scene' magazine...

I am sure that most of you are familiar with this magazine, but for those who perhaps are not, click on the links below and discover it today...

'Dolls House & Miniature Scene' is a monthly magazine published in the UK and an excellent resource for miniature hobbyists, serious collectors and professional miniaturists. Each issue has projects, reports on fairs, clubs and miniature news from around the world and great articles about all kinds of miniature artisans. I love diving into their articles and finding all sorts of inspiration there.

They have a website here - where you can find this (latest) issue.

Hope you enjoy my Dragon Egg Crate Tutorial as well as the rest of the magazine. Here's a little preview of it... ;)

Miniatures in Motion

As many of my readers are aware, when I am not creating miniatures to sell to collectors, I am working in Los Angeles in the art department of the film industry. Well recently I have been focusing a lot of energy on the film 'Myrtle the Witch', which was written by myself and for which I am building the scale miniature sets and hand-sculpting the characters and props. It will be created mostly the same way as films such as 'Coraline', 'Frankenweenie', 'Wallace and Gromit' and 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. So if you're a fan of those films then please do click over to the links below and show your support for my film - 'Myrtle the Witch'!

There are good witches, there are bad witches... and then there's Myrtle. 

This film is about Myrtle and her quirky little world - her household of monstrous pets and her haphazard attempts to fit in and be accepted.

Thank you for showing your interest by becoming a fan of the Facebook Page here

And if you want to follow my blog about miniature film-making and Myrtle, then find it here.

The production company website is here.

Thanks a lot!

PS Stay tuned as I will be running a Pixie Dust Miniatures competition soon in which you stand to win a rather large and exciting prize... one of the conditions for entry is that you follow the above mentioned Facebook page and blog! :)