Tuesday 9 December 2008

Day 2-The Mall We Get Together. More Shopping!

YESTERDAY, I went shopping again for my Maharajah. This time it was Daiso, our "Everything for S$2" Japanese Superstore located at IMM Shopping Mall. IMM is also the mega mall I mentioned in my email to Sumaiya the day before where the "tiny village of 4 dollhouses" is being displayed.

Just saw the plugs on The Straits Times in their Monday Picks and Tuesday Picks. Here's the extract:


Monday Picks :

IMM DOLL HOUSE MINI WINTER WONDERLAND/LAUNCH OF IMM'S CHRISTMAS CHARITY INITIATIVES

View and photograph miniature displays of Victorian-style doll houses illuminated by colourful fairy lights. They are part of the winter wonderland setting, which includes Santa and more. It's part of the mall's Christmas Charity Initiatives to help Habitat For Humanity build affordable house for the needy. Where: IMM, Level 1, Atrium MRT: Jurong East When: Mon - Dec 21, 10am - 10pm (Thu : 4 - 5pm - Launch of IMM's Christmas Charity Initiatives with Habitat For Humanity to raise funds to support its mission to build affordable houses for needy people of all backgrounds, races and religions) Admission: Free Tel: 6665-8288 Info: You can experience 'snow' at the mall's level 3 Garden Plaza daily at 8pm from today till Dec 21.

Tuesday Picks

IMM DOLL HOUSE MINI WINTER WONDERLAND

Wander through miniature displays of Victorian-style doll houses illuminated by colourful fairy lights and snap pictures of them. They are part of the winter wonderland setting which includes Santa with his sled of gifts, a moving electric train amidst snowcapped Christmas trees and landscape. A highlight of IMM's 'I'm Home This X'Mas' festive celebrations.

This is the bottom left hand corner of IMM's Christmas brochure featuring the dollhouses. This is a pretty bad jpeg version because the pdf one is 2.6mb! If you zoom into the picture, you can see the setting. I still do not have the photographs. I refuse to show the full brochure. With tagline like "The Mall We Get Together" (!!!), I am sure you can imagine why.

The village has turned out ok. But I am now too distracted with building my Taj.

Anyway, I managed to spend about S$114 or thereabouts on the palace. About 45% of that went into enough plastic foliage to make the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Daiso is quite the miniature haven without trying to be. For instance, they have bamboo /wood /tatami /straw /faux marble/ granite/ slates/ tiles drawer liners. What more can you ask for to wallpaper or "floor" your house? Of course, I bought more unnecessary S$2 stuff for my real house too. Tried uploading pictures I have taken of the stuff but they are huge files. Got to ask Win how to reduce and re-size my photographs..

ASSIGNMENTS

I have been tasked to do 2 things- FIND images of the palace I have in mind and some dimensions for the dollhouse AND post images of the characters I want in the palace. Speaking of characters, one of the best thing that happened yesterday was receiving Sumayai's reply. This is the extract:
Goodness! It's like waking up on Christmas morning!

Dear Susan, your email sounds like so much fun. Of course I would be delighted to make the dolls for you
Woohoo!! She then went on to say:-

Please send me photos from the movie Kama Sutra that you want the dolls to dress like. Also, do you want the dolls posable, or do you want them in a fixed pose?....

I am currently working on my dream dollhouse, which was going to be the pleasure palace for the bachelo
r prince, Dev. ;p You and I seem to have similar tastes in dolls :D The construction of my dollhouse is being documented on my blog: thegarfieldblog.blogspot.com........

So, if everything sounds fine, let me know
how many dolls you want, send me photos of the characters you want recreated, and let me know if you want the dolls fixed, posable...

Thanks for emailing me. It's very sweet of you. :)

Love,
Sumaiya.
I quickly replied to her:
SUMAIYA!! You don't know how much I look forward to your reply! Now I can have those glorious dolls!

Thank you , thank you for responding so quickly :) .

I am following your blog quite closely because of your Garfield. I suspected that you might also be building an Indian palace when I saw how Prince Devi was posing at your bay window. Can you imagine how our houses could very well
be an Indian epic movie Pt 1 & 2 because the 3 main characters of my palace is the Bride, her Groom and his Jealous Mistress. If you see my blog, you will know what I mean :) . I hadn't intend to show anyone this blog, not for a long while. So you are the 1st and probably one of few to read my blog :) .

So I definitely want you to create these 3 characters. Then there is the Maharajah and his Maharani, the ladies at the wedding , some servants and definitely 3 children who must look like my 8 and 6 year old nieces and my 3 year old nephew. May also make another baby boy who's on the way. This means I need their parents...sigh. ...
Can you tell I am getting really carried away? But then I came back to my senses:

I think I may have to make do with cheaper versions of ceramic, fixed dolls for some guests (I have found 3 dancing couples but they are Punjabi people, I think, so their costumes are different. I do want saris. I don't think I can afford for you to make all of them so 5 main characters and 3 kids ( maybe they can be the 3 younger siblings of the Groom from the Maharajah's Chinese concubine??) .....I suspect this is an ongoing project for 1-2 years so I may not want all my characters done together. I see the sequence of the dolls as follows:

1st set- 3 mai
n characters
2nd set-Maharajah & Maharani
3rd set-3 or 4 Chinese children (do you know Asian dolls are almost impossible to find online? I was thrilled to bits when I found yours , such great quality to boot, Your Xiao Lin is stupendously gorgeous. Poor girl ended up being a barrista :) . She will be the Chinese Concubine in my Court.

My
BIGGEST problem now is I don't have a house and my sister says building a Dome for the palace is going to be a big headache, if at all possible. I really don't know yet how many rooms etc etc and who's gonna be where. We can make the dolls first. It will be the start of all things beautiful for the palace.

Anyhow, your blog inspired me to document my own dollhouse diary so I started something as well
last night. I mentioned you on my blog of course and I hope you don't mind, used 3 pics of your dolls to show what I wanted in my dollhouse. You can visit this very very beginner's blog attempt at http://sansdollhousediaries.blogspot.com/. With your permission, I hope to also link your blog in one of my pages.

I will try and put up some pictures that I can find from the Kama Sutra movie on the blog. There is a particular white sari that I have never forgotten and the red dress for the wedding as well. I must w
atch the movie again.

Will email you again when I get the pics.


This is VERY VERY exciting for me.

Susan
I ended last night with watching Mira Nair's Kama Sutra-A Tale o f Love till 3a.m in the morning.

2 comments:

Sumaiya Mehreen said...

:D Dear Susan,
I will try my very best to make the joints durable. I usually use about 4 pieces of wire wrapped together to make the armature strong. But since I have been making dolls for about two years only, I am still learning a lot and am yet to find out how they do over long periods of time. As long as the dolls are not going to be played with by children, I think they will be fine.

If you want the girl dolls to have movable shoulder joints, instead of having bare shoulders, I could give them small puffed sleeves to hide the joint.

I think white is OK at weddings. It's fine in Bangladesh. In India although there are cultural similarities, there are also big differences. I guess if in the movie the characters are wearing white, then it should be OK. I will try my best to make the dolls look like their actual characters in the movies. And remember, if after completing a doll, you think you want something different, please don't hesitate to let me know. Since I am making a palace as well, I might as well keep the doll for myself and make you a different one. So please don't be shy to tell me if you don't want a certain doll, or if you want me to remake it.

I have a favor to ask you. In your blog settings, there should be a tab called "email"... in the BlogSend Address box, could you add my email address please? That way, whenever you make a new post on your blog, a copy will be emailed to me. :)

I tried to email you earlier but the email bounced back to me saying that your inbox is full or something. :(

Sans! said...

Su, you are now on the email list:)

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