Nikki’s (very small) miniatures.

Middle age, I often think, is a bit like jam.  There you are sandwiched in between your elders and your children, trying to care for both in some very sticky situations.

Nikki compensates by miniaturising and is firmly of the opinion that the settee is for projects in progress, which her family work around because Nikki is taking good care of everyone.

Her preferred scale of working is one thirty sixth, dictated by the need to make homes for Tim Burton key chain figures.  Victor and Victoria’s daughter is a skeleton girl but Nikki chopped her head off and made a new one.  She uses Milliput and air drying clay to make many items because of scale constraints.  This can cause unusual difficulties – unable to find a bathroom set in the right size, Nikki was left holding a bath she had modelled for an hour and a half to stop it sagging while it cured.

Nikki does love pink and pretty but tends towards dark and Gothic.  She was still at school when the Addams Family film escaped and is a great fan of all things Tim Burton.

As Nikki is working in small scales, weight is a consideration.  Although she has collections of cardboard notebook backs, wood offcuts and metal miniatures, she also uses mediums that are difficult to control in miniature. These dogs are made of shrink plastic motes, glued together

as are these tasty Battenbergs, glued to glazed paper plates.

Curtains and soft furnishings in this Corpse Bride House

are made from air drying clay.  This is very tricky in miniature but has the advantage, for Nikki, who does a really expert paint job on the clay, of being light so that it does not disturb the balance of the small shelf unit on which the house is based.

The rooms are beautiful and so detailed.  In the girl’s bedroom

Nikki painted a purchased dolls’ house to go with all the toys she made from scratch.

The pink cabinets in the kitchen

are a nod to Selina Kyle, who, as Catwoman, has a pink cabinet in her kitchen.

Nikki likes to buy laser-cut dolls but add ears (it’s all about the detail) before painting. Just take a look at these wonderful miniatures, see how small they are.

Here in the sewing room, the Pin Cushion Queen is a Tim Burton Character, made by Nikki in Milliput.  It is sitting on a purchased chair.

The chest, shelf and sewing reel rack are card, the tailor’s dummy is clay on a cocktail stick, the basket is braid round a card form.

These miniature dioramas are very engaging.  The love and work poured into them, is apparent in the beguiling result.

The wonderfully miniature miniatures made By Nikki are proof of the therapeutic benefits of taking time to cut the difficulties of life down to size, to be able to return to reality, refreshed and renewed by happy hours spent with the very tiny thoroughly deceased.

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If you have minis that deserve a wider audience please email me by clicking on the link below.  If we all go skidding back into lockdown it could do us no end of good to have another house to live in, other than the one we’re stuck in.  If you want a different life, get out the glue and make it.