2012 in Review - Part Two

Almost the entire time I was working on Dawncrest Castle at the start of the year I was thinking about my next project, The Dig Site.  It was one of those crazy ideas that come out of nowhere and grab you by the throat shouting "make me now".  Somehow, I made it wait until after the castle was finished but once Dawncrest was finished in early April I immediately set about making the Dig Site into a reality.

The Site is divided into two parts, the "inside" and the "outside".  Outside a team of archeologists are excavating the ruins of an ancient Egyptian temple or tomb that has been sealed for thousands of years.

 Inside, the structure has been perfectly preserved over the millenia due to it being undisturbed for so long.

Kikerikotep the mummy has been disturbed by the archeologists digging outside and has come to investigate the disturbance.

 The Dig Site took a little over a month to complete.  A few weeks after it was finished, the editor of Dolls house and Miniature Scene magazine saw the pictures I'd been throwing all over the internet and asked if she could use it in the magazine.  Needless to say she didn't need to ask twice and months later my Dig Site appeared in the Novemeber issue of DHMS!  This was certainly one of the high points of my miniature year!

With the Dig Site done, I started on the next project which was the renovation of an old house I had never liked.  This was something I'd been planning for over a year and I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  It was too bad that when I stripped out the old house and tried to re-form it into the new house I wanted it decided to resist me every step of the way.

Eventually, I had to accept I couldn't have absolutely everything that I wanted, but only after I'd tried everything to squeeze it all in.  The rooms I ended up including were the Bedroom:

 

 The Nursery:

The Drawing Room:

 The Library:

The Dining Room:

The Hall:

The Kitchen:

The Basement Hall:

And the Laundry:

Only after the house was finished did I settle on the name "Preston House".  It is set in the Georgian era and is a mis-mash of pretty much the entire hundred years from 1700 to 1800.  There are over twenty people spread through the nine rooms of the house.

 The house itself fought against what I wanted it to be and there a lots of things in the house that aren't quite right and even more items I bought specifically to put in the house that just refused to fit in.  Still, I thing the final result was worth all the irritation.

 Next week I'll add the final part of my "2012 in review" including for the first time Tilli's House and the bedroom roombox completely finished!