Memorial day!

                                                           

Have a safe and Happy Memorial Day! I staged the Roberts family in the kitchen to have red, white and blue cake to celebrate their day off. Mom still has not arrived from the store with lunch. (I have not yet found Mom for a good price yet, lol)

But let's not forget our real reason for the day, those that did not get out of the uniform. 

What I have been working on...

I have been working on some diorama photos for Memorial day, a new spin on what I previously have done in the past. Still not sure I might go with it. 

And here are my edited photos with the text. I wanted to give the appearance of a widow, in mourning for a soldier /vet who has passed. 

Dark Hollows Poppy Parker arrives at the Gothic Mansion...

I was able to get some wonderful photos of Dark Hollows Poppy Parker at my Gothic Mansion at my studio. A little tweaking and it looks similar to a Collinwood or my version. I transferred my portrait of Barnabas (actually a real painting I copied from the internet of a young man, just looks similar) to a gold frame I had from the white one) and it looks far more gothic now. Poppy arrives at the deserted mansion...covered in creepy cobwebs...

'Hello? Anyone home? it is so quiet here..."

'Nice Kitty,'...'ooh, mummy statues and cases!eek!'

'This must be my famous ancestor Barnabas Collins! But why is everything covered in cobwebs?' 

Poppy decides to take a candle, the only known lighting available right now, and go upstairs and explore. No one has come to greet her, and it is getting late. 

Should I go upstairs? It is so dark and lonely here and they did say they were expecting me....

Hesitantly she walks through the long hall and drawing room to the long flight of stairs...........

What awaits Poppy upstairs? Will she meet Barnabas, her long lost ancestor and vampire? Will other members of the family wake up and greet her? Will someone finally clean the house or have a Halloween party? Stay tuned to find out................
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            Behind the Scenes diorama photos-

Here are some behind the scenes photos of the setup of the Gothic mansion, aka Collinwood...

The entire structure is held together with pins and is about forty inches high on the main walls, which are insulation foam spray painted and covered with scrap book papers for two levels. Though it has worked for this I would like to make it over again since it is so hard to get to stand up and pin pictures into etc,  The staircase from ebay (puredreams) had to have more levels added to it to gain the height needed to reach the upper level since it wasn't tall enough and I had already built the structure according to scale. I needed alot of height for this diorama. I am already re-thinking how I can do this. 

Since this is so large and so difficult to set up, I hate taking it down and now rarely take it down. Ihave taken it down once before and it was literally and all day job putting it back up for Christmas last year. I will never do that again unless I have to , pinning it together is hard since I'm short and it's tall. It stays in my climate control storage unit on a six foot table. I decorate it according to the holidays and it has stayed up all year decorated for Christmas. The other part of the other six foot table is for where I work on other dioramas I build. 

I am currently working on the big bang theory's comic book store and made a little progress, not much. Those photos later. 
More to come, stay tuned. Lisa

Dark Hollows Poppy Parker....

After many holdups, I was finally able to get my Dark Hollows Poppy Parker & my Smoke & Mirrors Lillith- they both arrived today. I have not yet deboxed Lillith, I want to de-box her and Eden together. Would you believe I have not yet deboxed Eden? She has been sitting in her box waiting for her sister to arrive all this time. 

Dark Hollows Poppy has arrived and she is everything in my gothic dreams. Dark Shadows was and is a cult classic soap opera from the late 60's, I was only 1 year old when it began airing on TV and by the time I became aware of it, my mother would not allow me to watch it because of the horror aspect. Most of the mothers on the block would get together and if the kids came home from school it was Batman, the Mickey Mouse club, or cartoons if you had your little friends over in the afternoons. Things were much more different in the 60's and 70's as far as what was thought good for children to 'watch' on TV. This show was targeted for teenagers back then and came on around 4 pm or 3 pm. I have to admit I have recently discovered it with the 50th anniversary and began watching clips of it on Youtube. 

Here are some of my photo shoots of Poppy stumbling about Collinwood...stay tuned for more!

It took me forever to get my photos to load up from my phone. Here are some of her in her box. I have to say Integrity has outdone themselves with their boxes this year on this line, Swinging in London. 

What I love the most about these boxes is that they look like an actual old-fashioned Telephone box, where in the old days you used to go into a telephone booth and make a phone call. I KNOW somewhere in my boxes of stash I have a payphone magnet but I just can't find it and I was going to make my registration Poppy's box into a telephone booth since hers was bigger. I am still sorting through my doll room and tons of stuff. In desperation I have looked on Ebay for one and even Etsy. They are hard to find. Hopefully I will come across it. 

Today I hope to take some fab photos of Poppy at the GOthic mansion, aka Collinwood, so the Gothic Mansion will be getting a makeover in time for Halloween. Stay tuned! Hopefully I can do some photos of Lillith and Eden together soon. 
~Lisa