Sunday 8 August 2010

A garden variety post



Last year I showed you Nora and Helmer's new gazebo.
Now Nora has done more with it, she has tiled the floor and bought furniture in a style she thought fitted the gazebo better than the modern alumnium furniture she first used. She has also been working a lot on the garden and now she's eager to show you all the result of all her efforts!



Being a busy bee, Nora loves to work in the garden



and is very proud of all her blooming flowers.



Welcome inside!



- and mind the steps!



Nora is also very fond of her Virgin Mary statue, made by the famous artist Christel Jensen.



Views from the gazebo.







Details from the garden. A ballerina bronze figurine


and a sweet little angel.



When all the job's done Nora loves to sit in the gazebo with a book.
Now she's reading the "Arabian Nights" tales.






The gazebo in the afternoon sunlight.





An early photo taken before she had finished the decorating.

Credits: The madonna statue is made by Christel Jensen. The steps are made by my son Bendik. Tiling and the bead lamps are done by me. Most of the flowers inside the gazebo are from Sans. The furniture is Sylvanian Families, but spraypainted white. The square side table is an ebay find. Book from TreeFeathers. Flowers outside are part plastic and part real flowers from my garden. Nora's outfit is a scrapbook embellishment. Some vases are beads, some by Elisabeth Causeret. The ballerina figurine is a kinderegg toy from my childhood!

22 comments:

Unknown said...

¡Es preciosa! Si que has trabajado bien, todos los detalles hacen este cenador muy acogedor. La fotografia otro 10, porque la has situado en un entorno precioso y con distintas horas de luz del sol. ¡Enhorabuena por el trabajo! Besos Clara

callsmall said...

Lovely! It's great how you are able to create things from scratch and also transform them with paint. The all-white scheme is great, offset by the lovely tile work! And your son has done quite a nice job as well! The ballerina is darling, too -- a mini Degas!

Rebecca said...

Fantastic shots, and a really beautiful garden setting! I love how you've made Nora and the gazebo look perfectly in scale with their surroundings - very clever. The gazebo looks so cool and inviting - and how wonderful to have a tiny ballerina statue (from your childhood - wow!) just like many full scale garden ornaments. What a lovely place to relax with a friend :-)

Mimmi said...

Så utrolig koselig! Nora har gjort en fantastisk jobb :-D

Pubdoll said...

Muchas gracias Clara! Es usted muy amable! Me alegro de que dio cuenta del cambio de la luz. Me pasaba las horas esperando el gazebo para obtener el derecho de la luz del sol :-)

Clara thank you very much! You are very kind! I'm glad you noticed the change of light. I spent hours waiting for the gazebo to get the right sunlight :-)

Pubdoll said...

Thanks callsmall! Not as modern as I usually am, but I have for a time thought of doing something completely white, but it seems I can't do anything without adding a bit of colour :-) The tiles I found in a creative toy shop in Paris. They were meant for decorating a big frog. But I left the frog in the hotel and just kept the tiles :-)

Bendik was happy to get praise from you and I think he was quite satisfied with his work too :-)
He made the steps of stonepatterned airdrying clay.

And I love my little balletdanser, I have also thought she looked a bit like the Degas girl (Las Degas baby! :-))

Pubdoll said...

Thank you Rebecca! But it was more timeconsuming than clever I'm afraid! In addition to adding moss "grass" and pick miniature flowers from all over my garden to surround the gazebo I spent much of Saturday evening and half of Sunday as well taking pictures - almost 200 I think! (I'm not sure if digital cameras are such a good thing. Earlier I took one or two photos and had to wait until they were developed before I could tell if they had been successful, but I still managed to take quite a lot decent photos :-)) Afterwards there were hours of choosing photos and edit them as well. And the photos with strangely removed tops is because I removed anything that could distroy the illusion :-)

I don't have any figurines in my real garden, but I have always loved this little ballerina (I even have one other ballerina as well) In my childhood it was still possible to get real treasures in the kinder eggs, as the ballerina, and we also got a lot of different kind of male figures/statues in metal.

Pubdoll said...

Tusen takk Anne Mari, ja i motsetning til meg er Nora et skikkelig arbeidsjern :-)

Florine said...

Lovely, absolutely lovely! Thank you for all the time and effort it took you to bring such enjoyment to your "fans"! I would love to have a life size gazebo just like this in by back garden.
Your son's steps are great...is it too late for him to participate in a post explaining how he made them? How lucky you are to have help!

Pubdoll said...

Thank you Flo, the pleasure was all mine :-) (Except perhaps for the choosing and editing pictures part, that's always boring) To make this miniature garden reminded me of my childhood and all the miniature gardens and farms my brother and I made then when we stayed at our mountain cottage where almost all the flowers were tiny.

My son was very flattered by your request but didn't understand it was so much to explain, so I will have to try instead :-) The clay was bought ready with the stone pattern and Bendik just took a piece of clay and made it the right height and flat with a rolling pin and his hands and then cut out two curved pieces from them. And yes I'm a very lucky mum :-) He's very inventive and good with his hands, always have been, and I will show more of his work later on my blog.

My Realitty said...

Wow beautiful. The outdoor theme fits the summer perfectly. I especially love the tile floor and the little ballerina statue. Thank you for sharing! CM

Pubdoll said...

Thanks Carol! Who wants to spend much time with miniatures inside in the dark, when there's great weather outside? Summer, sun and miniatures, can life get any better?

Petra said...

Everything is so beautiful in this garden. I don't know what I like better: the furniture and how you decorate everything or your way to fotograph it. So special Pubdoll, very good eye.
The bead lamps are terrific and I'm wondering from what the stairs are made.

Pubdoll said...

Thank you Oese! I'm glad you liked it. Seems we both like to take pictures outside in the nice summer weather :-)
As I said in earlier comments, I took more than 150 photographs to get these, so perhaps I'm not that good to photograph after all:-) But I did wait to photograph until I got the sun from the right angle.
The steps are made from selfdrying clay with the stonepattern integrated in the clay. Don't ask me how they manage to do it! :-)

Sans! said...

Helene, it is good to come over more than a year later to see how this gazebo has been transformed. It has been that long, my dear :).

Firstly, tell Nora she looks really hot in a jumper. It shows off her slim arms well. Very good for tanning while gardening too :).

I can't believe those were my flowers! I went back after enlarging every pic coming down to enlarge those same pics again and I still fail to recognise them. You have done a fabulous job with the arrangements!

Are the furniture 1:12 or 16? I have seen Sylvanian's furniture and thought them 1:12. The paint job is great :) and you already know I love the tiles. That steps are most amazing and what caught my attention from the word go. Helene and Sons will go a long way! :)

Everything is in its place and looked very together. I recognise those lamps or pomanders. Great job with the painting. I think the flowers really added that zing to this setup especially the exterior one. Never too much colours when they are flowers :)

I am buying kinderegg candy from now on! Can't believe you kept the ballerina all these years, woman!

I know all about those 100-200 pics :). The things we do :)! Who gets any sleep these days :).

Thank you, dear for a really wonderful post! :)

Pubdoll said...

Thank you Sans, one year is a long time, but you know I couldn't have done it much sooner, since I just found the right tiles in the end of June in Paris and the Sylvanian furniture I found when we were in Oslo in the end of last month :-) I even had to wait a couple of weeks for the grout!

Nora was pleased to hear you liked her outfit (and that she had slim arms! :-)), she's very happy with it, even if it's a bit wide for her.

And they really are your flowers. I've just used the pastel ones, not all the fabulous, brightly coloured ones in yellow and orange and purple you also gave me. This setting really needed an abundance of flowers, so thank you again!!

The furniture is 1:16ish, if anything perhaps on the small side. And with spraycans, painting is both easy and fun. And isn't beads great, it's the first I remember about you, the magic you did with beads, turning them into all sorts of wonders.

And Bendik was so pleased to get so much praise for his steps. It was so nice, ebacuse I just gave Bendik and Mari one package of clay each to amke whatever they wanted, and it was Bendik himself that thought my gazebo needed steps and decided how they should be, I had absolutely nothing to do with it :-)

But don't buy kindereggs, you don't get treasures like these anymore, just plastic toys.

And I do feel the lack of sleep now, first because it has been hard to come back to wokr after the vacation, and then staying up til long past midnight editing photos, and this night I lay awake worrying about if the heavy rain we had would destroy Bendiks steps that I had forgotten to bring in with the gazebo. (Luckily the selfdrying clay is water resistant as well) But 200 photos is a lot even for me, it usually isn't more than a hundred photos for each post :-)

Glenda said...

This gazebo has just lightened my day!!

Pubdoll said...

And you just brightened my day with your nice comment Glenda! :-) Thanks!

Heather said...

Such a lovely scene. I'd like to sit in there with a good book and a lemonade!

Pubdoll said...

Thanks Heather, welcome to my blog! And thanks for reminding me about the lemonade, poor Nora working all day and not getting any lemonade to cool her down afterwards! :-)

Eva said...

Wow! Love your gazebo!

Pubdoll said...

Thank you Eva, I'm very glad you liked it!