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Doll house kits are an excellent way to begin or even grow your existing doll collections. They offer a wide variety of houses to choose from, and some even come with furniture and accessories to match your first home.

In choosing your doll house kit, it is important to note who you are buying it for. Is it for an adult collector? Or is it for a child, as a start of her collection, or simply a toy? Knowing who you are buying it for will help you decide which doll houses to choose.

Doll house kits are either made of wood or plastic, and come in a variety of models. Plastic doll houses are cheaper and more durable, which makes them ideal for very young children who will most likely think of them as playthings rather than investments. Most come with basic accessories, but furniture and dolls are usually sold as separate sets. But while plastic doll houses are easier to assemble and come in different sizes, they are also not fully customizable. The colors are pre-fabricated with the plastic, and the range of furniture and accessories are pretty limited.

Adult doll house kits, on the other hand, are made of wood and are a bit more complex. Although not as durable, they are more detailed and are a bit harder to assemble. They come in a variety of house types and are, in fact, often scaled down replicas of real houses. Indeed, putting together wooden house dolls is part of the fun, as you can build and design it as you would a real house!

Since they are extremely customizable, adult doll house kits also come with a wide array of accessories to suit your personal style. Most doll house kits come with just a house, but there are several starter kits that come with their own set of accessories and bespaq furniture. Starter doll house kits are ideal for someone who is just starting their own collection, giving them adequate direction on how to furnish their first doll house.

Building a doll house does present certain challenges of its own. The more intricate doll house kits take some time and tools to assemble, and are usually more expensive, so keep this in mind when choosing your doll house. There are several, basic, inexpensive wood kits that are available but require more accessories and time to spruce up. While a seasoned collector may love the thought of starting from a clean slate, the beginner may find it a bit overwhelming.

You should also consider the scale of the doll house kit before making a purchase. Before buying something, ask yourself if this is something that the owner will play with, or will keep on display. The more expensive doll house kits are sealed to keep out dust, so it is easier to clean and maintain. If it is meant to be placed on display for years on end, ask if there is adequate space in your house to set it up. Bear in mind that the size of the collection may grow in time, so make allowances for future expansions.

Choosing the right doll house kit is always an exciting experience. Not only is finding the right one for you fun, but it is also a wise investment.

There are as many hobbies as there are people who enjoy them. Learn more about the popular hobby of building and collecting dollhouses and miniatures. Visit our large selection of doll house furniture kits today at www.TheMagicalDollhouse.com.

Halloween, Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays are almost here. That means it is time to bring the seasonal decorations out. Not only that, but you have another great opportunity! If you and your children have a dollhouse and enjoy collecting, making, and decorating that dollhouse, now is the time you can have lots of fun.

You get to create great Halloween miniature furniture, and once you start with Halloween furniture, you can continue with all other seasonal furniture. Actually seasonal miniature furniture does not have to be all that glamorous. You can actually make lots of Halloween miniature furniture out of items like cardboard and paper.

You can find several sites online that offer printable miniature Halloween items like coffins, pumpkins, and witch sets. These are made in different scales so they fit houses of different sizes. You can use them to decorate your dollhouse, or even for other uses like candy favors or even as party invitations.

You can tell if the image will work for your dollhouse because it will tell you what scale the cutout is made for. Most are made for scale 1:12 but there are other sizes like 1:24.

You will first have to print the Halloween miniature furniture plans out on your printer. You may even want to use a heavier paper or even photographic paper. If your printer cannot handle heavier paper, then you can print it and glue it to a heavier paper.

Other Items you will need

Glue stick or white glue

A ruler so you can crease the paper against it

Color paper for decorating your Halloween miniature furniture

Once you have printed the Halloween accessory out, then all you have to do is glue it to stiffer cardboard, if necessary, and crease it where the plans indicate, followed by gluing everything in place.

Seasonal accessories like Halloween miniature trimmings are what make working with the dollhouse even more fun for both children and adults. Children feel the house is never the same and is always changing, and adults have fun helping children to make interesting accessories.

No matter what kind of dollhouse furniture you have, and no matter how beautiful it is, what really makes a miniature home so interesting to everyone is seeing all the intricate little details and a large part of those little details are seasonal accessories and furniture.

As you can see by the samples we gave you above, this type of accessory is inexpensive and often made of something as simple as cardboard.

Where to find Halloween Accessories for the Dollhouse?

You can find all kinds of arts and crafts projects for the dollhouse at your local arts and crafts store, but the best place to find seasonal items is online. Online is your best option because often the instructions come with the plans at no additional cost.

What Types of Halloween Furniture can I Find?

You can find all kinds of plans online–items from pumpkins to coffins, candlesticks, baskets, and squash. You will find everything you need for Halloween here.

The most important part of all of this is that you make it a fun activity for kids and you can get them away from the video games, the TV, and get their creativity flowing with these types of projects.

Add to your miniature collection, or start a new one! Come see our large selection of wooden doll house kits and accessories. Visit us online at www.TheMagicalDollhouse.com today.

Photo Storage Stories

Each of us has a story to tell. Granted, some of us have a story longer than others. However, there comes a point in everyone’s life when it’s important to recount memories and events that took place over the years. Most of us don’t write. Not all of us are blessed with the gift of gab. Not many of us can paint or draw. But all of us, all of us can take a picture (at least we can with the advent of the new, easy to use digital camera). So, when the time comes to tell your story, you don’t necessarily have to rely on words. You don’t have to put pen to paper. Nor do you have to draw or paint. Why not? Because the advent of the online photo album will allow you to share photos stories with greatest of ease.

Once you’ve opened an online photo storage site, in order to convey your message and tell your story all you need to do is upload the appropriate photographs. Choose photographs that go along with the story plan to tell. Do your best to keep your story in chronological order and try and recount the story and your mind as you organize your pictures.

Once you’ve signed some order to your photographs, you can begin uploading them to you free storage site. Your online photo album will offer you the option of editing photos as you upload them. This is perfect when you’re goal was to tell a story using your photos. As you edit your photos be sure and add captions and messages that will help to tell your story. It’s a good idea to convey the emotion you felt when each photo was taken.

Once your photo story is completely uploaded, edited, and conveyed through your online photo album, you will easily be able to share your story with your friends and loved ones. Most photo websites offer the option of sending an invite to those she loves. All you need is your address book and a little time.

Your friends and loved ones will truly enjoy the visualization of your online story. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, if this is true of photo story in your online photo album is the perfect way to speak volumes without ever opening your mouth. If you have a message to spread, but you’re a man of few words, why not try saying it with pictures? Online photo stories afford users the opportunity to be creative without spending a lot of money.

Don’t be intimidated by the process of organizing an online photo album in constructing your own photo story. The step-by-step instructions that most all photo websites display for their users are simple to follow and easy to use. Uploading and editing photos has never been easier than it is today. Our new technology has made it possible for all of us to utilize high tech methods to complete low-tech tasks. Even the most novice computer user will find the process of completing an online photo story enjoyable and exciting.

MJ Johnston writes for a variety of websites, including Digitalphotoalbumsite.com, site that offers advice on the quickest and easiest way to build a digital photo album, as well as free online photo storage.

If you’ve decided to create photo books, you might do well to think a little about page layout. Most likely your photo books are going to be combinations of words and photographs. You’re probably aware that some online photo gallery and storage sites offer you the opportunity to make photo books. These photo books are professionally printed and look like real books. Why not invest a little effort and make the page layout look like a real book too?

There are a few basic principles graphic designers use to lay out pages that you should be aware of. While there are no hard and fast rules to a creative discipline like graphic design, there are some principles that all graphic designers are thoroughly versed in, and in practice rarely, if ever, violate. These principles are simple, and don’t require the kind of visual talent you’d need to paint the Sistine chapel, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they don’t require as much talent as taking good pictures to understand and apply.

The first thing you need to think about when you are arranging things on a page—in this case, you’re arranging pictures and text to make a photo book—is how arrange the elements on the page. This includes thinking about what stuff goes on which page, and where to put it relative to the other elements. That is an important notion—the notion that things are placed relative to other elements. Graphic designers think not only about the elements they put on the page, they think about the arrangement in terms of what those elements, as shapes, do in terms of giving the page structure.

If you really want your pages to look aesthetically pleasing, you should think about the shapes that the elements make out of the empty space that remains on the page. This is called negative space, and your first priority is to make sure the pages of the photo book you are creating look organized. One way to do this is to think of the page in terms of a grid. The grid is never visible in the finished page, but think of your favorite newspaper. Think of how the columns, the photos and the headlines are arranged. Even though you don’t actually see the grid itself, you can look at the pages of this newspaper and know where the grid is, can’t you? A grid is a great way to organize pages, not just for beginners but for professional designers.

Are you planning on using text, either to tell a story or to caption your photographs when you create photo books? There are a couple of things to bear in mind. Firstly, color. As tempting as it is to use pretty colors on a prettily colored page for your text, if you want people to be able to read the text in your photo book, the color of the text and the color of the page need to be as different as possible. That’s why most books are black and white—it makes it easier to read.

MJ Johnston writes for a variety of websites, including Digitalphotoalbumsite.com, site that offers advice on the quickest and easiest way to build a digital photo album, as well as free online photo storage.

On a recent Princess cruise my wife and I decided to go to the art auctions since this particular trip had a lot of sea days. We were introduced to Alexandra Nechita pieces, both originals and numbered reproductions. We watched several videos about her in our cabin. At first we were quite taken in by the whole story and her Picasso-style paintings. But by the end of the trip I was soooo over her, and wondering if the whole thing is a sham.

I guess that would naturally lead to the question of whether Picasso himself was a sham. I mean this style of artwork reminds me of LSD-induced hallucinations while staring at a colorful carpet. It’s that imagery from the mind’s third eye captured in a still shot, and I guess that’s why it’s considered genius. But is it really any good, or is it only good because everybody else says it’s good?

It isn’t really fair to compare Picasso to Nechita. I have been to the Picasso museum in Barcelona and it takes you through the periods of his life. The man was a brilliant portrait and landscape painter much of his career. He developed the abstract style which he is so popular for slowly over the course of years. It was the final segment of his legacy, but is what he became famous for. So he was actually a well-rounded painter.

Nechita started off by painting that style. I mean, right out the gate like when she was five years old. They called her a child prodigy, a genius. She didn’t even see Picasso’s work until after she started having shows of her own work. It’s said that the first time she saw his paintings she tugged on her mother’s dress and said “Mommy look! That man paints like I do!”

Cute story, yes. And the paintings do have a uniform quality with good use of colors. But are they worth tens of thousands of dollars? Are they really pleasant to look at? Or do the people who buy them just collect paintings because certain artists are trendy? Are her paintings the emperor’s new clothes? Do those crazy half-cocked images with heads sticking out of shoeboxes and kindergarten-like hands constitute quality art any more than your kid’s crayon drawings on the refrigerator? I guess the answer is in your own eyes. Providing, of course, you have the ability to use them in an unbiased and purely observational manner.

By the way if you are interested in collecting art and buying it right, you can’t do better than on those Princess cruises. The exact same pieces are going to cost hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands more from land-based galleries. That doesn’t mean the land-based galleries are ripping you off – they have high overhead and are in the art business. Princess buys in huge volume for their large fleet of ships and is in the cruising business, so there is no real overhead to have to justify. Just a parting tip.

For more social commentary please visit www.stupidityinsociety.com

Making money as an actor can be a tough gig - but voiceover work is one of the few ways you can top up your acting income without resorting to a ‘proper’ day job. This short article gives you 7 tips to getting more voiceover work.

Many actors achieve great success in this industry. Its fun, they make great cash, and they keep getting work over and over again. Then there are others who are struggling to even get one gig. After many years as a copywriter working with successful (and a few not-so-successful) voiceovers, and founder of online voiceover directory - I’ve been studying what makes certain voiceovers successful. Here are 7 tips:

1. Is your demo good enough?

You can promote yourself as much as you like - but at the end of the day, it comes down to your demo. You’re competing with some very talented people out there. An “ok” demo is not good enough.

2. Call back immediately. If you get a message that someone is trying to book you for a gig, don’t wait a minute. Ad agencies are usually up against very tight deadlines, and if you take too long getting back to them, they’ll simply book someone who is answering their phone.

3. Do a special offer Offer a producer in an ad agency that you’ll do a free gig - IF it’s for a charity ad. Or you could try something like giving concession tickets of a show you’re acting in to a producer or copywriter. These things don’t cost you money, but they spread good karma, and hopefully drum up some business for you in the future.

4. Get some training. If you are inexperienced, try to go on a training course. It’s a small investment in comparison to the amount of money you can make doing voiceovers.

5. Pick someone’s brain. If you are inexperienced, go for coffee with a more experienced VO and pick their brain. Ask them everything about what to expect when you do a gig - from the minute you walk in to the minute you leave. Sometimes just knowing what to expect will calm the nerves when you’re doing your first gig. You can also take a few scripts along to this coffee and ask them to crit you doing a read.

6. Spam yourself Create a database of ad agency copywriters and producers and send them a link of your voice sample. This takes time, but doesn’t cost you a penny.

7. Get a Dictaphone. Buy yourself a Dictaphone and recite and record scripts for practice. (Some mobile phones also have voice recorders.) Sometimes it’s amazing how great something sounds in your own head, but only once you hear it out loud can you really figure out which bits need improving. This is fantastic exercise - schedule ten minutes a day to practice.

You can find the full 25 Things the Successful Voicover Artist in Ebook called 7 25 Things the Successful Voiceover Artist Knows (that the Rest of the Plebs Don’t)

Voiceover and voice over are two leading voiceover talent websites. They are independent sites that are created by copywriters, for copywriters.

Good photography, whether it’s using digital or conventional film, relies on a number of basic things - a camera body, a lens and you! All three of these things can be top quality or just plain average. Which would you prefer?

One of the things I’ve preached to my photography students over the years, especially the techno-files, is that yes the camera body is important, and never more so than in this day and age of CCD chips and many mega-megapixels, but even more important than the body is the lens or lenses you put on it.

I cannot emphasize enough how crucial good lenses, and unfortunately expensive lenses, are but there is no substitute for good glass and good construction.

And when it comes to Macro/Micro Photography add another 20% to the crucial factor. Do yourself a favor if close-up photography is your thing, buy yourself a brand name, 1:1 Macro lens. Both Canon and Nikon include 1:1 Macros in their stables, they’re not cheap, but they’re absolutely worth it.

The latest Nikon 105 f2.8 Micro AFS lens is a great example of this quality. It has an incredibly shallow depth of field* when working close up which adds an edge to the creative effect. It can transform the mundane, average reality shot into an emotive art piece in an instant - experience this once, and you’ll keep coming back for more, and where needed it produces perfectly sharp, precise images as well.

Macro lenses are expensive but the quality of the lenses speak for themselves and long term the investment is worth it, especially when you consider the huge gain in creativity and enjoyment of using such a precise tool.

Remember one thing though when working really close-up, the shift in focus from in-focus to out-of-focus is so rapid at wide open apertures that it’s sometimes hard to be sure the point of focus or the subject you are focusing on is enough to hold the picture together creatively. If in doubt, shift your focal point to several positions on your subject and shoot 3, 4 or even a dozen shots.

One of the fantastic things about this digital revolution is that shooting many frames at a time on one subject has no inherent cost. Experiment! Try different apertures, bracket (taking more than one shot at a time at different exposures in order to get the best exposure), try with flash, try without flash …

The list of possibilities is endless. It’s worth shooting extravagantly in the beginning to find a look and feel that you like. Remember in focus or out focus, with movement and without, they all have merit. If you like crisp clean images, then I advise always using a tripod – the amount of camera shake you get is generally exaggerated the closer you get to the image. Furthermore, because focusing is so critical close up, a tripod is a really useful tool, it also slows you down a bit, allows time for reflection, a bit of time for pondering, weighing up options. Of course this doesn’t mean that your subject is necessarily going to stay still, but then you can’t have everything.

If you are like me, and you enjoy taking a lot of flower pictures you’ll know all about trying to keep flowers steady on a windy day! I’ve taken pictures in the past where the flower has almost completely left the frame by the time I took the picture. Frustrating and yet even then I’ve found that sometimes the effect of a flower moving out of frame is gorgeous… a bit blurry, a bit odd but cool nonetheless. Serendipity at its best.

*For those of you who are new to serious macro photography with a DSLR remember that the aperture of the lens is always set to its widest open position to make focusing easier and only shuts down to the aperture you selected when the shot is taken – hence the sometimes annoying difference you see between the final image and the image you see while focusing.

Copyright 2008 Patrick Heathcock

Patrick Heathcock - sometime commercial photographer London, fulltime flower art photographer and web designer living in the southern semisphere, seeing the beauty. Co-founder of A Flower Gallery, Food and Family and A Hosting Review

It is said that design and architectural spirit were in Osvaldo Borsani’s blood since an early age. He was born in 1911 to Gaetano Borsani, who was a celebrated furniture designer of his time. The family, in which Osvaldo Borsani was born into, was made up of designers since his brother also collaborated with him in his design works.

Osvaldo Borsani joined Politecnico di Milano in 1937 where he enrolled for a course in architecture. Upon completion of his undergraduate degree, he joined the family business helping his father in his design work. During this time, he mainly concentrated in carrying out furniture designs.

Osvaldo Borsani became recognised for his design work in the 1940’s and 1950’s. During this period he produced a lot of furniture designs including seating and case goods in addition to storage pieces. During this period, one of his most outstanding designs was the wall mounted shelving system that he designed in 1946.

Osvaldo Borsani’s work attracted high end clients including Sussu, Crippa, Fontanna and Fabbri. While working with his brother Fulgencio, they founded a furniture design company, which they subsequently named Tecno. This company fully adopted technology and conducted intensive research before coming up with various designs.

Tecno as a company was credited with the design of the highly famous P40 chaise lounge. The chaise lounge was able to assume approximately four hundred and eighty six postures with rubber arms. The D70, which was a sofa version, was also produced during this period.

Osvaldo Borsani acted as the sole designer for Tecno Company for approximately thirty years. In the middle of the 1980’s other designers started sending their design work to this company. Some of the designers who contributed to the design work that were being carried out by Tecno were Norman Foster and Gae Aulenti among others.

Over the years Tecno, the design company that was started by Osvaldo Borsani and his brother Fulgencio has built a name for it and is highly recognised for its innovative office furniture designs.

Since 1933, Osvaldo Borsani had been participating in the Triennale di Milano. During this period Osvaldo entered into a joint project with other architects and together they worked on a project that was dubbed “Casa Minima”. Even after the completion of the “Casa Minima” project, he continued with his exhibitions at the Triennale di Milano for several other decades.

Osvaldo Borsani won several awards during his lifetime. His outstanding design works were exhibited by various design houses and museums across Europe. At fifty one years of age, Osvaldo Borsani won the highly acclaimed Premio Compasso d’Oro.

One of the design works that was done by Osvaldo Borsani is the rosewood and parchment cabinet.

It had two sliding top doors made from glass in addition to two other relatively bigger doors which were located at the bottom of the cabinet. A total of six small drawers were fixed next to the bottom doors. This cabinet was made out of long lasting ebony wood with a smooth finish.

Find international design at furniture design.

The legacy of Josef Hoffmann, even after his passing on in May 7th 1956, still lives on throughout Europe especially in Vienna and the world over. His exemplary contributions have inspired upcoming artists and will continue to inspire many for ages to come.

In decorative arts, Josef Hoffmann left indelible prints in almost all branches of applied arts. He used simple patterns and simple materials to masterfully and skilfully design his sparkling imagination. These materials ranged from porcelain, metalwork, jewellery, textiles to glass.

Most of Josef Hoffmann’s work was in Czech. In 1903, Josef Hoffmann touched many lovers of his work with the Poldi Kladno ironworks. This was a guest house that many years later inspired him to bring up another mansion which was known as the ‘Fairy Tale’ mansion for a family in Kouty nad Desnou, the Primavesi family in 1914.From 1913 to 1915, he produced another great piece of work, the Skywa – Primavesi Villa and even before it’s impact was felt in the entire Vienna, in 1924, he came up with the house of Sonja Knips.

During his education period, he was awarded the prestigious Prize of Rome in 1896 by the Vienna academy. This gifted designer’s work is seen in all day to day aspects of life. From textiles, book bindings, posters, wallpapers, clothing, to utensils.

Through his work, one is able to see the works of other great artists of his times whose legacies have lived through all ages. These artists include among many others Charles Robert Ashbee, Otto Wagner, John Ruskin and William Morris. Through his work, Josef Hoffmann was able to carry through their vision of lifting art and crafts to higher levels to produce fine works of art.

When Josef Hoffmann was barely 29 years of age, at the peak of his career, he worked as a part time lecturer in Kunstgewerbeschule, where he introduced into the curriculum his efforts of elevating technique into fine works of art. In the beginning of 1900, Josef Hoffmann introduced a unique signature in his works. This signature would be seen in his designs in silver, carpets, linens, furniture and lamps. The signature acted as his identity and as a way of bringing oneness in his work

Josef Hoffmann was known to be associated with the high and mighty wealthy industrialist’s families in Austria. The Paul family and the Karl families are among the top families that were proud to be associated with the industrial designer, whose decorative arts set the theme of Austria in the 1900’s.

Since Josef Hoffmann was experimenting with new designs, he needed all the material, economical and emotional support to do so and the two families were more than ready to support him both financially and socially.

The exemplary works of Josef Hoffmann have been recognized in Europe and in the United States and the world over. Although he has passed on, his legacy still lives on. His theme has and will always be reflected in all pieces of fine art that he worked hard at to elevate its status.

Find international design at furniture design.

Furniture designers are the people, who create an inimitable piece or collection of designs by working on new designs or innovating from the existing designs in correspondence with a customer or design associate. The designs have an operational requirement and an artistic appeal. Furniture designers may design the furniture items for household article, industrial use or commercial purpose. They mainly use the Computer Aided Design (CAD) to make models and paradigms.

The factors considered by furniture designers are the expense to be incurred, safety and durableness. Though traditional designs still exist, the modern use of computer technology has taken away the importance of traditional furniture designers. Thus, there are professional courses available for such furniture designers that help them to become familiar with the designing principles and the CAD technology.

Need for all-rounder furniture designers:

Furniture Designers need to be all-rounder, especially if they are self-employed. They have to be well aware of their business activities and market trends. The knowledge of sales, manufacturing and promotion is very much needed in this profession. They have to play the role of service engineers, accountant, and ought to know the functions of material purchase and sales. They also need to have good communication skills, strong visual awareness and creativity, as they need to do delicate artistic work.

Work Activities:

Self-employed furniture designers may work on their own along with a group a couple of experienced furniture designers. A furniture manufacturing company may employ them on salary basis, wherein they have to create their own innovative designs to create unique furniture designs. On the other hand, a self-employed furniture designer needs to do self-promotion by advertising his/her services or attending various furnishing fairs and exhibitions. Here, you may seek help of consultants, who will the job done for you.

Apart from this, Furniture Designers need to bring in clients, sample designs (CAD tested) card models, sketches or hard prototypes. They also need to organize their plans and schedules with respect to the availability of resources. Finally, the designers have to recheck their designs, as they need to be up-to-date complementing local as well global furniture market trends.

In today’s fast changing office scenario and competitive world, there is a continuous demand for planning and creating professional office spaces. This was actually at a slower pace in the mid 1990’s. The process of interior designing has a parallel trend with the development of e-commerce and the Internet. For example, interior designing can never be completed without furniture designers. Furniture designers have a huge contribution in designing computer tables, cabinets, tables and many more furnishing supplies.

Overview:

However, to keep up with the current market trend, furniture designers need to innovate new designs on a regular basis. This will help furniture designers to furnish exclusive designs to their clients. Nowadays they can even attract customers by listing their services on the Internet. This will initialize their business covering a wider area. Customers can see their artistic designs uploaded on these websites.

Find international design at furniture design.