Thursday 15 December 2011

Teahouse warming party

Welcome! Let me introduce you to the resident of the Teahouse, he's name is Totoro and he comes from Japan. Also one other guest has arrived too, Moomintroll from Finland came to a visit.


Totoro is a very famous actor, he has stared in the movie My Neigbor Totoro, named after him (that's how famous he is). Totoro had this Teahouse built where he could retreat from all the city fuss. So are you interested in a grand tour?

Here is the deck, I know you've seen it before. Totoro has planned to start a zen garden around the decking, but it's still in planning stage.


From three sides of the house the shoji screens open and on summer days those can be left open. Let's move inside then. We'll start the tour from the altar, it's a very sacred place, take note that it is not a table, nothing that does not belong there should be placed there. The image above is a painting of Daruma, the father of Zen.


Then on the left there is the built-in storage space, that has sliding doors. It has three shelves where for example the bedding can be stored.


Then we can move to the center of the house. The floor is covered by tatami mats in a very traditional Japanise style. There in the center is a small table and seat cushions.


As we are now in a teahouse, we also have some green tea and if you are hungry some sushi. The teapot and the cups were made from the same polymer clay as the roof, using instructions from MiniMaker. The sushi set is the only bought item in the Teahouse and it's from Etsy, but I can't find the seller anymore, it's name was 2plus1 MiniWorld. At the time I bought the sushi there was no actual mini sushi sold in Etsy, or then I was really blind, so the thing I bought is actually dim sum, but to me it looks like sushi and it's good enough.


Please enjoy your stay and feel right at home. You can even stay for the night. Moomintroll atleast is staying, he's had bit too much of sake allready.


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This post is the final post for the I'm a Giant challenge by Emily Henderson. All my posts about the challenge can be found behing this link.


22 comments:

  1. Beautiful! Such a nice tea house! :) -Ruhnu

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  2. Thank you Ruhnu. The Totoro you brought has finally found it's home :)

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  3. wahhh!!! i swear i left more comments, but they seem to have disappeared :( I LOVE IT. it even fits so beautifully in your home...*sighs wistfully* love it Love It LOVE IT!

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  4. To Cindy
    I found your comments, they were in the spam folder!! I marked them as not spam so they can be now found here.
    Thanks for all your comments, I couldn't be happier that you like what I've done.

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  5. I love your teahouse! Great job! The Crux blanket is so cute. And I like that Moomintroll stopped by for a visit, had a book when I was a kid ;)

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  6. That Teahouse is amazing! So very well done, to the tiniest detail. Good for you!

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  7. Thank you Nina and scb. I still have one moomin book :)

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  8. Here we are! I knew I must have missed the tour.

    It's so delightful! So magical and so beautiful. Well done.

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  9. Thanks Alana. I do love how in the pictures the house actully looks like it could be human sized.

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  10. I love your teahouse! What a lot of work. And I love Totoro too, and all Miyasaki films. How cute that you had him and Moomintroll give us a tour.

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  11. WOW!!! Your work is incredible. The details in your craftsmanship is really impressive. Great work! (Love Totoro, too.)

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  12. Thanks all! I'm happy you enjoy it.

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  13. Hej, jag kom först nu ihåg att komma å hälsa på för att se hur slutresultatet blev. Vilket vackert hus, och alla små detaljer också!

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  14. This is a beautiful little teahouse, made that much more so because you used items readily available to most, instead of high-end items. One nitpick, tho' : your tatami are placed in an inauspicious arrangement. The Japanese believe tatami should be placed assymetrically, in T formations, rather than along regular edges. See wikipedia's aricle on tatami for ideas. sorry and HTH!

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    1. Thank you about your comment. I know about the tatami, but it was whole lot easier to make it like I did and I'm very happy with it.

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    2. Okay, no worries. I wasn't sure whether it would matter to you, so just thought I'd post. Thanks so much for posting this. There aren't many examples of Japanese dollhouses on the web, other than yours and the washitsu one on YouTube. I want to make one for my little Kelly dolls using yours and the YouTube as points of reference.

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    3. Hope you have fun making yours, I definitely loved making mine. If you have any questions about some details in my teahouse, I'll be happy to give you more info, just give me a comment or send me e-mail to leena.onshore@gmail.com
      Good luck with your dollhouse building!

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    4. Thanks, I just might take you up on your offer! One question that already crossed my mind -- what did you use to make the tatami mats?There was someone in Canada who used to sell kits, but she doesn't seem to be in business anymore, and real mini tatamis are too thick for dollhouse scale and really pricey.

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    5. I actually used linen fabric in it's natural tone for the tatami. I also used orange ribbon and the whole thing is attached to a piece of cardboard the size of the floor.

      So first I sewed 3 ribbons on the fabric, using similar colour as the ribbon, then I sewed with black from the center and again center perpendicular to the first black sew.

      Then I attached the fabric to a cardboard so that the first ribbon came to the center and two others to the sides so they go a bit also under the cardboard. So my tatami is one block where only seems to be individual tatami pieces. But you could make each separate and move them around if you like.

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  15. Your tea room is so cute and inviting. I would eat the sushi or the dim sum in this space. I like your solution for the tatami. It is hard to find tatami material in scale. I have seen in the past place mats that are made of similar material but it's never quite the right scale. Hope you do another project in Japanese style!

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    1. Thank you, I tried to be innovative with the materials and I also wasn't that interested to make a "real" miniature. It's my version. I know it's a bit more tricky to use only true materials.

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  16. This is amazing! You know, our favorite sushi restaurant in town is called Daruma. I had no idea what it meant, until now :-)

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