The best kind of weather when you are buying the Christmas tree is a SNOWY DAY!   We got about 10″ of snow the day we bought our Christmas tree.   It added more magic to the day and was just perfect!

We have snow for the holidays this year!   We bought the Christmas tree while it was snowing—made it all that more magical.

I found a wonderful couple of artists in Michigan on Etsy that custom-made six coffins for the collection.   Thank you Dan and Neysa!  Three 13″ coffins and three 9″ coffins.  The coffins are called “toe pinchers”.  The craftsmanship is amazing on these coffins and I had a great time staining them.   Ruby red shimmering velvet is used to line the coffins once the vampyres are placed in them.

The vampyre brood has been moved out of the studio and is crammed onto the library table in the living room for the month of October.   Later we will do some serious photoshoots of the collection with select pieces taken out to showcase their beauty.

I’m having a great time searching for, and finding, odds and ends to go with my vampires: Nosferatu, Vampire Grygor, and Vampire Capolan.   Bats, bat cages, keys, skulls, bones, miniature tarot decks, trunks, candles, lockets, rats, etc.  I’m having several custom built coffins made for the 12″ Nostferatu.

It really is an international scavenger hunt conducted on the Internet and in person.

I am having a great time making the miniature maps, documents, bottle labels, relics, etc.

We have done a few photoshoots with John’s big camera and candlelight  Great photos!

Here are a few of the photos from that photoshoot:

 

And with my iPhone here are a few photos showing the details of the collection:

The miniature medieval books arrived today and they are perfect!  I will age the pages a bit more and have slipped in loose pages of my own making.  Later this fall I will design and build the vault and display diorama for Vampire Capolan and all his accessories.