1:12 scale Victorian style Ice skates

I realise today is Halloween, but I have been busy getting ready for Christmas. It had crossed my mind to put some sliced fingers on the "ice" though, which would have made a horrible Halloweeny themed horror image or just the scene of a terrible accident! 

The ice skates are the first object of my Christmas display to be finished. They are made with real leather, with a wooden heel, thin card soles and laced up with thread. I made a pair of small fimo feet, to glue the leather over. They also have a tongue at the front and loops on the back.  The metal skates are by Phoenix Model Developments, and they dictate the size of the boot, the sole of these boots are 23mm long which would make these about a UK ladies size 7. A white pair would have been more what I was after, but I only had brown glove leather (p.s. you cannot paint leather, it looks awful, I tried it). The pine cones are made using paper and paint with a fimo base, I used a small flower punch to make the "scales" for those.  

I am also working on decorations, garlands, wreaths and candles, which aren't quite finished yet, but everything is in the final stages, I might just be finished in time for Christmas.

The sky here has been very cloudy with the odd burst of sunlight, so not great for taking photographs, hence the odd lighting, as usual.

The ice is wax and the snow is salt. The clumps of grass poking through are railway modellers field grass.

Terrible lighting.........I will take better photographs when the weather picks up.

Miniature cobbling. The metal skates are by Phoenix Miniatures www.phoenixmodeldevelopments.com/ I had to come up with the pattern for the boots by looking at pictures of real ice skates and shoe patterns, and somehow managed to make it work, though the leather stretches a bit, which helped enormously. I used a beading needle to lace them up, before they were glued onto the fimo foot.  Thankfully, the rest of the table didn't make it into the frame, it is a complete mess beyond the edges of the photograph. Who would have thought you could turn a room upside down making something so small :D

Tiny teddy base sculpt using fimo.  He has since been furred and "earred" and is ready for Christmas, but his eyes have to be painted, and unfortunately, the black paint had dried up....must put the lids back on the tins properly in future!  I think I may have mentioned this before, but I find it easier to make a rough shape of something in fimo, and then refine it after it has been baked, using exacto knives and files. The wires are there just to hold him together. He is fully jointed.

I think he will be called Shrug.