But Who Will Bell The Cats?: The Powder Room

Here is the final image of the powder room with the mouse shower scene below it. I was influenced by the bathroom of Colleen Moore's Dollhouse Castle at the Museum of Science and Industry. In her dollhouse, probably the most beautiful and creative dollhouse in the world, she had artisans use mother of pearl for the floors. I loved the shiny, seashell look, but mother of pearl tiles are amazingly hard to find. I finally tracked them down and ordered them from China. I glued each tile to the wood floor. Moore's dollhouse was a big influence throughout my book. I didn't have teams of artisans or an unlimited bank account to make my castle, but I think that my rooms wouldn't look out of place in her castle.

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This scene is during the wintertime, so I added winter flowers with berries instead of the summery pink flowers.
Small version:

Here's a larger version of the image. Note: The color is lighter here than it is in the same exact picture above for some reason.

Rough collage sketch:

Pencil sketch.

Test Shot 6. This shot has pink flowers and a different reflection in the mirrors.

Test Shot 5. One challenge was making sure that all of the characters were bright enough and in focus. Each scene required many test shots to get things just right. I'm not even showing all of the test shots here. Sometimes I shot a scene 20 times before I got it right. Here you can see that Jacqueline is too dark and Claire is too blurry. I wanted the lighting to come pouring through the windows the way natural light does. I worked very hard at this. I was pleased when a well-known photographer friend of mine asked me if I had shot these with natural light. I did not, but that was the look I wanted to achieve.

This is the kind of lighting I was trying to achieve.

Test Shot 4.

Test Shot 3. I took many test shots of the characters before I photographed the whole scene. This window treatment is a very fragile piece of French lace. I felt that it looked a bit like stained glass. Jacqueline is spraying perfume on her neck. I bought the sink, but it was made of wood so I plastered and painted it to look like it was stone.

Test Shot 2. I found the dried seahorse at the beach. I cut it in half, painted it with gold leaf, and attached it to the tub as a faucet. The tub was an old soap dish. The water is Saran Wrap and the bubbles are cotton batting with glitter. Veronique is having a bit of bubbly after a long day of lolling around.

Test Shot 1. Claire is on the loo. I bought a wooden toilet and plastered it to look like stone. Claire is reading Le Monde.

Sketch.

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Mouse and Bat are given a bath. The sponge was a real piece of sea sponge. The soap was a rubber eraser cut off a pencil.

Rough collage sketch:

Pencil sketch.

The Powder Room In Progress
This is what the powder room looked like before I got my hands on it. My father made me an open wooden box to my size specifications.

Details
This is the mother-of-pearl I bought. I recommend this company if you wish to buy MOP overseas. The language barrier is a bit hard, but Micky was extremely helpful.