The making of 'Little Miss Muffet'

"Little Miss Muffet sneaked into Dr Thomas Muffet's study (her father) to eat her curds and whey in peace and got a bit of a shock"

The 'roots' of the rhyme

Little Miss Muffet is the second of my room boxes based on nursery rhymes. This post is well overdue as I finished it about 4 months ago. Oh, well, I get there in the end. As you can guess this room box is based on the nursery rhyme of Little Miss Muffet. In contrast to Ten in the Bed, there's a lot of information about this. One of the theories is that it was written by Thomas Muffet, a renowned English doctor and entomologist in the 16th century. He was fascinated with spiders, even keeping them as pets. He wrote The Theatre of Insects, the first catalogue of native British insects. It is believed that he wrote it for his stepdaughter, Patience Muffet. I chose to use this as my inspiration.

Making has kept me going

At the end of June we went on holiday to Portugal, we had a lovely time but July ended up being a write off as far as this project was concerned. I don't do well with change and getting back to normality was quite difficult for me. The thing that helped was preparing for a party where I had the opportunity to dress up as a fairy. At first I wasn't going to bother as my motivation for making a costume was rubbish, but then I warmed to the idea and my imagination and excitement got rolling. I was quite pleased with the finished costume and it got the ball rolling again on Little Miss Muffet. It was also my birthday at the end of July and my lovely hubby bought me a Belt and Disc sander which made some of the more arduous task a whole lot easier.

I do find life quite difficult at times. During this project I've taken an overdose of alcohol and pills, self harmed, got a CPN, was promised DBT (which I'm still waiting for) and found out that I have OCD tendencies (the focus of it I can't talk about as I'm too humiliated by my behaviour). The one thing that helps is my passion for making. In fact, I would say I couldn't live if I didn't have the opportunity to making things.

The room

I decided to depict a 16th century Tudor study filled with insects, potions and the like, with a rabbit to represent Patience (idk why I like rabbits, I had one when I was little but it died 3 days after we got it, he was a rescue and in a bad way, I suppose the rabbits I have made won't die will they?). She's in the study eating her curds and whey (this was eaten for breakfast and is similar to cottage cheese) when she gets a bit of a surprise.

As the lid fell off the last room box when I was showing it to the gallery owner in Lincoln (cringe) I decided on a more robust design. Also, this one needed a ceiling to create a more gloomy atmosphere, so only the front was clear acrylic sheet. This made it too dark inside so I added lighting, which gave the perfect candle lit look I was after. I have some bright ideas that bring a lot of challenges sometimes. This time I thought it would be a good idea to make a globe, Dr Muffet would have one I decided as he travelled a bit. After a week of struggling with construction and wise words from hubby, I abandoned the idea (for now...). By the time it got to November I decided to put the rug on back burner for a future project too, there was no way it was going to be finished in time. The room didn't need it anyhow, it was full with everything I'd made for it.

The absolute worst part of this project was the panelling, there was a hell of a lot of time and sanding went into them walls! My fav part was making a pair of 16th century glasses.

This project took quite a lot longer than I expected it too, I got quite stressed out about it because I had the exhibition in Lincoln coming up and I was supposed to be putting 3 room boxes in and it seemed like it was taking forever. Everything is scratch built apart from the glassware (which I filled with coloured resin and did labels for). I researched the Tudor period to help me design the objects and the room. Please excuse any errors, history is not my strong point and research is difficult because of the dyslexia.

Next project

Humpty Dumpty room box and a tree house (both half done)