Blog Spotlight - Creating a French Bistro from a Playmobil Doll House

When I was growing up, I had a really neat painted-tin dollhouse that originally belonged to my Mom.  But that's very different from the adult hobby of building dollhouses and furnishing them in painstaking detail to reflect a specific house or time period.  (The Faith Bradford Dollhouse in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in DC is one famous example.)

Earlier today I discovered a blog post that was so cool, I just knew I had to share it.  EmmaJ is a self-described collector of Playmobil pieces who started customizing them for various projects.  Her blog is located at http://emma-j1066.blogspot.com/.

I am a complete sucker for French things, and the project of EmmaJ's that completely blew me away was her conversion of a standard Playmobil dollhouse into an amazingly detailed French Bistro.  Here's a photo of the original dollhouse, before she started working on it:

Now here's a photo of the exterior of the French Bistro, after EmmaJ re-painted the building and added little details like fancier doors & windows, a "Bistro de Paris" sign and a menu board next to the front door:

Even more amazing is the amount of detail EmmaJ created for the interior of the bistro.  She designed the three floors to accurately represent a first-floor bar/lounge, a second-floor dining room, and a third-floor kitchen.

I copied these three photos from EmmaJ's blog to give you an idea of what her French Bistro is like, but you can read all about the bistro on her 19 Oct 2010 post at http://emma-j1066.blogspot.com/p/french-bistro-5302.html.  She includes many more up-close photos showing the incredible detail she packed into each area of the bistro's interior, as well as the lighting she installed to also provide an appropriate nighttime ambience.  And you can see even more photos (to the melodic strains of Edith Piaf's "La Vie en Rose") in her French Bistro YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/EmmaJane1066#p/u/6/eqnAhlxQFhk.

I love encountering artists whose level of creativity both delights and inspires me.  Is there anyone out there who particularly inspires you?