Hello folks! I’m back with more fun art for ya!
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I needed a lighter tone after all the creepy pictures I made for the first 10 so, I delved into my toy collection! My first toy love was the Fisher-Price Little People. My prized Little People playset is the Castle. It has the best figures, accessories, base, and secret places!
There is a trap door that leads to the bottom of the tower where you lift a portcullis to release the person!
This turned into Number 11 “Dropsy” (the name of this game lol).
Number 12 is “Hide & Seek” When my DD was almost two we were stuck inside for days during a bad snowstorm. It was lovely because we just snuggled, watched Backyardigans and played. I even let her play with the castle. Well when it was time to clean up I couldn’t find the prince figure anywhere.
My baby girl could speak pretty well and she kept telling me that she “put tha pwince in da cat-le.” There was no prince there though. I looked everywhere, and looked for months.
When the spring came around I gave up looking for the prince. I could not imagine what had happened to him so, I bought another one off of E-Bay.
Dear reader, I kid you not, the day we got the new prince in the mail my daughter got down the castle to play and she dropped it! It was not broken, but out popped the first prince! It turned out he was jammed, unseen, in the back of the dungeon the whole time!
My DD said, “see Mommy, I tol you he was in theyr!” While my mouth gaped open!
We ended up keeping both princes as we had both versions of the princesses (yellow-Leia-haired and red-haired bobbed). A few years later my DD loved to show her toddler brother how to get the people “stuck” in the dungeon.
Number 13 is “Hiding” It features the hidden door to the dungeon from the main castle room. I am seriously loving the lithos on this toy. My lovely aunt-in-law bought the castle base for me when I was in college. When I graduated with my BFA in illustration the accessories where my graduation present! (Yes, I am a dork, no I don’t care!)
The Weebles Haunted House playset is tied for favorite playset with the castle. That is saying a lot because I don’t collect Weebles, I collect Little People. But this house is everything my secret goth self absolutely adores. Here is a previous post.
This place has a secret slide/passage a hiding place and a revolving bookshelf, plus a glowing ghost! It reminds me of a fun house!
This inside view of the revolving bookshelf is Number 14 “Boo!” 🙂
For Number 15: “Cinders” I had to draw a weird thing I had remembered.
I ended up making a trip to the basement and capturing this strange anomaly in the chimney. There was a brick pulled out when we moved here. Fully expecting treasure, I pulled it all the way out. Ashes and cinders ran out everywhere. This is weird because there is an ash clean-out door on the front of the chimney and this was on the side. If you have any ideas about this please let me know in the comments!
The next piece is “Premonition” and number 16. It’s a picture of our attic. I can’t believe we have an attic, but we do. Ive only ever stuck my head up here so Im not sure how tall the rafters are, but Im pretty sure I can stand up in the middle. Its very creepy up here with just the wind whistling by the shingles and the chimneys jutting up through the roof (all the way from their bases in the basement!). All that we found here was a stash of rolls of ancient wallpaper between the joists. They flaked and disintegrated when we touched them.
Number 17 is called “Other Worlds” because sometimes when Im immersed in looking through a strange window or going through an odd door I imagine that something very different is on the other side. This is especially easy to do on our third floor as everything has an other-worldly quality. These thumbnails are of all the dilapidated decadence that makes that empty floor feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland come true.
Number 18 is another third floor piece, “Ethereal.” I know I’ve done a lot of pieces about our tiny “Alice” doors, but I can’t stop.
Number 19 is a drawing of Mudhouse Mansion, one of the first urban explores of a Victorian house I had ever seen. I found this gem on the great website Forgotten Ohio way back in 2006. The inside tour of this second Empire abandoned house haunted me and still does even now. I never could understand why people don’t take care of their property. It was torn down a while back.
The last one for this post is numbered wrong, but oh well. Number 20 “Rendered Ashes” is the ash clean-out door for the hall chimney. This door is at the bottom of the chimney base, set in sandstone. About 4 feet above the sandstone the bricks start. Our basement has flooded many times over the last 113 years. The sandstone is scarred and worn away to prove it. This door is completely rusted shut and will not budge. I’ve always wondered what was behind it, even though it’s probably caked up fireplace ashes. Oh, this is the same chimney as the weird brick drawing in 15.
Stay tuned for more art!
With art everyday to you from Kansas Street,
-Jaime
Life on Kansas Street 