Miniatures

It began with seven tiny shops, and a couple of dozen villagers, all of which fit on a small table. Then, Joanne Marek said, she realized she had to have more. So she began adding pieces, she said, becoming increasingly enchanted with her Dickens Christmas village with its soft yellow lights glowing from the windows of homes and shops, its snow-dusted pine trees, and the children skating in circles on the pond at the edge of town.

Perhaps you recall the must-see-to-believe story of the Designer Dollhouse Showcase , for which top Los Angeles architects and interior decorators revealed the obsessive-compulsive gene that drives them to get every last detail just right , even if the project at hand is just 1:12 scale of reality? Now comes word that at the charity auction where bidding on each designer dollhouse was expected to start at $15,000, "most" of the 10 houses did sell. Officials declined to specify which ones sold, or for how much, treating the auction results like some matter of national security.

Reopened Nov. 15 in Buena Park after a four-year hiatus, Mott's Miniatures Museum already has run into a sizable problem: minuscule attendance. It seems customers are balking at paying admission to see "The Last Supper" painted on the head of a pin, costumed fleas and other memorable favorites from one of Orange County's quirkiest tourist attractions, according to owner Christopher Mott.

Malibu Barbie never had it so good. A Paul Smith rug, curtains sewn from Missoni fabric, LED sconces strung with Swarovski crystals, even a Mies van der Rohe Barcelona daybed cluttered with Rodeo Drive shopping bags - all small enough to fit in your pocket. These are but a few of the over-the-top luxuries decorating 10 couture play pads created for the 2013 Designer Dollhouse Showcase. The Los Angeles firm Richard Manion Architecture has constructed scale-model dream houses - Italianate, brownstone, beach house contemporary and other styles - that will be auctioned April 17 to benefit the UCLA Children's Discovery and Innovation Institute , part of Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA.

IBM researchers in San Jose have succeeded in moving single atoms around under a microscope, a major step toward the fabrication of atom-sized transistors, exceptionally small integrated circuits and even molecule-sized mechanical devices.

A 75-inch yacht--a scale model like those that sail in the America's Cup--wobbled its way across the Glendale High School swimming pool Friday as a group of special-education students unveiled the product of nine weeks of blood, sweat and accounting. The boat, christened Rising Star by school secretary Barbara Melone, was a class project designed to give students a hands-on chance to learn physics and math.

The Japanese have discovered the mini whinny, the little horses that have a way of fascinating almost everyone who has seen them. And what the Japanese like, they buy. There are about 100 of the miniature horses in Japan and the number is growing. A prime source for the Japanese stock is Winners' Circle Miniature Horse Ranch in Petaluma, about 35 miles north of San Francisco.

Leon Halperin looked stricken as he cut through a crowd of financiers to tell his client the bad news. "The Edsel is missing," he whispered to John Rempel, chief financial officer of Creative Master International Inc., a maker of model cars and other collectibles. The pocket-sized, red-and-white station wagon with real wood paneling, leopard upholstery, seat belts and retractable antenna had obviously struck a chord at the 11th Annual Growth Stock Conference here last week.

They're off and running again at the Encino Velodrome near Balboa Park, an 880-foot, high-banked concrete oval built for bicycle racing in 1961. Competitors aren't pedaling their vehicles. But they are pushing the pedal to the metal, so to speak. Radio-controlled race cars--one-10th scale, battery powered vehicles steered by operators with hand-held controls--approach speeds of 60 mph as competition heats up between members of the Competition Oval Racing Club.

Looking at European portrait miniatures is like discovering the universe in a drop of pond water. It's enough to make you slack-jawed. In technical terms, great portrait miniatures certainly dazzle. When you've got a painting whose convincing likeness of a person is rendered in teensy dimensions that may be less than an inch or two, an element of "gee whiz!" fascination is inevitable.

BEIJING - North Korea tested a nuclear device Tuesday, state media said, defying international pressure to stop such activities and drawing quick condemnation from the White House. State media said North Korea successfully detonated a miniature atomic bomb underground in a test geared toward protecting its safety and sovereignty from the United States. The White House, meanwhile, issued a statement saying "these provocations do not make North Korea more secure. " “Far from achieving its stated goal of becoming a strong and prosperous nation, North Korea has instead increasingly isolated and impoverished its people through its ill-advised pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery," the White House statement said.

The tsunami sequence in the new film "The Impossible" is so terrifying in its intensity that you might believe you're watching actual documentary footage of the natural disaster that struck Southeast Asia on Dec. 26, 2004, killing hundreds of thousands. The verisimilitude is the result of more than a year's work of exacting planning - and experimentation - by director Juan Antonio Bayona and his visual- and special-effects supervisors, who used a giant water tank in Spain (the largest in Europe)

In the spring we followed students in the Woodbury School of Architecture's Design/Build program as they created miniature cabins using components from store-bought sheds. This last semester, another set of students were given 10-by-10-foot sheds from Home Depot and CC&Rs (covenants, conditions and restrictions for building) from professors Jeanine Centuori and Sonny Ward. Teams also were given a theme - performance, music, games, therapy or dining - for each of five cabins, which will be used as part of a therapy program at the Shadow Hills Riding Club.

Eleanor LaVove, a former fashion editor who co-founded Angels Attic, a museum devoted to antique and contemporary dollhouses, toys and miniatures, died Aug. 24 at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica. She was 94. The cause was ovarian cancer, said her son Timothy. LaVove and longtime friend Jackie McMahan joined forces in 1974 to mount an exhibit of dolls and miniatures as a fundraiser for a school serving autistic children. The show was so popular, it outgrew McMahan's Brentwood backyard and within a few years moved to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, where 10,000 people viewed the exhibits over two days.

Abigail Goldman was wandering the Internet when she came across the model train website that changed her life. She noticed all the miniature figures were engaged in wholesome activities - waving to strangers, helping neighbors. Then she had a dark thought: Maybe those characters could be made to do violent, unspeakable things. They could populate tiny, twisted dioramas of her own design, snow-globe-sized worlds of murder and mayhem. "I said, 'Oh, look at all the little people!

Santa Clarita city officials are hoping residents might forgo the chips and soda next time they buy from a vending machine and opt instead for something a little more edifying: a piece of art. On Thursday at the Art Walk in downtown Newhall, the city debuted its new Art2Go vending machine in an effort to whet the public's appetite for culture. Deposit $10 and the machine dispenses a miniature piece of original art, such as oil paintings, watercolors and tile work. "The idea is to get people to start appreciating art," said Jeff Barber, Santa Clarita's arts and events supervisor.

I knew I was out of control when I began to daydream about the toaster. It was an old-fashioned, shiny chrome model with inner coils that glowed a vibrant orange when it was plugged in. It was only $39, and it wouldn't take up much counter space since it was barely an inch high. "Isn't this cute?" marveled Sue Garfield, owner of Petite Designs, a cozy dollhouse emporium in West Los Angeles that specializes in handcrafted miniatures. "I can't keep them in stock."

Open on: an aerial shot of a dollhouse-sized sports stadium. Cut to: toy trains and buses speed toward the soccer game. Close on: an itsy-bitsy marching band and teeny cheering fans fill the stadium in fast-motion, time-lapse photography. The mini-city featured in this animated sequence seems like an especially intricate and sophisticated architectural model. Or is it? That scene - from a 2011 ESPN commercial - was actually done with a photographic technique called tilt shift.

A cause of death has been determined for an 11-year-old upstate New York girl who died Wednesday while playing miniature golf in Orlando, Fla.; she was electrocuted, officials have determined. The child, identified as Ashton Jojo of Latham, N.Y., apparently had reached into a small pond at the Orange Lake Resort to retrieve her golf ball, Florida officials told the Orlando Sentinel. The Orange-Osceola Medical Examiner announced the cause of death on  Thursday. Orange County code enforcement officers inspected the pond and found possible violations, the newspaper said.