I am no stranger to making Japanese-inspired dioramas (see here and here), but until this time they’ve not been particularly accurate. The first one was assembled from literal junk including a cardboard box, and the second was a kitbash into an “inspired” home. But I was itching to do something a bit more detailed, proportional, and accurate than my previous attempts, so I hauled some of my miniature supplies from Montreal to California and got to work.
I started out with a basic MDF room-box kit with two walls and a floor. From there, I constructed the inner walls to create the tokonoma, butsudan alcove, and decorative shelving using square balsa dowels I hand-staned, and pine craft rectangles. I wallpapered the whole thing in decorative rice paper. The tatami ended up stumping me for a while, and then I remembered I had this beige textured shelf liner left over from organising the pantry. A bit of beige paper underneath it and some washi tape to form the borders, and voila. Itty bitty tatami committee! I divided it into typically balanced proportions, ending up with a room that’s four and a half tatami, plus the toko and shelving spaces.
Once the room structure was complete, it was time for the fun part – decorating! This is always my favourite part of making a miniature or diorama, since it’s where things really start to come to life. They go from looking like boxes to looking lived-in. I like to imagine the resident of this room is a young woman trying to balance modern and traditional life based on her hobbies (calligraphy, reading poetry). She knows she’s too old for it, but she still puts her childhood hina dolls out for Girl’s Day and still pays her respects to her family altar, but she’s also busy enough that she picks up pre-made meals on her way home from university. I don’t generally imagine this much of a resident in my scenes, but every detail I added here just kind of helped flesh her out, what can I say?
The details are a combination of printables from Etsy (links to the shops below), Re-Ment miniatures (the hina dolls, zori, and butsdan set, as well as the onigiri in her bento box), and a few small items I picked up from specialty shops on our recent trip out to Torrance. The tiny blue and white ginger jar was quite possibly the most expensive individual element here, at nearly twenty dollars, but it’s so stunning in person I knew I had to have it.
The greenery is all from MGA’s MiniVerse DIY sets. The ikebana was a kitbash of a few flower sets, the bonsai trunk was handmade and the leaves came from a strawberry kit, the fig tree and small plants in the shelving unit were just placed in as-is, and so was the tiny koi in the bowl with lilies. They’re not quite to 1/12 scale but I think there’s a lot of leeway to be had with plants, since they’re never one fixed size anyway.
Please enjoy exploring this tiny space as much as I loved creating it!
Printables came from the following Etsy shops, but I’m afraid I’ve lost the references as to what came from where.
As for the Re-Ment miniatures and MGA’s MiniVerse; they can both be found on Amazon.
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