I
love miniatures - I really admire handcrafted pieces filled with
detail. I've tried my hand at making a few tiny treasures over the
years. I want to show you one I made for my sister Beth - she has
recently lent it back to me so that I could take a few pics.
I gave her a necklace consisting of a chinese lantern and a few glass
beads on a leather cord. Tucked inside the lantern are the details of
a wonderful story I found in the magazine Awake! It's a story of a
girl, raised in China, who was given away at 3 yrs. of age because her
family was too poor to feed her. The family who took her in put her to
work in their rice paddies and she never went to school. When she was
of age she was given, in an arranged marriage, to a man who owned a Chinese Restaurant
in the U.S. where she was expected to be a "charming and gracious"
hostess. She bore 7 children in a little over 9 years and soon after,
suffering from exhaustion and seeing no way out, she had a "breakdown"
and tryed to take her life. She was rushed to the hospital though and
recovered. From here the story takes an amazing upward turn as a kind,
white-haired lady comes into her restaurant, The Red Dragon . . .
Inside this nutshell version I included a book containing her life
story (complete with pockets containing pictures and letters from her
life), a menu from The Red Dragon (as I imagine it to have been), a
small folded paper fan, 2 tiny Fortune Cookies (with "fortunes" giving
clues to the outcome of the story) and a little doll I made from wood
beads.
