How is to be married to a hippie

I have been writing about my husband, but I still didn't mention his name or anything about him. I did it because I would want to write a post about him.

He was a very intelligent guy, student of Chemical Engineering in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He was a kind of thinker, he had something as a genius. Being so wise, he was critical about the world. Sure, he didn't get along with the society standards and therefore he became a hippie. He had to be. If there was no hippies, he would be the first.

He knew to write with both hands, the left and the right hand worked as the same. He played guitar wonderfuly (both sides - the arm of the guitar could be to the right or to the left!). He had a great mechanical reasoning. He was very creative.

He was vegan since when this word wasn't used yet. He just ate natural food. No soda, no sugar, no junk food. He would want to live a natural life, without the human inventions. He didn't want to have things like TV, phone or refrigerator. It was not easy to live with him.

He left the Chemical Engineering School when he completed the third year and started studying arts and painting. It was a big change. I met him first time when he was playing guitar with friends. His name was Marco.

I'm talking about him in the past because he died some time ago. Later I will write more about it.

I am telling all of this because you, reader, can understand what was happening that time. I'd like to ask you: does a person like Marco care about money? What do you think?

Every Thursdays and Sundays Marco was going to sell our miniatures at the arts fairs. The fairs (both) open at 8 AM and close around 9 PM. So, Marco was used to leave our home at 7 AM and he was back in the evening. However, after we started earning more money, Marco was back home from the fairs like 1PM or even earlier. When I asked him why he was back so early, he answered that was because he had got enough money already. Then I would ask "What is enough money???"

Well, the deal was: as soon as Marco earnt enough for us to survive until the next fair, he'd stop selling and was back home. Sure, I disagreed about that. Money is never "enough". He would want a simple lifestyle, but that was too much simple. I wanna live, not survive! How about to have some savings? Emergency money? He said that he was not ambitious. But I don't think this is about being ambitious or not. Did you get the argument?

I felt me beaten. What I was doing? To be awaken until late painting, doing my best sounded useless.

Taking another punch

Things are not good or bad for long. After the fire in our studio, we had to start and start soon. The miniatures were our only source of money. We lost a lot of things, but there was still material to work.

Actually, that difficulty led us to get help from other people. We always worked alone, only me and my husband. Then, we got two people to paint the miniatures and one to deal with the molds, but the last details were made by me. We tried to get someone to make the details, but the miniature seemed somehow different and no good.

We were 5 people working all day long and every miniature made for us was sold quickly. This work paid our bills, food, clothes and furniture. I could work and have my children close to me. Our employees were our friends and everything had a great harmony. We were not rich, but I was happy!

Once, we knew about an out of state fair. It was called "Ouro Preto Winter Festival". We could expose and sell our miniatures there during 7 days. We had an old car, but it would be an 8 hours trip to the mountains and we were afraid that the car wouldn't get to make it, then we decided go by bus. As I needed a break, my kids and I went there too. The good thing about selling miniatures is that you can have a lot of them in a bag.

Ouro Preto is a historical city in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. It is called by Historical and Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It was the place of the sculptor Aleijadinho. He hadn't no fingers in his hands, but he did a lot of wonderful sculptures in the churches of Ouro Preto. In this town there is also an old and traditional university. So, this place is always full of students from everywhere.

The weather was wonderful and the fair was great, then during the weekend we sold almost all miniatures. We bought our tickets back home and decided to enjoy the town as turists before go home. The town was full of people. We went to the museum and walked around looking the colonial architecture.

At the end of that day, we went to eat something, but... Where was the money??? A thief had stolen the wallet of my husband with all our money!!! Now we had no money and no miniatures. We were lucky because the tickets were in my bag, that wasn't stollen. I had some money too. But we had to leave the place where we were staying, so we didn't have to pay for another night. There was no credit cards in that time.

We went to a cheap student place, and next day early in the morning, we were back home with no money to tell the story. Again I had to rush myself to make more miniatures.

Low Fire Night

We had a studio in our backyard where we were used to work. It had a lot of shelves full of miniatures ready to paint (some were new models that we were experiencing and hadn't tried to sell yet), a cabinet full of painted miniatures waiting to dry, cans of ink, brushes and a desk full of other stuff, like the molds. Outside, but still under the roof, we had a large wooden table where I was used to paint and our oven. We also had some pictures (oil paintings and watercolors) hanging on the walls, a radio and a guitar. There were no computers at that time.

I was used to paint only during the day, with natural light, but we were selling everything each Sunday and we got another weekly fair on Thursdays too, then I had to make a lot of miniatures every week. That is why I was also working during the night. My husband was crazy about organization. He had to organize and clean everything before start working. I wasn't much like that (now I am, but not at that time), then many times we fight over this subject. While I was painting, he was cleaning the studio. Everything had to be perfect before he could start.

My husband was used to sleep early, while I stayed up until late every night just painting. I liked to paint a lot of miniatures at once. I'd get the yellow ink, for example, and painted every yellow detail of all miniatures and so on. This is addictive... You can't stop! So, I was used to paint until the large table was full of miniatures and there was no room for any more miniature. Then, it was bed time for me.

When I get up in the morning, the miniatures were already dried. Then the table could be cleaned and I started all over again. This was my everyday rotine. However, once, when I got up and open my window room, instead of seeing the dried miniatures on the table, I felt a smell of smoke and saw that the whole studio was black!!!

My husband forgot the oven on and the fire distroyed the studio during the night!!! Everything was black! The large wooden table was now trash! All miniatures I had done were distroyed! I don't know how we didn't awake. We got the idea that the fire was low, with no flames and extinguished by itself. Everything turned into coal. I thought we were very lucky because we could have die. Now we had to start over from zero.

We had to get a little helf from our friends.

1000 Miniatures

Things were very different years ago. We were trying to increase our homemade miniature production. We thought about making a two parts plaster mold. We had never done this.

After an entire day working hard to get at least one mold done, we tried to make the first miniature, but we didn't get it. The miniature didn't get out of the mold. It came out in pieces. When I think that today there are a lot of videos on youtube showing how to make this job! But that time we had nothing. We tried again and again. Now the miniatures were coming out of the mold, but completely deformed!

We thought about silicon molds, but the silicon wasn't sold as it is today. It was sold only in enormous quantities to the industries. The only silicon we could buy was the silicon that is sold to dentists. It was very expensive, but we bought. We made a mold and the miniature came out wonderful!

However, each time we made a miniature the mold was damaged. Then, we found out that the mold was able to make only about 100 miniatures! That was worthless. The silicon was too much expensive and each miniature would have to cost a fortune.

My husband thought about to make an oven in our backyard too, so at least the miniatures would be lighter and resistant. He made an electric oven using refractory bricks and cement. There was an iron little door and a key power. But we couldn't put all miniatures in this oven because they had to be hollow and some miniatures were too small to be hollowed, but still too "big" to get that high temperature (it would be distroyed). So, just some of the miniatures were placed in the oven after dried.

But we didn't stop thinking about the molds. My husband got an idea. He ordered natural latex from Amazon forest! That time the government had built the BR320 Transamazon highway - an enormous highway of 4000 Km (about 2500 miles) through the tropical forest and there were a lot of big trucks going there. The latex is extracted from the "seringueira" (the rubber tree), a common Amazon tree.

So, we got the cheap latex from Amazon forest and tried to make our molds. We didn't know how to deal with the latex. That look like honey (same color, same texture, but not the same taste!). I don't know how my husband found out how to deal with that.

We had to put the miniature inside the latex can and then put it close to the fire. We had to make a big fire in the backyard to get the molds done. It seemed we were from the Stone Age, but the molds were great and cheap! And more: the latex last longer than silicon.

But we had to had a plaster mold to hold the latex mold. That seemed very complicated. We solve the problem diferently. As we live close to the beach, we got a box full of sand and the molds had to stay placed in the sand. The sand takes the form of the latex mold, so we hadn't to make that complicated plaster mold. Also, we had to start making plaster miniatures because the clay doesn't work well in the latex molds.

After all of this, we could have boxes and boxes full of miniatures quickly, although the painting process was still slow. I was making about 1000 miniatures/month and selling all of them.

PS.: Dear readers, next post I will tell you how my little factory was distroyed by fire!

Like American Indians

Sometimes I think that if you don't live in USA, then you have a cousin living there. I had a cousin living in New York City and he was back in Brazil for a visit. He worked as a trader, importing and exporting American products. He was a successful man in his business and he came to my home while I was completely busy making miniatures.

Sure he saw my miniatures and my attempt to do business. He said that people in America would love my miniatures but he couldn't do almost nothing for me. When I asked him why, he told me a story:

"Once a business man was driving in the desert, when he saw some indians close to the road selling things. He was curious and wanted to see what was that.

He was amazed! They had really nice leather jackets, quilts, blankets, jewelry, bags, shoes... a lot of things! The prices were so good that he bought everything the indians had to sell.

The business man went to downtown and sold everything he had bought of the indians. A week later, he was back in the desert looking for the indians, but they weren't there, where they met before. He drove around trying to find them until he did.

So he said that the people just loved the leather jackets, quilts and everything he had bought. Then, he would want to buy more. The indians agreed.

He said he wanted to order 10 thousands of those jackets, 3 thousands of the quilts and 2 thousands of the blankets to the next 30 days.

The indians started laughing. The older one said that was impossible. The business man didn't understand and asked why. So, the older indian explained that they took about 10 years to make that stuff the business man had bought a week before. They would need more than 1 hundred years to get that order done!"

I understood what my cousing was talking about. He said: "Can you have 5 thousands of the miniatures done and packed to next 30 days?". I couldn't. He was right. It would take a year to be done.

So my cousin just bought some miniatures to give to his friends in NYC and I was left thinking about how could I increase my production.

The excitement of that visit was over soon. Then I was back creating new miniatures to sell at the fair on Sunday.

Selling Miniatures

As I told before, I had no experience. Mainly, I had no experience in pricing. The clay is cheap. I could make more than 100 miniatures expending only 1 dollar with the clay. The ink also was not expensive. If I buy a small can of each color, I could paint during months. The solvents as Tinner and the brushes were the most expensive, but still not so bad. I would spend so few, that my dad was used to say that I turned earth (the natural clay) in cash!

Also, the value of the miniature had to come from the time I need to make each piece and my skills. But not only this... There are other things that we have to account as: if the miniature is the one of a kind, if I am a known artist or not and, mainly, how much the people is willing to pay.

But 30 years ago I didn't know about it. My husband sold a lot of miniatures to the stores, but we didn't know really how much we could ask for each miniature. Only when we saw the prices of my miniatures in the stores windows, we had the idea of how much we could sell them. I was amazed because the prices were like 5 times higher than we had asked. We knew that the prices would be higher at the stores, but not so much.

So, I realized that I could earn about 5 times more if I had sold the miniatures directly to the clients. That is why we did stop of selling to the stores and started looking for clients only. We get a sales person: a college student, friend of us, that sold a lot of miniatures in the Federal University of the Rio de Janeiro. My mom also sold a lot for us, and she didn't ask anything to do this job for us. Friends of my mom sold for us too, asking nothing to do it. We sold to neighbors, relatives and friends.

We also started participating of fairs, shows and events. Every Sunday, my husband was going to a turistic and historical town in the mountains close to Rio de Janeiro called Petrópolis (that means the "Town of Pedro" because the king Don Pedro II and his family were used to have vacations there a century ago). It is a charming town and go there to sell is like to have a kind of short vacation too. The sales in this place was like to earn a week paycheck. We could live the week with that money we earnt on the Sundays.

The only problem about fairs is the weather. If the weather was bad, we didn't get much. But, fortunately, the weather in Rio de Janeiro state is like to have summer during the entire year. Life was good.

PS.: Dear readers (if there is someone awake yet), next post I will tell you why I thought we were like the North American indians...

A weird coincidence

Now I have to go back again to the past. When I was just a teenager, a scout girl, camping and selling cookies to get money to help other people, I had a boyfriend, so young as me. He was not a "boyfriend" as we understand this word today. We just kissed quickly each other only once. But he was my first "love", that one we "die" for. I will call him D. here in this story.

I guess all of us had someone like that, the "sweetheart" of the high school. If one gets to marry this person, then he or she has a great chance to be happily married to the rest of his life. This was not what happenned to me. We had to be apart. I never cried so much in my life as I cried for D.. It wasn't his or my fault. We were too young and had to live too far from each other and there were other circunstances too. So, D. was my first and impossible love. We didn't see each other since I was 15. I didn't know what happened to him, where he lived, nothing. We lost the contact.

Then, lets go "back to the future" again...I was at home creating and making miniatures, with my two babies to take care and my unemployed husband walking around trying to sell my miniatures at the stores. Now he was going far from our home. He was visiting the downtown stores. The Rio de Janeiro town has thousands of stores.

Do you know what happened? He found a store called "Leila". Well, Leila is my name. Naturally, my husband went to talk to the owner to get some business, and in the middle of the conversation he told where we lived and that the name of the store and my name were the same! The store owner told to my husband that years ago he knew someone from that place...

Well, readers, you can guess who the store owner was! He was D.!!! Oh my God! How my husband ended up meeting him??!!! There were thousands of stores! I myself had never met him again since I was a girl. And the name of the store? Why the store had my first name? Had it been just a weird coincidence?

Sure, D. bought some of my miniatures and even sent me a gift after he figured out that I was his old sweetheart. However I didn't want to exploit this connection, if you know what I mean... I just persuaded my husband to visit other stores and forget about the "Leila" store. And it was what happened. I didn't meet or talk to D. in this occasion. I did't want. He also didn't look for me.

I kept myseld creating new characters. I made some dolls.

PS.: Next post I will tell about the shows and fairs we started participating.

Dear readers...

Well, now I know there is at least one reader! As you know (maybe not yet!), I am telling the story of my miniatures and how I started. I want to tell how everything happenned until the day of today. Then, you will know what I am doing now and what is coming next. It seems that there will be a lot to tell, but not really. Although I have started selling my miniatures in 1978, I stopped during many years.

Readers are like friends of us. They give us a bit (or a lot) of their attention. If they are serious, I don't mind if they become critical. My main goal is to share my experience. What I learnt in this way and what I am still learning.

As I told in my second post, I started from nothing, I knew nothing and I didn't have a formal learning. I learnt by myself. That time there wasn't internet, videos, youtube, tutorials or even books about making miniatures (at least not in my country). I was a mom of 2 babies, had a lot to do at home, no money at all and the unemployment as knocking my door. I had to do something! I could do a lot of different things, but I don't know why I just wanted to make miniatures.

After selling to the stores close to my home, my husband went a little further and we got to sell to other stores of the town, not only in our neighborhood. I created new characters: an angel and an indian mom with a baby in her back. They look like as they were from the same "family".

PS.: Next post I will tell you about a special store that my husband found during those days. You just have to know about it. It was a weird coincidence. It got me thinking and you will be too.

Miniatures as a source of money

The pack of clay stayed in my garage completely forgotten during years... I was a bit older and got married. A year later, we had a baby and soon I was pregnant again. It was when my husband became unemployed and soon we would be running out of money. Being almost 6 months pregnant, I couldn't get a regular job. So, I got an idea. I went to my parents garage looking for that clay I knew was still there.

The good thing about natural clay is that you just have to add some water, wait few days and you can use it again. It was what I did. So, I thought about making something to sell with that clay. The heads I had made before would be too difficult to sell. Who would buy a head? No one. Then I thought about making something that people would like to buy just for fun. Just to have it.

That day I made a pair of little stylized dogs, some turtles and worms... They didn't take long to dry outside. Rio de Janeiro, where I live, is a warm place! As soon as the miniatures dried, I should burn it in the oven, but I hadn't a special oven to burn the pieces! I tried the kitchen oven, but it didn't work. It wasn't hot enough. So, I decided to leave the miniatures only as dried clay. Later I learnt that this is called "cold ceramic".

So, I had to paint the miniatures, but what ink should I get? I had ink to paint wood and metal at home. It is the ink we get to paint doors and gates. I painted the miniatures with this ink. It took a lot long to dry, but it worth. After painted, the miniatures were shinning! Still, the thick layer of ink gave some protection to the pieces.

Next, my husband went outside to sell the miniatures while I stayed at home making more. He tried to sell it to the stores and he got it. He got to place all of them in our neighborhood stores! We had to make more!

How I started making miniatures

It was more than 30 years ago. I was still a teenager and was playing at the beach with some friends during a winter day when I found that there was a layer of clay in the ground. I didn't know what was that, but got a bit of the clay and made a small female head. But it was heavy, so I made it again smaller. Then, I did like it. I didn't know anything about modeling or sculpting. I just found that I knew how to make it.

When I was in my way back home, I had some of the clay in my bag. Later I found that I could buy clay. I still keep the two heads I made that day. It is already broken after 3 or 4 movings. Now it looks like an ancient greek or roman piece found in a archaeological site. The nose is missing as part of the smaller one's face, but it is still my first miniatures.

I didn't do it long. After some months I had forgotten about the clay. The left over clay was kept in my garage. However, years later I had to look for this stuff again. In the next post I will tell you why.

PS.: Dear readers - if there is at least one! - I hope I am doing ok with the english language and you get to understand what I say. There are a lot of translators on web, but it doesn't work well. My first language is Portuguese.

Hi everyone!

I'm just starting this blog. It is under construction yet! Soon, I will be posting pictures, tips and tutorials.