Gingerbread house. According to certain researchers, the first gingerbread houses were the result of the well-known Grimm‘s fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel“. As many czech people will tell you; the Grimm brothers ‘borrowed’ many of their famous fairytales from old czech fairytales. In this case it was the ‘Pohádka o perníkové chaloupce‘, fairytale of the gingerbread house. Translated back from the Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel it becomes ‘Jeníček a Mařenka‘. Funny detail on the wikipedia page is the standard picture that comes with this fairytale is a photograph taken in the dutch fairytale park the......
Continue Reading
Cottage on chicken legs. One of the returning fairytale movies around christmas in the Czech republic is Mrazík (Jack Frost). Made in the sovjet union in 1964, based on a russian fairy tale. While Ivan searches for Nastya, he comes across Baba Yaga, She lives in an enchanted forrest, in a house on chicken legs. While there are more (russian) movies with houses on chicken legs and Baba Yaga, there are only a few photograph of that house. And most of them are unsharp screen prints from the movie. Nevertheless, we thought it would......
Continue Reading
The Watermill Princess In 1994 the famous czech film director Zdeněk Troška made the fairytale movie ‘Princezna ze mlejna‘. In 2000 he made a follow up with ‘Princezna ze mlejna 2’. Both of the movies where made in the South Bohemian district with the many forrests ad lakes. As for the building, the watermill, they opted to build one specially for the movie. With typical South Bohemian barok style front, but a-typical positioning of the mill itself to accomodate for the camera-view. Unfortunally the whole building was demolished after the filmming was completed!......
Continue Reading
Most, if not all, miniature parks in europe have miniature buildings en landmarks that exist in full real life size. Fairy gardens and garden railways mostly have a gothic style fantasy buildings. We would like to have only non-existing fantasy buildings, but in 1:25 scale, so they all look to belong in this fantasy world. Most fairy tale movies made in the Czech republic are filmed in existing castles, some with little adjustments specially made for the movie. The most famous castles are already copied in the Bohemian miniature park. We don’t want......
Continue Reading
As the tabletop wargaming crafters on youtube will tell you; start with carton. Why not, it’s cheap or free and easy to use. But not if you want to put it outside. Yes, we tried. With a lot of special coating for boats, we had some builds outside in the summer. Under some roofing that is, because we did not trust the rain. So, the next best thing; XPS Styrodur foam. Already waterresistent by itself, it is used as house isolation on the outside. Well, if that works, it should work for us......
Continue Reading
To have an idea in your head and realizing that in real life can be fustrating. Internet to the rescue! The amount of inspirational creative websites and educational films on youtube is endless. Of course, there is no website of youtube film that will show you how to build a miniature park. But there is information to be found that can be usefull. First of all; the most usefull for me where the channels about tabletop wargaming. We will have to make a thank you-list of all youtubes that have helped making some......
Continue Reading
From 2007 we have been building and maintaining a small leasure park for the whole family, with some trails, puzzels, games and more, locally known as Houbový park (the Mushroom park). (In 2020 we changed the name to Fantazium, as people kept asking for real mushrooms…) In 2010 we added some houses and gnomes, at rather large sizes. The houses and figures had a lot to endure in local weather conditions. Ongoing development and new insights lead to new ideas: Let’s make it smaller. Being dutch has the advantage of having visited the......
Continue Reading