(Originally posted at my main account, *WolfenMoondaughter)

First, let it be known that I DID **NOT** MAKE THE BUILDING, I only PAINTED it. Also, I DID **NOT** MAKE THE ACTION FIGURES. I also DID **NOT** make the furniture or cups or ice cream or any of that. I'm not even sure this is in the right category, but I couldn't figure out where else to put it.

FULL VIEW FOR MORE DETAIL (unless you have dial-up, because ther's a lot more images in the full view)

Basically what I did was "kitbash" a 1987 Takara Co. LTD toy ice cream shop (wish I had taken pics of it before I altered it, so I could show before & after *Sigh*) into Fortescue Florean's Ice Cream Parlour. Those Mattel Harry Potter mini-figures are the perfect size for it! *gush* I painted the building (it was all pink and brown before, then designed new decals in photoshop, printed them out, and pasted them on (with glue "potion" from a Harry Potter art kit, no less). Hence my hesitation about putting it in this gallery, as part of the art is the digitally-made logos, but as it's not just about the logos, I couldn't put it in digital art, or even design & interface, could I? ... And since it's a toy, and I didn't design the structure, just decorated it, I didn't figure it fell under achitecture. And since it's not a doll but a setting, I figured it didn't go in custom dolls ... Arrgh.

Now for a little background story. When I was still living with roomates, one of my roomies and I were window shopping one day and stumbled across this cute toy in a Korean Gift Shop. (It must have been there for years, given this was 2000, and the toy says 1987.) We didn't have much money on us, so when the shop owner told us the price and we declined to buy it, she lowered the price dramatically (I guess she just wanted to get rid of it!) When we got it home, we and our other roomie went through our toys and found all the figures we could that would fit and started playing with it, making up funny little scenarios. The next day, the second roomie had even put up word balloons taped over the character's heads, and periodically we would change them. When we all parted ways, I paid the first roomie for her share and took the shop with me. So when I got those little Harry Potter figures and I noticed how they were the perfect size for that old playset, I remembered there was an ice cream parlour in Diagon Alley, and I just *had* to do this to the shop. I replaced the menuboard, covered the decals in the window, made new signage, and did a chalkboard image for the freestanding sign. On the back wall there had been a "community board" I replaced it with wanted signs of Sirius Black and my rabbit Alice, aka Evil (I did that "Wanted" image of Alice ages ago, and you can find it here: [link] ).

You can see the decals here: [link]

Diagon Alley and Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour © J K Rowling/Warner Bros.
Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger action figures ©/TM Mattel/J K Rowling/Warner Bros.
Ice Cream Shop playset © Takara Co. LTD
Logos © me

("Kitbashing" is a term we used when I was in college for taking toys and making them into other things. I guess they just call it "customizing" now?)