It starts with a feeling.
Not a plan — a feeling. The sense that a bumblebee and a mouse skeleton and a branch covered in moss belong together. That pink hydrangeas and white blooms and a pine cone are not random objects but a world waiting to be assembled.
The glass dome comes last. But before that: hours.
How long does it actually take?
People ask sometimes. They see the finished piece — sealed under glass, perfectly still, every flower in its place — and they imagine it came together quickly. It did not.
A single dome can take anywhere from several hours to several days, depending on how cooperative the materials are. Moss needs to be positioned just so. Dried flowers are fragile — one wrong move and a petal is gone. The skeleton needs to be stable. The branch needs to feel like it grew there, not like it was placed.
Every element is tried in multiple positions before it stays. Most things get moved at least three times. Some get removed entirely because they are almost right, and almost right is not good enough.
The obsession with scale
Working at this scale — inside a dome that is 15 centimetres across — means that every millimetre matters. A crystal that is one centimetre too far to the left changes the entire composition. A flower that is slightly too tall blocks something behind it.
This is not a problem to be solved. It is the work. The pleasure of it, even — the way a tiny world demands your full attention and will not let you be anywhere else while you are building it.
What goes in and what stays out
Every dome starts with more than it ends with. Materials are gathered, arranged, considered, and often set aside. Not because they are wrong — because they are not right for this particular world.
The Bumblebee’s Garden has pink, violet and white flowers because those were the colours that felt like an enchanted garden at dusk. Ad Semitam Magicam — to the magical path — holds a shrew skeleton with burgundy-stained teeth, a crystal ball, magical scrolls, moss and fern, because that world called for something older and stranger. Arcana Prati Silvestris — secrets of the forest meadow — is built around a rabbit skull, a dragonfly, and a shed snakeskin: a world that has already been lived in.
Why glass?
Because it preserves. Because it protects. Because there is something about seeing a world through glass that makes it feel more real, not less — like looking into something that exists on its own terms, sealed away from time.
Every dome that leaves this studio is a world complete in itself. Nothing inside it will change. The bumblebee will always be mid-pause on her branch. The shrew will always be mid-journey on the magical path. The rabbit skull will always rest among the ferns and dragonfly wings.
That is the point.