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STARLINGSHIP

Gift and Book Shoppe

and Interstellar Space Station

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A large room, carpeted, with several potted trees, chairs and tables covered in fuzzy draping. Centerpoint of room is a U-shaped, 5-story miniature apartment building made of shelves. Roof is covered with grass-like carpet and mountain-like planters with small houseplants. Tiny elevators lead between shelves. Tiny cable cars and staircases lead from apartment roof onto the tables, and to a gift-shop shelf full of jewelry, books and crafts.

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Welcome to the Starlingship.

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Close-up of a section of a miniature apartment building seen from both sides. Each shelf has walkways with guardrail. Apartments have small signs above them. On one side apartments are open like dollhouses. Most are strange and alien, such as an aquarium-like room containing a large fish, a room with mouse-like creatures playing a board game, and a room with a two-headed cat-eared vendor behind a counter overlooking the walkway. Other side is closed off with outer doors and windows. These are also strange, including doors resembling mouths or flowers, a caged window like a boat porthole, and a stack of three round tubes in place of a door.

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This is... a sort of business proposal.

It's an idea I have, which combines a variety of things that are very dear to my heart.

They include my greatest passions in life.

Miniatures and dollhouses.

Science fiction and fantasy.

Arts and crafts.

Plants and nature.

Bicycling and local artist communities.

They've all coalesced in my mind to form this concept, which feels very much like a distillation of all that makes me happy.

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So I've played around and experimented...

collecting found objects and craft supplies...

making mockups...

building models...

to give myself a taste of what this could be.

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A still photo of a half-scale model I built of 6 apartment cubes on 3 stories of wire shelving. Zoomed out far enough to see the edges. One side has printed descriptions of the apartments in small frames. The walkways and roof are made of green yoga-mat foam, edged with fuzzy fabric cut from a green towel to resemble grass.

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But I'm ready for it to be so much more.

If putting this idea into action could become a big part of my life, I would feel like the luckiest life-form in all the galaxies.

In addition (since the idea is based around the theme of homes and housing) I would eventually want to donate part of the proceeds to housing initiatives here in Los Angeles.

(It remains to be seen whether this plan can even sustain itself, let alone make enough to donate to charity. But I do hope that someday it can do more than just raise awareness and interest in that cause.)

~Erika Hammerschmidt

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