Flickering Stove Bulb: HBS has a 12V red/orange colored bulb that flickers without causing other lights on the same transformer to flicker. A true wonder. Click link to see... http://www.miniatures.com/hbs/global/Index.owp?TOPCATEGORY=shopping&SUBCATEGORY=products&INNERPAGE=/hbs/global/shopping/ProductDetail.owp&PRODUCTSKU=2120

Sally Cook-Thomas

Wallpaper in America: Itsy Bitsy Minis sells some nice prints, and they have matching fabric too. They do ship internationally too. I just checked. http://www.itsybitsymini.com/index.htm

Kassy, Bristol, CT

Haunted House Plants: Check out the work of Beverly Gallerani at http://www.miniplants.com -who at my request developed some dead plants for my project and has since added a line of "Haunted Houseplants (tm)" to the amazing 'living' plants she already does. Her dead plants are fabulous and so real (for being dead).

Patricia Paul

Clay Flowers: I use polyclay for certain flowers - roses, iris, orchids, fox gloves, poppy's etc - but I never use it for leaves strangely enough - even the thinnest clay leaf looks clumpy - just my opinion / technique

Lesley, South Africa

Clay Tools: The clay tools you need for Fimo and other polymer clays can be found at http://www.clayfactory.net/kt.html    They are Kemper Pattern Cutters. I used these in another lifetime when I made bread dough (yes, that really ages me).   You can buy them in sets or individually.   I would buy them and then use needle nose pliers to reshape them .  You then have to level them off with a file because the reshaping distorts the tube.   Look at ceramic shops in your part of the world first.   However, they aren't heavy for shipping.

Diane Foster, The Colony TX

Punched Clay: Let's say you have a hand held (as opposed to those square plastic ones) maple leaf shaped paper punch. You want to make a maple leaf shaped candy dish, but out of polymer clay, not paper. (You can use the other punches too, and the method is basically the same.)

The first thing you have to do is remove that 'trap' on the back of your punch, meant for catching the cut outs.  Take a good size piece of polymer clay and dust it lightly with baby powder. Press part of your clay into the hole on the hole punch. Pull it out using the rest of the chunk of clay as your 'handle'. Using a NEW, sharp single edged razor blade, dusted with baby powder, slice the shaped part of the clay away from the backing.

Now you will have a chubby maple leaf shape. By gently squashing it, and curving the edges, you will have your maple leaf shaped candy dish! You can paint and give it a coat of gloss to make it look like ceramic, too!

I have done this with many of my punches, and it has not seemed to adversely affected their original use!

Alice Zinn- Pt. St. Lucie FL

Making Bricks: The pasta machine bricks, I believe are ours, and you can find them on our website. http://www.thomasopenhouse.com   Happy bricking.

Noel & Pat Thomas, IGMA Fellows, NAME AOH

OLD Fimo: When I took Sharon Warner's fimo food class in Dallas, she told us that old fimo could be revived by mixing in tiny amounts of hand lotion (any kind). We tried it in class and were quite impressed.

Anyway last night my sister and I tried it on some fimo that was about 25 YEARS old. IT WORKED!!We broke it into about 1/2" cubes and worked it adding hand lotion a bit at a time and within minutes it was totally workable. And colour stayed exactly the same. Wonderful!!

Maureen in St. Albert AB Cda

Wearable clear "glass" slippers for a Cinderella doll. I've never done it, but it seems to me you'd have more luck by painting the shoe onto the foot, with the foot having oil or some kind of mold release agent all over it, so you could pull the shoe off later. Resin might not be pliable enough - you may need to use a soft latex. No matter what, I'm fairly certain you won't be able to hollow out the inside of a solid shoe. That only works for clunky wooden Dutch shoes.

Paulette in IN

Champagne Flutes: Mary Eccer makes filled champagne flutes complete with bubbles. Her web site is http://pannikins.com/

Lynn in Milan