Wheel rims: RE: Cutting circular rims. - - - - Mount your Dremel router on a piece of plywood with pin holes set various distances from the inner/outer tangent of a 1/8" spiral cutter. This creates an electrical cutting compass. Set pin into board and into pilot hole on middle of piece to be cut out (or fixture) Route the outer circle first with the inner tangent of router bit. Stabilize the work piece then cut the inside diameter with the outer tangent of the bit. You can do this with hobby plywood or with wheel rim segments in an assembly-/-cutting jig.

Nice thing with segments, you can pre drill for spokes if you plan to use round pegs to align and secure. Two spokes per segment, and the drilling depth is the same for both..

Mel K.

Wheels: To my logic of having a round form to build wagon wheels around, wouldn't it be easiest to go on a jar lid search and use one of them for a form? Might have to go to the grocery store and find something you like to get one...

B Hudson's info was very interesting. I made a bunch of wheels about 25 years ago. I used macramé beads sawed in half for the hubs and dowels for spokes. At that time, I used plastic ice cream containers and cut 1/8 "wide strips. These were cut on the circular shape of the container already so the rounding shape was already there. Needless to say, hard to make exact. Later I found a good source for various sizes of plastic wagon wheels and purchased about a lifetime supply. I don't have any fancy tools so have to go by my own finesse. I have made a number of traditional size brier horse vehicles.

Margie Smith, in Mont

Suggestion for making round "wheel forms": Take some scrap wood and make your circle to the size you need using a compass. Make sure to press the point of the compass into the wood so the center of the circle is marked. Hand saw as close to the circle mark as you dare. Saw on the waste side. Now drill a hole where the compass point was indented and pass a bolt thru this hole and tighten it in place with a nut.

Insert the free end of the bolt in a drill chuck and turn on the drill so the wood starts to revolve. While it is revolving use a file etc. to make the round form for the wheels. When finished; unchuck and remove the bolt and nut. There you should have a perfectly round form for making your wheels.

Drbob...Delray Beach, FL

Drying Flowers with the Microwave: one way to use a microwave for miniatures is to speed up drying real mini-flowers. Bury them in sand or silicon in an old microwaveable container and "nuke" in very short bursts (10-15 seconds), checking for "doneness" after each zap until they are completely dried, then remove and spray with clear acrylic to preserve the color and strengthen. Once the clear preservative dries, you can even repaint if you like the flower but need another color.

Loretta.Sniarowski

Printing wallpaper: Firstly, to get wallpaper, or any full-size printie into the right scale, you would first download the picture and save it. Then insert the picture into a Microsoft Publisher document. Publisher enables you to decrease the size of the object/picture (or expand it if need be) to whatever size you want, and the rulers on the left and top of the page are a great help. Once you have the object the right size, you just have to print it.This leads to your next question re printing 11" wallpaper. Here I would make a copy of the picture in the file you have saved it in so that you have two. Using suitable software (I use ArcSoft Photo Studio 2000) you can then open the copy picture and crop it so that the piece you are left with can be added to the bottom of the original wallpaper (here you have to take care to ensure you don't crop off too much and that the pattern matches).

You would then go into Publisher, insert your original wallpaper and then insert the second cropped section of wallpaper below it, print and TA DA!

Another alternative is to print your own from scratch, either by scanning real wallpaper/wrapping paper or whatever and downsizing it, or you might find something on the Net. I'm a William Morris devotee and the dolls house I'm currently decorating is a Late Victorian one. I papered a couple of rooms with shop-bought wallpaper but wasn't entirely happy because I wanted something really special. Then, in my quest for the ultimate wallpaper, I discovered that quite a few William Morris sites have samples of his wallpaper, even giving the pattern repeat which means you can downsize the sample to a perfect 1/12 (in my case) scale. Before inserting the samples into a Publisher document, downsizing, and then copying and pasting to fill a page, some of the samples had to be cropped so that the pattern could be properly repeated. The result is that I now have done three rooms in William Morris wallpaper, and am working on the fourth, and now that I have fuzzy paper, I can complete the look with carpets. I'm in heaven!

Heather Heatherbee Miniatures, Perth, Western Aust

Queen Victoria Pictures: One of my favourite sites for pictures of Queen Victoria throughout her lifetime is http://www.victorianstation.com/queen.html I even have a miniature portrait doll of Queen Victoria at age 15 with her little dog Dash -- the picture appears on this site.

Nancy Faye Roach - Port St. Lucie, FL

Cheap UK miniatures: My local DH shop is The Dollshouse Emporium. They do an excellent catalogue packed full of goodies. Since I have become more adventurous I tend to regard them as "bread & butter pieces" but this is a bit unfair - I think they have so much that the reader gets overloaded. I have been known to buy a piece elsewhere or at a fair only to find that I had overlooked it in the Emporium Catalogue!! The catalogue is free http://www.dollshouse.com

Sue C. Belper Derbyshire

Cheap UK miniatures: Maplestreet http://www.maplestreet.co.uk/

Helen of York

Retail Shops Locator: I got to thinking about all the posts asking for help in finding retail minis shops...... CIMTA - the Cottage Industry Miniatures Trade Association - has shop information on it's website...every business listed is a Supporting Member of CIMTA.

Here is the link to CIMTA's homepage: http://www.cimta.org Supporting member shops/mail order/show listings include BOLD for retail storefronts, and blue-text links for websites. It's all listed by state, alphabetically, and very easy to use.

Laura in OKC

Retail Shops Locator: not every shop and mini maker belongs to CIMTA --- so when looking for mini shops, etc. you can check out Miniature Shops Around The World -- http://www.geocities.com/tinyteri99/ and don't forget NAME (well I think they have a listing). There are some others also.

Elise in Va