Live miniature plants: I would think that you could use the micro-mini African violets that are available now. Also, since I've made miniature arrangements for flower shows, I used mosses, miniature ferns and the like. All of the read small bonsai plants also look fine. I have a book on miniature bonsai which might give you some ideas& I would look into terrarium plantings too. You would have to limit yourself to the same kind of flowers that do well in that terrarium environment too as otherwise I doubt you would be able to provide lighting enough within the dollhouse to sustain live plants. If you wanted to just grow the plants on a light stand and place them on display within the house for special occasions, you could do that easily enough too. There are even miniature orchids for home culture too but again they would require you to grow them are plant tables and then move to dollhouse for temporary display. As for what plants you can use in a Victorian house, I would think any plant that you can grow as I've indicated would have been grown back then - I have read of many magnificent conservatories in houses back in colonial times and before that grew all kinds of exotic plants.

Rwitterman

Live miniature plants: I wanted to let the person looking for miniature live plants to know they do exist....at least here in Paris....there are tiny 1/12 scale oranges, lemons, green shrubs, and creamy white "oranges"....I have no idea what they are called, but they do exist...are sold in tiny pots (2 inches across)...the shrubbery leaves are smaller than half a grain of rice....they are rather inexpensive ($5 or less)....of course these are not real oranges (I tried to peel one -- it was hollow inside), but they have the dimpled skin and the little dimple thing on the "ends" just like real citrus....they remain quite small and tidy... Will ask the florist next time what these mini shrubs are called....

Whui in Paris

Air plants: For the person wanting to use live plants in her dollhouse setting, try using air plants. There are at least two different looking airplants that I know of and they would be pretty much in scale. You could take them out for a day or so when you decided to mist them.- No moisture in your mini house.

Peggy

Plants (Victorian) A favourite plant of the Victorians was the Aspidistra.

Ann

Victorian House Plants: I'm not an expert on the subject, but have done a lot of reading about that era. One of the most popular plants was aspidestra (Music Hall Song: "She's got the biggest ass....pidestra in the world!) Also, "parlor palms" and Boston Ferns. African violets were very new, and expensive, and orchid breeding was all the rage.

Sharon in Watsonville, CA

Making weeds: Thought I would share a discovery with you. If any of you have Clematis vines you should check them out now. Before the seeds mature they form a rather unusual spiked form. I cut these off and spray painted them a dark green then, I used a tan colored paint and just brushed the tips of the spikes with it. I did this 3 or 4 months ago and used them as mini plants. The tips of them will curl just a little but, it just makes them look more real. You could even use several of them to cover a tree branch and make a very real looking tree.

Now for the matured seeds. If you look at them and pull them apart they look like tiny feathers. Glue the single seed to the end of a very fine piece of wire (painted tan) or stiffened tan thread. I have a palm plant so I pulled off a dead leaf and tore it in half length wise then cut it to length and glued the end of it around the wire with the pointed end up for the leaves. When finished spray with a clear matte sealer. It will look just like the cattail type weeds that grow everywhere.

Talks to Birds

Brickmaking:

You need some basswood stripwood and you cut this and glue up a little open form using waterproof glue, epoxy. Coat the form real good with epoxy after it is made to make it waterproof and strong. Make a little punch that you can punch out the brick when you fill the form. Remember that these wet-clays shrink when they dry so the form has to be about 10-15% bigger than the brick you want. The side of the brick is what will show so the thickness of the form is real important too. You fill the form with moist clay and punch it out and be sure to leave the mold marks on the brick. In fact, it is the mold marks that give the charm to the bricks except that you need subtle contrasts in color and texture.

So whatever clays you use you need two of them, different colors, red & brown, etc. and then you blend about 6-8 blends of those two colors in different ratios so that you get subtle differences and when you go to "lay bricks" you don't put clashing colors together. You keep the differences more subtle than that. You might not even make bricks out of the two "parent colors" at all. Just several "shades" or "hues" in between those two colors. There are red colored Mexican Pottery Clay, gray Marblex, and brown wet-clays you can mix in as well. Play around with it. You can do this on any scale. You can add bone-emulsions to harden bricks or Elmers glue or whatever. Self hardening clays are good enough, but (kitchen) oven hardening clays (Della Roba?) are also available. You lay the form on wax paper, fill the form with wet-clay, scrape off the excess clay with a stick or spatula, and take a plunger of the exact right size and push out the brick or hold down the brick and lift up the form, pinning the brick to the wax paper with the plunger. In other words, remove the brick from the form with a plunger/pusher of brick size (it must be small enough to easily penetrate (clear the sides of) the mold from top to bottom.

Let the bricks air dry and then oven-bake them if you choose. Don't mess around with wet bricks, except to make sure that they are not warped or crooked or fouled up. If they are fouled up, return them to their wad of clay and TRY AGAIN. You can make thousands of bricks once you get the hang of it. You will have a brick yard and can oven bake thousands at the same time, hundreds if you get bored easily, or whatever pleases you. You do need more than one color, in slight variations, for best effect. All the same color looks remarkably dull compared to the effect of slight color variations in the earth colors which gives a rustic, "natural" look.

You can glue these in place with Elmers glue or some and leave the seams exposed or showing. You can make up some "mud" of Elmers glue and clay that could be applied with a little spatula. I just paint on Elmers glue with a little brush on the bricks that are already in place and sit the brick down in it and wiggle ir around a little until it is "seated" into place, it will be a little "wonkey" but that just adds to the charm. You don't want it to look too mechanical and all bricks aren't just exactly the same size. You don't want air gaps to show between bricks so you may have to have some "mud" on hand to use as needed to prevent air gaps or cracks between bricks. Let a wall, chimney, fire-place, etc. dry thoroughly before messing around with it. Overnight or longer.

Let bricks dry thoroughly before laying them, else they will shrink and distort and be a disaster. They absorb water and swell when you are laying them if you use excess water, so don't go wild on moisture while you are laying them, unless you have fired them hard (Della Robba oven bake clays, etc.).

Anyway, have fun! It's not so hard and you can make bricks on Half-Scale (1/24th scale), on "Inch Scale" (dollhouse scale) or on "O" (1/48 Scale) or even tiny bricks on "dollhouse for dollhouse" scale. So just make the forms the size that pleases you and GO FOR IT!

Walter Vaughn!

Horsehair mattress - I don't think human hair would make it coarse enough....what about excelsior, that straw like packing stuff and shredding it a bit, it would tend to make it lumpier, the effect you wish to achieve, I think.

Molly Cromwell

Two tips: I'm fairly new to this digest, and two indispensable tools have come into my collection. The first is a photocopy of my 1/12 scale. It folds easily in my wallet and is there to measure unexpected finds when I am out shopping for other things. I've even taken the step to cover the photocopy strip with clear contact paper to prolong its usability. The second is using a room planning kit designed to plot out furniture placement in real size rooms. There are a lot of versions out there in the marketplace, but the one I have is magnetic. I like to move pieces around as if I were shifting real furniture. And believe me, moving around magnetic symbols on a metal board is a lot easier on my back than moving around real furniture in a real room

Gina in No Va

Mother-of-pearl buttons, suitable for putting on underwear: I can't help with real, but for real looking I have made them with pearlized fabric paint in dots on plastic, when dry pick off and poke desired number of holes with needle or push pin. very real looking. Glue on with the back facing up that was stuck to plastic if you want flat buttons and use the other side if you want rounded.

Debbie