Simulated Concrete Flooring: Use gritty white paint - let it dry. Give it a second coat to build a thickness - let it dry. Use small amount of black acrylic paint with a lot of water - making dirty water - paint the 'dirty water' over the gritty painted area and allow to dry - repeat if the effect is not 'dirty' enough.

Joyce Betts

Simulated Concrete Flooring: when I want to simulate concrete or even stucco, I use Sears Basement Waterproofing Paint . It is latex, nicely gritty, and I already have it :)!

Linda in Leroy, OH

Simulated Concrete Flooring: I made my concrete walkway using a mixture of white glue, water and sand. if you want it gray looking you can add a few drops of gray paint to the liquid before adding the sand.

Jo

Simulated Concrete Flooring: I was waiting for someone else that attended the Gulf South Show this past March to respond. We did a vignette of a garage sale, garage and all. Braxton Payne conducted the class, as always, and the concrete floor was simply painted with ordinary gray house paint. Then, while still wet, take a Kleenex, carefully take it apart to get one ply of tissue, and lay it into the paint. Concrete. To get stucco, do the same thing, but kind of scrunch the tissue in the paint, to get that stucco look.

Olivia

Concrete floor: (Some great ideas out there from everybody!) Here's my contribution" I made a concrete driveway in one DH scene using grey grout...the same grout you use when laying tile in RL. I had some left over from RL remodeling. It can be purchased at any home improvement store (Home Depot, Lowes) and most hardware stores, in large or small quantities, premixed in a can or dry powder in a box or bag, comes in a variety of colors, with sand or without. Just add water to the dry mix for the consistency you want. I used the powered type with sand for the concrete look and a small spatula shaped like a butter knife to spread it. It can be spread pretty smooth but still looks gritty the way real concrete does.

I use a lot of RL home improvement items for minis. Self-adhesive linoleum floor tiles can be purchased individually for under $1 each and have wonderful, realistic finishes resembling marble, stone and tile. I've used them for DH flooring as well as landscape scenes. They cut fairly easy and are scratch/scuff resistant.

CRWhidbee

Concrete flooring in a garden shed: How about trying the lid from a cardboard egg carton. It may be too rough but it sure can pass for cement.

Dr bob

Charitable Donations: It is much better to give the item you want to donate to charity to an organization and let them raffle it off. In that way they have a much better chance of making more than you would probably sell it for! Make sure to get a receipt for whatever price you could have sold it for so you can deduct it as a charitable donation.

Alice Zinn

Padded Hanger: You will need some pipecleaner, thicker rather than thin. A piece of gold or black wire, about 1" long and some satiny fabric. I used bathing suit fabric which was stretchy, it made this a bit easier. First coat the back of a piece of the fabric about 1" x 2" with tacky glue. Let dry. Cut a piece of pipe cleaner 1 1/2" long. Lay the pipe cleaner on the fabric, lengthwise. Cover the pipe cleaner with the fabric using Fabritac glue, sparingly. Fold over and tuck in the ends as you go.

Let dry. Slightly curve the fabric covered pipe cleaner. Bend the piece of gold or black wire into a hook shape with a slight extension at the bottom of the hook. Use an awl to make a hole in the center top of the fabric on the pipe cleaner. Glue the hook in the hole!

Alice Zinn

Pet shop printables, plus huge selection of others:
http://www.geocities.com/boopmini40/ Go to the bottom of the screen and click on My Printables site 1. On the next screen in the left hand column is "pet supplies". This has printables of all sorts of pet supply boxes and bags. The whole site is full of an incredible range of items but does take a bit of effort to get around. Each of the links on the home page has printables, plus each of the listed "My printable site #" at the bottom. I have found that some of the printables needed a little modification to put together but it was simple enough for me to work out.

Wendy in Clinton, NJ

Color Preservation: you might try using a clear, acrylic spray sealer on your printables.....I use Patricia Nimock's brand, but there are others out there, too. I prefer the matte finish (there's gloss as well) and use it for all my houseplant kit parts.

Laura in OKC