Polymer clay: When you take your baked clay items out of the oven you might just panic and think they aren't cooked, yes they do harden as they cool and it is normal, don't worry. One way to help the process along is to plunge the baked clay into a bowl of cold water. This speeds up the cooling process and some polyclay artists believe it makes the clay stronger. Please remember that the clay is really hot when it first comes out of the oven (don't laugh, it happens) and it's very hard to work with singed fingertips.
P.S. The baking tray will be hot too.

Jacquie Hall

Tacky Tourist Junk: some ideas from my childhood Michigan and Ontario vacations in the 1950s: use beige parchment paper or papertwist whipstitched together with tan buttonhole thread to fake souvenir "birchbark" items - Native American/First Nations doll canoes, long-houses with metal chimneys (burners for balsam-scented incense -- this was way before the Consumer Products Safety Commission, when this stuff was still called Indian souvenirs). Round, oval, or square birchbark boxes for cigarettes, cards, or jewelry, plain or decorated with porcupine quills or glass beadwork. Beadwork pins, necklaces, and zipper pulls. Burlap pillows the size of a pincushion stuffed with balsam needles, printed with "Souvenir of Traverse City or Niagara Falls." Deerskin moccasins. Pendleton blankets. Woolrich jackets (good use for a tatty old flannel shirt with small-scale plaid). Lamps with parchment shades and bases made from log sections, weathered old iron implements, fishing creels, or rusty moose or bear silhouettes.

Cellophane-wrapped birchbark-boxed nature-motif stationery. Beeswax candles painted to resemble birch tree trunks. On the extremely tacky side, plastic Indian dolls in plastic buckskin costumes with gaudy red, green and yellow feathers, painted (Taiwanese) totem poles, as solo knicknacks or nailed to a log section reamed out to hold a glass ashtray, plastic bead and safety-pin Indian war bonnets, and for a contemporary touch, some of those wiggling, singing fish plaques like "Bigmouth Billy Bass"

Loretta Sniarowski

Toyshop Names: I made a toy store and named it Toys for Tots. A number of friends have commented favorably on the name. You are welcome to use it. Used small wooden letters from Hobby Lobby.

Ruth Morey, Corpus Christi on Padre Island

I had the brainwave that I could use the left-over gift bag room from my elder's party in January and make a classroom scene from printables. My daughters identified the important elements of the classroom and then we set out to find them on the web. I think we found everything Jim's printables at http://www.printmini.com, http://miniatures.About.com and a site I only just found with a huge range of stuff, Boop Mini Printables at http://www.geocities.com/boopmini40/

Wendy in Clinton, NJ

Boop Mini Printables at http://www.geocities.com/boopmini40/

I used a table from the dollar store and painted it the right colours, backed a clock face of Jim's with a button of the right shape and colour, made a flag from a fabric cutout and a fancy toothpick, mitred a window frame from balsa, made coloured pencils from 1/2" nails with the heads cut off and painted, and everything else was paper. We even found a printable stone floor that looked pretty realistic behind the window frame! Boop Mini's had the critical snack food containers and bookcases, somewhere else had the ubiquitous tissue box, to which we added a real bit of tissue, Jim's TV, computer and dictionary (exactly the right one!) were perfect. We also found manila files and envelopes, graph paper, tiny word puzzles, books (including a Dr Seuss with inside pages), 12" and 36" rulers, a file box, maps and posters. Paper sample books rescued a while back from the garbage provided construction paper and even a blue rug. Finally, my daughters painted and drew miniature artwork for the classroom walls.

Wendy in Clinton, NJ

Bending tubing:   for bending metal tubing Micro-Mark sells a little set of benders, the one reasonably priced item in their catalog, as far as I'm concerned. You get five densely-coiled steel springs from a sixteenth to three sixteenths outside diameter. You slip the tubing into the appropriate one and bend. The springs keep the kinks out. I've only used them with brass and I anneal it first.

A method that doesn't require benders is packing the tubing with sand before bending to keep the kinks out and using a jig to bend tubing around.

Mary Kelly

Bending Tubing: You did not say if your bent tube had to be or stay hollow. Here are a couple of hints.

14 gauge solid copper wire is about 1/16 inch in diameter. Smaller number gauges are larger diameter. You can buy "Romex" by the foot at builders supply shops such as Home Depot, Lowes, etc. Suppose you wanted to make an old faciendo pipe frame headboard. For such in half scale, I would use 14 gauge (Scale 1.5" diameter) Strip off the insulation with a sharp exacto. Clamp one end of the bare wire into a small bench vise or have a friend hold it firmly with a pair of Vise Grip pliers. Fasten the other end into the chuck of an electric drill. Pull moderately tight and spin the electric drill. The wire will magically become perfectly straight as it twists. Cut pieces to size and bend over radiused corners in a block of wood.

A technique with hollow stock would be to use KS hobby brass tubing. Anneal the brass by heating it to cherry red in a gas flame and then allow to cool slowly on a pot holder. For very easy curves, you maybe able to slowly bend freehand or over a form after it is cooled.   For tighter turns, kinks can be controlled by stuffing the annealed brass with fine salt. Cap the ends with solder and then form your corners. After bending, unsolder the capped ends, dump out most of the salt and dissolve any that may be "packed in" by soaking in a pan of water. Rinse away any residual salt, polish, cut, and enjoy.

Petitfacades

Miniature woodworking tools: I have been interested in miniature woodworking for some time, and have been using a scroll saw, delta 1" belt sander, full-size table saw and chop saw, along with the Dremel drill press and shaper table. My Christmas present from my DH was a Preac table saw and thickness sander. What a wonderful addition to my workshop.

The thickness sander enables me to create all my mini-lumber at the exact thickness I need. No more waiting for an order of "close to but not exact" thickness lumber to build scale furniture and cabinets. I can create any thickness I need from what I have in the shop. Now I can use any of the hardwoods, such as cherry or walnut, and get away from using basswood (with its greater range of available thicknesses). If I need 1/32 inch cherry, I just put a 1/8 inch piece in the sander and make my own. The sander is easy to work and not intimidating ( I still grit my teeth in fear and intimidation when I use my full size table saw).

The new Preac table saw is wonderful for straight cuts for moulding or furniture pieces. I can make dados for shelves and sand the shelf lumber down to the exact

thickness to fit in the dado.   I have been busy making store counters, shelving units, and plant tables for my street of shops. Even my husband is impressed with the results.

I bought my tools from Pam and Pete Boorum at http://www.smallerthanlife.com .

Preac also has a website, where you can get more information.

It just proves the old adage " get the right tool for the job". If anyone would like to see pictures, or have questions, please email me.

Sharon Blake, Wasilla, Alaska

Bending tubing: My method of bending a tube is cost effective. Fill the tube with sand, flour or anything that will fill the tube and remain fairly dense. Then I delicately (gently) bend the tube, By filling the tube a fracture is prevented.

DrBob...Delray Beach, FL.

Basketry reed: There is a place that has very small reed, however, I don't know how small #000 is. Ive seen their size #1(1.5 mm)round and 11/64"w flat. They have a lot of different things for basketry, you might check it out. It's called: The Caning Shop and the URL is: http://www.caning.com

Joni