Liquid Sculpey: If you add eye shadow to the TLS (Translucent Liquid Sculpey) and mix well, it will tint it and you have lots of different colours. Just a couple of uses could be Icing on a cake, Chocolate Sauce for ice cream, drizzle for cinnamon buns, pie filling. It bakes hard but it gives a total different look to you project. There are other uses for it, but I just started using it for my foods .

Kathy Huffman

Polymer clay: I'd like to comment about your concerns with old polymer clay. I truly shudder at the idea of everyone throwing their "old" PC into the landfills!
1. Try heating your PC on a heating pad set on LOW, just until it starts to soften, but not long enough for it to begin curing.
2. Next, break it into chunks and pulse it in a food processor. I got one at a rummage sale for 25 cents and it works great! Keep pulsing until it is reduced to small grains.
3. Work these small grains a little at a time into ropes. Trying to condition a too large piece will wear your hands out. Work in very small batches.
4. If the product is still too dry, start adding Sculpey diluent one or two drops at a time. Continue kneading and rolling. Fimo makes a product called Mixquick which could be tried as well.
5. I just started using Liquid Translucent Sculpey. It may be possible to recondition clay by adding this product as well.
6. I have found that certain items turn out better if the clay is dry! This is especially true for tiny leaves, flowers, and lettuce .
7. PC that is no longer useful for creating miniatures, is still useable as handles for tools, armatures for making other miniatures with etc.
8. Anyone truly interested in using PC should have a pasta maker. I'm getting one with a motor! Large quantities of clay can be conditioned and rolled and blended with a fraction of the effort required to do it my hand.
9. If all else fails, rather than adding your "old" PC to the environment...send it to me and I'll find a use for it!

Kathy in Wisconsin

Old Fimo: For those whose Fimo is hard and crumbly, Sue Heaser's book recommends adding vegetable oil. I have tried this and it worked.

Linda in Leroy, OH

Photosites: I have been using both Epson and Webshots. Both have their own good and not so good features. I figure if I have both, people can still see my photos even if one site is down for maintenance or goes under!

Epson http://photo.epson.com/ is just like the old photopoint site - in fact photopoint designed it, so it is easy to use if you were familiar with that. It has a counter that you can reset daily to how hits, and it has a feature that makes moving and rearranging pictures very easy. The only thing I really don't like is that only 24 pictures show up on a page - if you have more than that in an album they go on to a second page which most people miss and never get to see.

Webshots lets you put 36 pictures in an album, and I like the nifty feature of having the first picture of the album displayed on the initial page - lets people know what to expect inside the album. Their drawback is that the counter can't be set by you - they change it twice a day, and if you are interested you just have to keep track of the last count yourself to see how many new hits have come in. Their pages are really difficult to rearrange. When you load a new pic, it is automatically the last one in the album and it takes quite a while if you try to reposition it to the front of the album.

Both sites are easy to upload pictures to. Epson will let you do a lot at once or even send them in an email. Both sites offer software you can download to make sending pictures in bulk easier. Epson's gallery is currently unavailable since they were using Photopoint's and lost it when they went under. Webshots has a gallery, but can be hard to use.

I know a lot of people like Picturetrail - I'm not that crazy about the format and I hate when people put music on their site - it drives me crazy and makes the site take longer to load. But I guess the site is ok, too. Best about all these sites is that they are still free!

Bonnie Gibson - Tucson, Arizona

Photo Sites: Webshots http://www.webshots.com/ has a program that you can download to your computer called "My Photo Assistant". You can rearrange your photos AND albums just by dragging and dropping. You can also edit them easily and quickly. They send a note weekly to let you know how many hits and downloads you have had, for each album, and also notify you of new guest book entries. It is the easiest photo site program I have ever used.

Karolyn Plymouth Ma

Finding Pictures on the Internet: After three years on the computer I discovered something wonderful yesterday!

You know how hard it is when you are trying on the Internet to sift through websites to find a picture of something you are researching? And you know how whatever you are looking for, (like your Xacto knife) is usually right on the table in front of you?

Well, yesterday I was researching a piece for a customer, and I went to my old favorite search engine, http://www.google.com which I have used for years, and there, right over the place where you type in the thing you are looking for, you can click on "Images" and only get pictures of whatever you type in!

Alice Zinn- Pt. St. Lucie FL

Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle: I was just browsing the web and I came across this amazing site.
http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/fairy_castle/Fc_home.htm

I've never seen anything like it - now I have a reason to go to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago! If this castle cost $500,000 in the 1930s, I cannot imagine what it would cost today. Nice feature that you can look at specific detail by clicking on them.

Evelyn (in Saskatchewan)

Web sites: I spent several hours on the following three non-mini web sites getting ideas:
http://www.shabbytownusa.com/

http://www.atapantiques.com

http://www.shabbytiques.com/

Quinn

People Making - Bones: I found that most of my dissatisfaction from making 'people' was that the limbs didn't act right. So.....

When at the pipe cleaner stage, and just before wrapping and padding the body. Cut short lengths of plastic soda straw/aquarium tubing/brass rod etc and slip them onto the pipe cleaners in appropriate places. Leave 1/4 inch opening for elbows/knees etc to bend. Squirt some glue into the openings to hold in place. Then wrap them as usual. The 'joints' will bend properly, the long bones won't. Use a larger straw/tube for body and stiffen it further with fabric strips dampened with glue. . Leave hips to bend also. I also use the straws/tubing for neck and feet. . tiny pieces snipped and wrapped.

Give it try and see how much better your figure looks. I suppose this might be called an enhanced skeleton. . . sure gives the piece an overall better position. Bendable, but only in the proper places. Quick and easy.

Judie - Daytona Beach, FL

Child's Doll Suggestion: Anyone looking for good dolls for smaller children to use in a 1:12 house might consider the Fisher Price doll house dolls. I came across them on a visit to Canada last year and picked them up for my daughter to play with. She was 3 at the time and they are perfect for her. I haven't checked the scale, but it is very close to 1". The dolls are very durable, have articulated limbs and work very well for her. We have the parents, two children and two babies. Later on we can replace them with something different (and more expensive).

David Harron