Child's room box: what is your granddaughter interested in? If she loves school, you might do a classroom scene. If she likes dolls and is a little "motherly" type, do a nursery scene or a mother reading to children, either sitting on a couch or at bedside. If she's a young shopper, create some kind of store. If she likes outdoors, do a picnic or camping scene. If she's into fairy tales, do a fairy forest.

Right now my 7-yr old granddaughter is into the little collectible shoes and purses on the market. (She's after my collection, so I've started her one of her own) If I were doing her a room box, it would be a miniature hat and shoe shop. There are endless possibilities.

Paulette in IN

Camera/Software: We have a Sony Cybershot 70 which takes wonderful photos. We use Picture It - a very simple program - to "tweak" our photos. The Cybershot uses very tiny "memory sticks" on which you can get many, many photos and use the camera inside and out.

Georgina H. Simmons

Saving Files to Disk: Do you know where the folders are which have your saved mail? If not, you can do a Find Search. This will tell you where your folders are. Once you find your folders, you can drag them to your desktop. Once you see the Icon for your Zip Disk, you simply have to drop the mail folder icon on the Zip Disk icon and it will copy all your e-mail. I too have Outlook Express 5 which I believe Noella indicated you have. In the future, it'll be easier if you save each digest to the Zip disk. You can do "Save as" for each Digest saving it to your desktop. Then all you need to do, is copy it to a Zip disk.

Dee in MA

old seaside fishing towns are full of weathered buildings like that! As for what else would be in them... besides piratey stuff, there'd be plenty of seashore/ship/fishing related items, too. My mom's family have always been sailors & fishermen (and opium smugglers in the 1600's in Cornwall - that's supposedly why they ended up here in the USA - I wouldn't go as far as pirates, though. Though I wouldn't go as far as to say they weren't, either). Decor has included pictures of ships, lights made out of ship lanterns, old harpoons hanging on the wall, lobster traps piled outside, fishing nets (outside with the traps and inside on the walls), floats, buoys, bells, pictures of ancestors, pictures of the ocean, barometers, fishing poles & tackle, small boats at the dock outside (rowboats ,canoes), extra oars ,oarlocks, broken oars, rope hammocks (rope EVERYTHING!!), and lots of macramé. My grandfather actually managed to combine every one of these items into his den - plus he used to macramé anything that held still more than 30 seconds; the rest of the family eventually came to refer to this style as Owen Decor.

A pub would be serving some sort of food - stew, bread, lobster, clams, actual beef maybe. Crates stacked up here & there, or being used as seats or tables. A fireplace. Where there's pirates I'd expect to find gambling, so any card or dice games appropriate to the era of your pub; guns, swords, knives,booty- gold, jewels, cloth, clothing, carpets, perfumes, spices, (opium!), etc. - I expect they'd be using much of it to gamble or just plain display. Maybe a lost and found section of wooden legs, parrots,eye Patches! And of course the MAIN reason the men eventually come ashore (besides the alcohol) - WOMEN!

Grace

Rotozip... Last Christmas, I "hinted" to hubby that I wanted a Micro Mark jig saw. He bought me a Rotozip... big difference! They are very powerful! So far, the only "real" project we've done, besides practicing, (which I highly recommend before trying anything you care about!) is cutting out a hole in the back of the computer desk for all the cables for the scanner, digital camera, printer, speakers, etc. I am going to look into the attachment for the Dremel Tool, as that seems more appropriate for miniatures. The Rotozip is advertised as being able to cut through ceramic tile, so imagine the power. It is a great tool, but in the wrong hands could be very dangerous. I have many power tools, most of which I keep at my brother Jeff's house, because I don't have the room, and he has the greatest workroom. We share all our tools, and therefore have twice as many. I have a scroll saw, belt/disk sander, router, etc., and he has drills, table saw, power mitre saw, etc. At home, I have my Dremel (Jeff has his own), a palm sander, a Micro Mark table saw, which I love! and lots of small hand tools & craft knives.

Cindy in MA

Tools for Your Chair making: If you're buying power tools, I would recommend the Dremel tool first over all the others. It's so versatile. The second most important power tool would be a good jigsaw. I had an early-era Dremel jigsaw, and found it unsatisfactory, because it had no speed control, and the blade choices were very limited. Price makes a big difference when it comes to power jigsaws. Don't scrimp, if you can afford it. The better ones are heavy (you'llwant to fasten it to a workbench), have dust blowers, a light attached to illuminate your cutting work, variable speed control, and can accept many kinds of jeweler's saw blades (see next paragraph for more about this). Also, the better ones have less vibration when cutting. My favorite tool isn't powered at all, and you may like using it best in scratch building fancy chairs. It's a jeweler's saw. Don't buy the X-Acto brand - they make good knives, but not so with jeweler's saws. I had an X-Acto one and hated it. Go to a dental supply or jewelry-makers' supply company to get one. They're about 15 to 25 dollars. Make sure you get one with a depth of cut of about 3. Much more than that, and it will be unwieldy. Much less than that, and you'll find yourself dealing with logistics when trying to cut anything wider than a couple of inches square. The blades you can get for this saw are incredibly small. (With some of the tinier ones, I can only tell if the teeth are set in the right direction by running my fingernail down the blade.

George Held

Dremel/Rotozip: I have both. You can now buy an attachment for your Dremel that includes the end guide and rotary saw bit to make it into a tool similar to the Rotozip, although it won't have as much power. I use the Rotozip occasionally to cut holes in assembled houses. That's about it.

Tom & Kari

Sclarise and her cigar box miniature scenes: Sclarise, I visited your site (again) and love your sofa bed--BUT the cigar box for a mini scene gave me an idea, I hope you don't mind me mentioning your URL. http://www.hughes-ec.com/~frog/cigarbox_art.html. Perhaps Michelle (i think that is who was inquiring) who is looking for an idea for the little girl (who is visiting from out of the country for medical help)--- could use a cigar box to create a miniature scene! What a perfect idea! Most tobacco shops that I have seen have these for sale for $1 or $2 dollars. The ideas are endless for the inside! She also gives directions to make your own Adobe cigar box.

Nursemini

Project for child visitor to take home: For the container, why not use one of those old-fashioned sturdy travel cases for toiletries, etc.? It is perfectly suited for traveling, obviously! She could bring it back as a carry-on and it has a handle. And you can get some of the old ones for cheap at thrift stores. Maybe you can recover one of the fabric or vinyl ones, or decoupage a hard-sided one.

Lynette in WNC

FISHING SCENE: About 12 years ago I made a fishing scene room box for my DH, who was an avid fisherman. It's a camp site along side a creek (with a Mallard duck on it) with tent, fire pit (with 2 roasting marshmallows) 2 camp stools, table and benches he is standing in wading boots, fishing vest, hat with fishing flies, knife in hand at the table cleaning trout- with the heads and guts if 2 on newspaper and 2 cleaned ones in a pan of water ( bought that at a convention, but don't remember from who) maybe someone will know their work; at the other end of table are 2 mugs of coffee with our names on them and a pan of biscuits; sitting at his feet is his faithful beagle and a full tackle box and a basket with a loaf of French bread, salami and bottle of wine with a squirrel peaking in it. Inside the tent are 2 sleeping bags with a candle on an inverted orange crate.

Kathleen, CC,NV