Cutting mat board: Cut matboard with very sharp exacto - using three strokes. The first cuts, the top surface, the second the middle, and the third the bottom. (Thank you)

Lexie Johnson

Use watercolour and gouache for mini detailed and decorative painting - one can get great effects; my friend Penny who worked at Pendon in Oxfordshire for over 20 years taught me about the watercolour, and Ruth Pollock about the gouache Use huge ceramic floor tiles for Fimo work - one to sculpt on, the other to bake on. Angie Scarr sort of taught me this - I noticed she used them thus in her videos. Makes Fimo work so much easier

Helen from York England

I heard of someone whose dollhouse house number was the year the house was built. That way it can serve as a reminder of its age when it is passed through the generations

Viola

Moving a Dollhouse: When I last moved, I had a three story house to move. It was already on a plywood base, so my DH went out and got a huge carton from a washer or dryer which fit over the house and rested on the plywood. I wrapped all the hanging light fixtures with toilet paper. The house was carried carefully from house to truck, then from truck to new house. Came through just fine

Beth in a Miniature Manor

Sewing Room items: At the end of a guitar string - bear with me, I'm going somewhere on this - is a tiny little round "spool" of metal. Usually gold coloured, sometimes, silver. When thread is wrapped around it, looks just like the real thing.

Vi in Hamilton

Sewing Room items: tiny grommets make great spools.

Lynn (No E) GSOLFOT, Cahokia IL

Sewing accessories:  check out http://www.btinternet.com/%7Ebertiesbazaar/jess/   then click on Printies in the left column and click on Haberdashery to find printable sewing accessories like button, ribbon, and elastic cards, needle cases.   For contemporary patterns, get on the mailing list for whatever is your local fabric shop (e.g., Hancocks, Joann's, Hobby Lobby), you'll get flyers and can clip out the ad illustrations and glue to a mini envelope (adapt stationery patterns on Jim's www.printmini.com site).  Should also be able to use ad clips as a pattern catalog cover -- glue over a section cut from the spine of an old magazine, cover with glossy clear nail polish or packing tape to get the laminated look of the real thing.   Don't forget a rack of crafts magazines/books -- find covers in book club ads   as well as in store flyers.

Items for hanging racks:  Tape measures (3 inch lengths of yellow paper, marked with black pen, folded up and tacked onto cards).   Scissors:   flattened hooks of hooks and eyes tacked onto cards -- use several sizes for shears and embroidery scissors; paint loops orange to make Fiskars.   Buttons:  seed beads glued on cards, or tiny blobs of dimensional fabric paint). Zippers:   two lengths of metallic thread glued down center of narrowest grosgrain ribbon you can find, tiny bar of metallic paint as stop on bottom and pull tab cut from bit of metallic card at top.  Quick strawberry pincushions and rust-removers:  Cut one medium and one small green star from craft felt, string on a bit of green floss and glue to medium and large pompons.  Cutting boards:  4 by 4 inch cardboard; cover both sides with graph paper (or back with decorative paper), add string ties at middle of two opposite sides, fold in fourths, tie, and stack or lean in display area.

Loretta.Sniarowski

Decorating Ideas: Dolores from Illinois wrote:  I have a beautiful San Francisco dollhouse that my husband just finished.  It's already for decorating.  The sad part is that we live in Illinois.

If you have questions about types of furnishings appropriate for a particular period like Victorian (or anything else you can possibly think of), the best thing you can do for yourself is to learn to make good use of all the Search Engines available to all of us lucky people with Internet access.  For example: I went to my favorite SE, http://www.google.com/   clicked on the "Images" tab at the top, and typed in Victorian furniture.  The result was 2,160 images (on many pages) of rooms and individual pieces of furniture.   You can click on any image and be taken to the site where that image originated.  A week later (joke), after you have explored all the images and sites, you should have all the knowledge and ideas you need to furnish your San Francisco house.

I think search engines are one of the MOST valuable resources we have.  I use google at least once a day for something or other.

Bobbie Schoonmaker

Crumpled Lingerie: There's a modern lingerie pattern and instructions in the Projects section of http://miniatures.about.com   Pretty simple to make, and so is crumpling.   Cover the bed or other furniture where you'll display the garment in plastic wrap or wax paper to protect the surface, then follow package directions to saturate the gown in fabric stiffener.  Arrange it in the crumpled shape you prefer, perhaps partly draped to flow over the edge, and leave it to dry.   Then gently remove the plastic and gown from the bed, peel away the plastic wrap, and replace the shaped wrinkly garment on the bed.

Loretta.Sniarowski

Hagatha's Hut is all but finished.   I know that the old wise woman would have lots of little accessories.   I have a metal cauldron and the fireplace does draw.  I saw a post about using incense, so I tried it.  All my teenage sons oohed and aahed, so I got to puff out my chest, don't you love it, lol.  I wouldn't do this without supervision, but it is a cool effect.

I think I should put a table, two chairs, a rocking chair and a cupboard roughly made and hanging on the wall.   I know I should have plants hanging from the rafters, and probably onions and garlic and sausages and things like that hanging there too.  I know she should have herbs in jars and not things like eye of newt, this is a wise woman, not a witch.   She is ready for winter, just settling in for the long cold, so she should be well stocked.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

Eileen in St. Louis