Goop: I have personally used a glue called "GOOP". It will adhere anything to anything. The acid test is that I affixed a metal cylinder to the stucco on the outside of my real life home and this has withstood the heat, sun, humidity and rain of So. Florida. If push comes to shove you could use caulking compound by applying a very thin layer and setting the roof tiles in that. Very cost effective.

DrBob...Delray Beach, FL.

Holding Room Boxes together while the glue sets: A pair of picture frame clamps, which will give you a nice square box with little fuss, should work beautifully. These can be found in almost any shop that sells picture framing supplies, or you can check with a woodworking store.Their advantages are that they take very little time to set up, provide an accurately square glue-up and can be readily used on a wide variety of room box sizes. Happy Building!

Brian

Finger planes- Finger planes are tiny wood planes that are guided with an index finger and cushioned in the palm. They are used by musical instrument makers. Finger planes get into tight spots in guitars and violins and often have curved soles. They might be useful on the interior of dollhouses but seldom on miniature furniture. I use a block plane on miniature furniture which is easier to handle than a finger plane and the throat is adjustable. The other day I shaved off the end of my thumb with my very sharp block plane. Does this make it a thumb plane?

Pete Boorum

Stained Glass: I will tell you about my new adventures with stain glass. I don't have pictures up on my site yet but I was blown away by the results. If you buy the liquid leading at WalMart or your local craft store you can also get a set of Tips that are tiny, tiny and work wonderfully.

So you have your piece of plastic from your dollhouse kit or your piece of glass depending. Now put your pattern under the piece of plastic, unless the pattern is already on your plastic if it is from a kit, OK? Next Take your Liquid leading and trace the pattern either on or under you plastic, using the tip that suits your project the most. I suppose that you could use a pin or small brush if you were really coordinated. Once that is done set aside to dry. Now you have another choice. If you don't buy the glass paints you can mix clear drying glue and food colouring. The next step is simple as with a very tiny brush fill in all the little sections with the glass paint, (store bought or homemade) in whichever colour you wish. Let dry.

It turned out wonderful and now I am going to the mall and allow my kids to get those gumball machine toys so that I can have the plastic containers to make lampshades out of them. My dollhouse that will be posted on my site soon will have stained glass in every window. I am working on designs for Stained glass suncatchers also.

Oh, the greatest thing about them is if you make a mistake it just peels off, you start again. Wonderful, wonderful stuff if you ever wanted to try it, I recommend it.

Kathy Huffman

Stained Glass: Our club has done the Stained Glass Workshop. We did this by the following method.

Make up a design to your liking or copy one and shrink to the appropriate size. Buy the transparency sheets and transfer the design by copier.

There are ready made kits for children in the toy stores for stained glass (plastic) projects. Those kits offer a variety of colors in glass paints which are a better value than purchasing individuals bottles.

Paint the transparency and outline with a permanent marker, preferably, "fine". We had black, silver, and let your creativity dictate. Cut, trim and glue in place with a glue that will dry clear.

bon maio

Plastic windows painting: I am into 1/4" and all the windows are plastic or have been so far! The suggested method for painting them is to put them on double sided masking or scotch tape on a scrap piece of wood and then spray paint them. If you have the right color spray paint, then two light coats should work, but if not a light coat of say Testor's white and then you can paint over them with normal paint.

Isabel-CT

How to Paint Windows - I have the Houseworks working windows and in order to avoid getting paint on the Plexiglas I found it easiest to take the panes apart. They came apart fairly easy. I use a foam brush for painting and that kept down the thickness of the paint. I hate to state the obvious as it can be insulting but don't paint the sides of the panes where it goes in the track and don't paint the track.

Carol

How to Paint Windows - When I paint windows with non-removable panes, I use waxed paper. Cut it in strips to fit the window. It is thin enough to slide between the pane and the wood and will not let paint soak through. I used this technique on the Timberbrook garage door. Worked great.

Debbie

Painting windows: Just be careful how much paint you use! You can paint around the 'glass' panes with a fine brush or a fine flat brush, and dilute the paint just a bit. When you paint inside the channels the panes will slide in, use just a bit of paint, and when dry sand it very lightly with a scrap of brown paper bag - that should remove any extra paint that will cause sticking. The key is to paint with a light touch. Remove any paint from the panes while wet, with a Kleenex, damp cotton swab, etc. You can always use an extra coat and sand again. I've done many, many houses this way, and it works well. Fit the panes back in the windows when dry and run them up and down several times just to make sure before you glue the window in.

Sue in Madison, WI

Workshops & Organization: Organizing fabric: I just finished a monumental job of sorting through years of my own purchases, plus the quilting fabrics I inherited from my mother. I have an old dresser/chest of drawers, with four small drawers across the top and six drawers side by side below that I use for fabrics and sewing stuff. Here's how I did it:

I bought several boxes of ziploc plastic bags, both sandwich and gallon size. For all those fat quarters and eighths of a yard pieces that I'm always buying, I grouped related prints and solids together in the sandwich bags, by color. I did the same thing with the larger pieces, folding everything to fit. It's surprising what will fit within one of those bags.

I discovered that three rows of sandwich bags fit exactly side by side across the width of one standard drawer. I measured and marked off two dividers to fit from front to back of each drawer and my grandson cut them for me from cardboard. Four drawers held three rows each of sandwich bags (gasp!). I can just riffle through them as one does the patterns in the file cabinets at a fabric store. It's the dividers that keep them from slithering down.

For the larger pieces in the gallon size bags I made dividers to fit them, also, although the bags had to be lengthwise in the drawer as opposed to facing me (does that make sense?), sometimes with the ends of the fabric sticking out of the top of the bag. The largest pieces of yardages (from my mother's quilting) I just folded as compactly as I could and laid them flat in the bottom drawer. I may cut them into smaller pieces eventually to share with newbies.

I worked for days on it, but now it should not be that difficult to either locate something or to add new pieces (which I shouldn't do but know I will). I would imagine you could use the same process in those large plastic storage boxes, too, if you don't have a chest of drawers. Just line up the bags to see how they best fit, snugly but still flippable-through, and make your dividers.

In some cases I added odds and ends to the bags that I knew would go into a planned scene. For example, in a bag with some correlated apple prints from Joann's I put some apple buttons, stickers and pictures clipped from a magazine for posters, etc., that will eventually go in a Michael's hutch in my apple kitchen vignette.

Wanna in El Paso