Installing Floor over wire: I recommend that you glue your floor down with quick grab or gloop. Before you do that though, I would cover the tape wiring with masking tape & MOST IMPORTANT do not put glue on the tape. Spread the glue on the floor in the house, not on your flooring or on the masking tape, & lay your floor. I like to glue because it gives it a nicer look.

Sari, The Doll House, Scottsdale, AZ

Installing Floor over wire: Debbie asked: [How do I do the floors when the tape wire has been put down? Do I put in a fake floor that can be pulled out or can I just lay my hard wood floor on top of the tape wire? The type of hard wood floor I have is from Houseworks. ]

These are the same floors I used and I put them down with double sided tape. Not a lot of tape, just enough to keep it flat. I have at times, taken up the floor to work on the tapewire and it was very easy.

Carol, S P Miniatures

Button Pastries: I found a had no corks around the house so I tried the button box. Bingo! I found a metal button which looked like a sort of half ball in a ring . Painted in a pastry colour it looked very much like a pie. I added some "pastry" leaves ( self hardening clay) to go on top and varnished it to give it a bit of a glaze. It looks very tasty. The next victim was a button in the shape of a flower in a ring. The centre of the flower looked like a pile of cherries. So I painted the ring and the petals a pastry colour and the cherries red. When this was dry I painted the cherries with red glass paint. Easy!! Then I got all excited about tiny buttons that looked like doughnuts. LOL I painted them and added some jam with the glass paint. Are there any of you who make their cakes out of buttons too and want to share some ideas? Loretta mentioned bottle caps for cakes.

Marianne

New Glue: I want to share info about new glue I discovered at Michaels. Aleene's now has a glue that is called Quick Dry Tacky Glue. It is great. I've only been using it for about 2 weeks, and it has worked so well with glueing different things together that I think I will have to go get a couple more bottles! I've tried it with fabric, wood, and doll hair. It was about the same price as the regular tacky.

Gabrielle

Ungluing: I have used this procedure to unglue doors and windows for painting.
1. Pour a small amount of alcohol in a jar that you can reseal. Never use alcohol from your original container, as this will make the bottle un-sterile, and useless for medical purposes.
2. Paint the alcohol on the glue joints, let dry and paint again. you will have to do this a number of times, and the glue will become soft and allow the parts to come apart. ( A single edge razor blade will help cut the joint, this makes a straight line cut )
3. Let the parts dry for 48 hours and turn every 12 hours. The alcohol will evaporate and the parts will dry.
4. Sand if needed and paint. Once the paint is dry, glue the parts and touch up the cracks if needed.
5. Patience, patience and more patience.

Andy

Michael's hutches:
I removed all the doors and windows that can be removed, sanded, primed, sanded...(this part was not fun!) and then painted all of them a dark green. All through the year I've bought hutches when they went on sale. I've also bought various packages of tiny Christmas decorations when I've found them, as well as anything else I could think of that would be suitable. (Tiny trees, tiny animals, packages of Chrysnbon dishes to be painted, etc.

I've also done some decorative painting on the hutches, and will make some Christmas cakes and cookies for them, but am pretty much done with the collecting and major painting, and can start the fun stuff...gluing everything in.

Kaye in L.A

Historical costumes: I love to make vintage & ethnic clothing. For your "longfellow" shirt, visit http://www.old-cowtown.org and scroll to the bottom of the links page to find links to clothing or pattern suppliers. You will find enough descriptions and / or drawings to figure out how the gathering is done. This is also a good place for those of you that make period clothing for your dolls.

Reva in beautiful Loveland, Ohio

Fruit trimmed wreath: I did something kind of cool. You know how Christmas wreaths and swags trimmed with fruit have become so popular? I made a wreath with Fimo fruit and it came out great. I found some wired trim with tiny rounded leaves at Pat Catan. Made the wreath with that. Then, trusty Sue Heaser at hand, I made yellow and red apples, oranges and pears. Before baking, I inserted the finest green floral wire I had into what would be the back side. Made grape clusters by dipping floral wire into tacky and rolling it in seed pearls. When dry, I painted them purple. Wired all the fruit to the wreath and decorated with a gold bow. I found some very narrow shiny wired gold ribbon last Christmas. It's cool to do big floral bows with because you can shape the loops and twirl the tails and everything stays put.

Linda in Leroy, OH

Lighted tree candles: I did some very realistic lighted tree candles with fiber-optic plastic threaded through a silver sequin and a red bugle bead (if that's the small straight kind). When the tip of the plastic pokes through the top of the bead, it looks like flame. You need to thread the fibers up the middle of the tree first, then attach the candle when you get the fiber where you want it. The problem I had was hiding the bigger light source, since you have to bundle the fibers at the bottom and attach to a light source. I finally had to add a thicker base than I wanted and drill a hole in it for the light (one of the ones on small white light string).

Callie

New German Mini Magazine: For those of you on the Continent, there is a new German miniature magazine just started. First issue was September and it is called
1zu12 Das Magazin
http://www.1zu12.com/1zu12_Mag.htm

Barbara B from South Africa