Ants for Picnic: What about gluing tiny black seed beads along a doubled strand of black embroidery floss?  You can cut the ends of the floss for antennae & stiffen them with a little diluted white glue.

Havana (FL) Holly

On making bees from rice: I painted each grain of rice yellow & added black stripes with a thin tip marking pen. Then I cut tiny little wings out of plastic wrap & glued on the top of the grain. That was the hardest part - the plastic wrap had static and wanted to stick to me! I was able to find a cat whisker or two (thanks to Lucy & Simon) but you could also just use a paint brush hair to cut two little antenna - glue to head of bee. Make little dots for eyes. I glued mine onto a lilac bush. I have to admit they were quite time consuming & I threw away several. But they do look cute on the bush. And we all know, cuteness counts!!!! My daughter said that this project proved that I had lost my mind and do not have enough to do!!! I guess painting grains of rice does seem kind of strange. Let me know how your bees turn out. I bet you could even hang them from real fine fishing line so your bees could be flying about.

Carbomax

Horse Barn: could your mini-estate be in the Kentucky Bluegrass region? Down there many of the old horse barns are stained a dark charcoal with white trim so they match the tobacco barns, which are invariably charcoal. That's neutral enough to be okay with your house. Others have rather New Englandy/Greek Revival color schemes -- white, dark green trim. Anything goes for the less traditional owners. I've seen some off Harrodsburg Pike that are burgundy, teal, and tan. Roofing runs the gamut from tin to slate to modern shingles. Apparently the less traditional, more modernized horse farms often have "foreign" owners,according to Pam, which in the Lexington area means anyone from movie stars to oil sheiks.

Loretta.Sniarowski

Animals

Dogs: Karl Blindheim-Bjarnesonn's address is 59 Isabella St.#502, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4Y 1M9 (416) 921-7802 and of course there is out own Alice Zinn iamazin@aol.com

Dawn

Pipe cleaner teddy bear site: Here is the site for the pipe cleaner bears. They are so easy and fun to make. http://www.pipmin.fsnet.co.uk/teddy.html

Wendy in Clinton, NJ

Cotton Pipe Cleaners: Marianne was looking for pipe cleaners which are suitable for bears and other animals. I have some made by The Chenille Craft Co. in Gurnee, IL 60031 , which are perfect for what you want. They come in a variety of colors, called giant cotton stems #5524 20 pieces 9mm x 12".

Lee from Melville, NY

Cotton Pipe Cleaners:Fred Aldous sells them in the UK his web site link page for pipe cleaners is http://www.fredaldous.co.uk/  Lots of different one. Cotton and chenille, different lengths and thicknesses. I bought some on impulse just before Xmas and they do not show the wire when bent. I was spoilt for choice on colour selection.

By the way it is a fun site. Lots of craft ideas. Staff very helpful. They do sell direct and also to craft shops in the UK. So they pack all their own stuff like this up them selves. Possible they will make you a pack with the colours you want.

Pauline UK

Giant Cotton Chenille Stems: Here's some sites where you may find what you want: http://www.grumpy.org.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_PIPECLEANERS_55.html  http://data.synasoft.com/chenillekraft/products.cfm?categoryid=111

http://www.fibrecraft.com/html/chenille.html  http://www.gy.com/product/601231%5Cindex.htm

Gerry

Horses: Breyer makes horses in 4 sizes, 2 of which can work with dollhouse minis. I say "can work with" because Breyer isn't really interested in scale. Fortunately, real horses come in several sizes, so we just need to worry about body type. Basically, the Classics size goes with 1" and Stablemates go with 1/2". Traditional size, which is what you usually find in the toy stores and which has the most variety, is too big. As a remaker, I saw and drill and carve and even melt body parts to make the horses more realistic before painting several coats and adding hair manes and tails. It's possible to reposition body parts too but there are horror stories of all that work coming apart later so I try to keep that to a minimum.

Denise Pritchett

Butterflies: For butterflies I use vellum stationary paper. You can use acetate too. Fold in half and cut out half butterflies. Glue a piece of wire in the middle of the butterfly and when glue is dry, paint the butterflies with markers or glass paint.

Judy K

Cat House: many years ago the late Dennis Waldron published some ideas for pet toys, including one of those carpet covered tower "condos". It's hard to describe without drawing pictures, but here goes. Take a toilet paper roll and cut it to whatever length you think appropriate. Trace around the roll and cut out one circle of lightweight cardboard (cereal box, etc.) one inch larger, and another 3/4 inch larger. The larger circle will be the base. Mark a spiral on the smaller circle, from the outer edge to the center circle, going maybe two thirds of the way around the circle. This will be the ramp that wraps around the center core, and the circle from the middle will be the top of the condo. (Close your eyes and think about this, and you might be able to "see" it.) Cut a piece of self stick felt for the base, but remove the center "hole" before you stick it to the cardboard, so the core will fit into it. Test fit the spiral ramp, and cut doors into the core in the proper places. Glue the core in place, and cover it with felt. Trim a scant 1/16th inch from the spiral, and cover it with felt on both sides and glue it in place. You can get really clever and put in a floor or two at this point, then cover the top with cardboard from the spiral and the circle of felt you cut from the base.

Dani

Scratching post: The cat scratching post can be found on my site, http://www.bulback.com/personal/kim

I believe it may be under "projects".

Kim

Cat Condo: I should think the cardboard core from a roll of toilet paper, covered with mini-scale carpet and with the appropriate openings cut out, would make a nifty cat condo.

Molly/StormBorn

Mini Aquarium....I had the nicest thing happen a while ago. Chris who has a printables web site e-mailed me to let me know I was the "think tank" for her new aquarium printable. I had made a printable for my site of transparencies of fish for a tank and Chris made a tank with nice fish too. Chris's site has some wonderful printables and is called Dollhouse Miniature Printables

http://members.tripod.com/~cwoolse/miniprintables/index.html

Jean Day

What makes mice? I am accumulating for a pet store and my mice/gerbils(?) are being made out of pussy willow buds. They are already furry and the right size. Just need some little felt ears and string tails.

Jan in Cincinnati

Turning Mini Animal Limbs: I made some mini teddy bears recently (I did a batch of 12) - I used a 23 piece pattern, scaled down (on the photocopier) till the finished bear was about an inch tall. They were made the same way as full size bears, stitched & turned. Then thread jointed. The arms were the hardest to turn. TIP - leave arms & legs open at the top, not the back as you may do for full size bears. If you position them sitting with their arms out the closing stitching is at the back. (and a seated bear looks smaller than a standing one).

Now I hope this bit makes sense ...

The best way I found to turn them was to hold the limb in a pair of fine pointed tweezers, positioned so the tweezers run up the length of the limb with just a tiny bit of the open end of the limb protruding beyond the tips of the tweezers. Then I pushed with my fingers till I rolled the open end of the limb back over the tips of the tweezers. Loosen your grip on the tweezers and move them back a bit then keep on pushing and rolling. Keep on doing this and you'll end up rolling the limb mostly right side out over the tweezers. When you are mostly done you can poke something in the limb to turn it fully, but watch you use something blunt as it is easy to push thru the stitching. It is not easy but can be done!!!

Sandra Monk

Flocked Finish - I just bought some Soft Flock put out by Plaid. There is an adhesive bottle and another bottle of fibres. It says it will add a velvety finish on the inside of boxes. Can be used on most porous surfaces including wood, plaster, clay, pots, primed metal, paper, paper mache, memory books etc. Sounds good. I bought brown. Seems to come in about 40 different colors. I want to try it for animals. The web site is www.plaidonline.com

Barbara in El Cerrito, CA.

Cat Resources: Here's a copy of my file of cat related mini-sites.

For cat figurines:

http://www.aprilfoolandpennytoo.com -- look under "animals one"

http://members.aol.com/beeskneesminis -- some unusual cats: cat with broken fish bowl, cat in a birdcage, cat tangled up in yarn; prices US$ 9 -30

http://www.dragonflyintl.com -- scratching, climbing, prowling, playing cats, cat with fishbowl prices US$ 10-20

In A Miniature Manor -- Cats in a variety of positions US$ 9-15

Little Obsessions -- A variety of cats, Cat condo

Ann Weiner Miniatures -- Cat in rocker with afghan

I don't have the URLs for the last three but all of them are on the SS link page. My personal favorites are dragonfly's and beesknees' figurines.

Other cat related possibilities:

http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~nyssa/dollhouse.html -- free instructions for a wicker pet basket

http://www.toad.net/~raz/litterbox.htm -- printables of a litterbox and a generic box of litter

http://members.tripod.com/~JillsMinis/index.html -- lots of cat related items (toys, collars, etc.)

Multiple brand names of cat food and litter

Chryssa Sharp

¼ Scale animals: Try model railroad stores, and ask for "O" gauge, pronounced oh.  That is the same as our quarter inch scale. Most MR stores don't have much in the way of O stuff, but ask to see the large scale Walthers catalog, animal section.  They will probably have HO scale animals in stock, pronounced H-oh, but will be too small, but you might find a large dog that could be used as a small dog in 1/4 scale.  I know Arrtista has lots of quarter inch scale things, including some dogs, cats, peddle car, stroller, etc, but I no longer have their address.  I don't know if they sell to shops, hopefully a model railroader on this list can furnish the address--they occasionally advertise in Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman.  Model Railroader is a Kalmbach publication, sister of Dollhouse Miniatures--perhaps they could help.

Dean Jenson

Tiny Animals: tiny bunnies...all sorts of tiny animals can be found in many craft stores. In just a couple of months, there should be lots of tiny bunnies available for Easter scenes! Also people who do Eggery (the creation of scenes inside eggs) have a lot of that sort of thing available. Why not do web search for "Eggery" using one of the search engines recently mentioned. BTW "Google" is my personal favorite! While typing this I thought I'd take a look myself, and found a really interesting site to share with all of you: http://www.craftsearch.com/Craft/A.html

Alice Zinn