Bird Seed: For bird seed I use pepper, it works wonderfully...

Sarah

Bird Food: Check out spices . . . believe it's "lemon pepper" that works well.

Jo A Cohrs

Bird seed: I bake a polymer clay "pancake", very thin, with marbelzed tans and light browns. After baking I chop it into fine crumbs with a razor blade. Then I mix in tiny glass beads in brown and black and it looks great.

Beverly Michie

Bird food - I used very small seeds like pansy seeds (different colors), and foxglove seeds are very small.

Judy

Bird food - Head for the spice rack! Poppy seeds, mustard seeds, all kinds of little spices just waiting for your birdies!

Marilyn

Pond: I used a round coffee lid for the pond and cut down the edges to the depth I wanted. Painted the bottom of the lid a murky color, made Fimo fish and glued them in. I then cut a piece of acetate to fit the lid and used clear nail polish to give the surface a ripple effect. I then made rocks out of plaster ,glue and water and put them on a plastic bag to dry and then painted them. I then glued them around the edge to hide the edge of the acetate, then I cut out water lilies and made water lily flowers glued these onto the water and put plants in the crevices of the rocks. It looked great. The clear nail polish took away the flat look.

Karen from Dubai

Polyseamseal for Water: The stuff for water in a tube is Clear Polyseamseal and is great stuff. But, when I did my ocean shore, I used Liquid Illusion, because I needed quite a bit and the Polyseamseal takes a very long time to cure. Polyseamseal would, however, be great for making a rougher surface - you can use your finger or a spatula to make ripples, waves, etc. Guess I was just afraid the Polyseamseal wouldn't cure completely with such a large amount.

Carole Pierce in TN

RESIN PROBLEMS: First of all, there are SEVERAL kinds of resin to use for water, beverages etc. You say that you received some miniatures that leaked (I would think you mean "oozed" out of the particular miniature) and some didn't.

The products that you were sent were not done correctly. What I mean by this, is that the resin was not MIXED accurately or stirred correctly before being poured into the container, and therefore, did not harden. (Wish I knew what containers you mean).

But here is what you really wanted to know: NO. you cannot salvage them by washing them, nothing can clean up a messy resin miniature, and don't even try.

And NO.. you should not touch the sticky resin, not because you will be poisoned, but because care must be taken with ANY medium - glues, spray paint, etc.

My suggestion is that you contact the people you purchased these miniatures from and tell them the problem you have had. If need be...send them back and SHOW them what happened.

If you are tempted to create water in jars on your own, what you need is Polymer Compound Resin - a 2-bottle kit - one is your resin, the other your catalyst. These must be mixed one part to one part, VERY ACCURATELY AND STIRRED THOROUGHLY.] If you want to learn more about this resin, go to my Website, http://www.pannikins.com/

then to the second page, click on Mary's Menus Projects. There you will find a page on working with resins. This resin can also be purchased there, or at most craft shops and some miniature shops.

Mary Eccher

Planting flowers: I recently taught a garden workshop in our mini club.  First we covered the base with a product called Sculptamold.  It's a powder that you mix with water.  We spread it on, building up flowerbeds and generally contouring the ground. Although it dries hard, you can sand it, drill it, carve it, etc. etc.  Very adaptable.  You then paint it appropriately - brown where you will have flowerbeds, green where you sow grass.   When this dries, add your soil and grass products (purchased at a model train store) to the appropriate areas.

To plant the shrubs, trees and flowers, we just used a pin vise, or any pointed object -or even a push pin for the smaller stems - and put some glue on the end of the plant to be planted and stuck it in the drilled hole.  Voila.  Garden planted.

The Sculptamold can be purchased at an art supply store or possibly Michaels. Very versatile. However, if you can't find it, I know the railroad hobby stores carry similar products.

Marlene Thomas

Plantings: You can use GE Silicone II, Brown, for your planting base. It is soft, easily pliable, and when it sets up it is firm (hard). But the best thing is that it will not shrink or crack as many of the other caulking products on the market do. After you place it, you can spread your "dirt" or "grass" and it will adhere very nicely. Remove the excess by vacuuming (carefully). Place your plants and flowers using tweezers.

Sir David

A Gardening Tip: A lot of middle-or-back-of-border flowers have a clump of leaves at the base, or heavy leafage at ground level with wider spacing going up the stem.  Rather than planting these with stems stuck down into your foundation, you can make individual clay bases.  Do shallow mounds for the first type and skinny cones for the second, with holes down the center into which you glue stems.  When you glue leaves onto either type, work from the outside in and bottom up.  Sure beats trying to glue all the leaves one-by-one on a wire, and fills in the ground between plants in a natural way.

Mary

Water putty: You can buy water putty in a Home Depot or other hardware store.

Roz Weitzman

Possible Weeping Willow Material: One local craft store has had hanks of fake asparagus fern that would probably be a pretty good starting point: long narrow pointed leaves twisted into wires.  You'd have to sort of work backwards with these to join them into bigger branches and then into a trunk.  As I recall, price was eight or nine dollars, B.C.(Before Coupon.)  Enough for a tree, with leftovers.  While you're checking, do look at all the greenery.  Some of it comes in little inexpensive sprigs, and much is adaptable for our gardening.

Mary

Flower Punches: The new Fiskars squeeze-type punches, under $5.00, seem like good quality. The "blossom" - a wavy-edge disc shape - is useful for leaves as well as flowers.

With punches of this type, you can pry off the "catchers" to use them upside-down and see where you're punching. If you can see where you're punching, you can add other colors to the paper before you punch (e.g., yellow centers). A template made from a strip of card with a line of punched-out holes can help with size and spacing. You can also pre-score radiating lines, which usually cause the piece to cup up differently than unscored paper. Disadvantage: it's trickier to align and punch several marked sheets at once. On the other hand, since you don't need markings on all blossoms, you can stack up a couple of sheets of other colors to punch at the same time. (When bits of paper stick together it's easier to separate different colors, anyhow.)

Mary

Flowerbeds: First: look at flowerbed drawings in books and seed catalogs. There's not a lot of detail, just overall impressions. Such pictures enable people with good eyesight to overcome that handicap and see the world as we nearsighted ones do. So, go for overall effects. As you might expect, plants are arranged to be visible, so if they're against a wall, the taller ones are in back, lowest-growing in front.

Lots of leaves imply that plants are flourishing, and I suggest flat-bottom bases because (a) many flowers have most of their leaves at or near ground level and (b) fastening leaves singly onto wires is a necessity but also a bitch, and no point in doing more than you have to and, (c) if you don't want to complete your entire flowerbed in one great gallop you can display stuff temporarily in pots and planters and transplant it later. Maybe the best way to put it is, think in real life terms: a "bed" is really a collection, an assembly, of plants.

Mary

Ivy: I have successfully made ivy using the smaller maple leaf punch. You punch them out (I use artist's paper in a darker green) and snip the stem off each leaf. Outline the edge of each one with a light tan or gray paint.

Use the blunt edge of an exacto knife to put a crease down the middle of each one and then glue them down a length of thread covered florists wire. I learned this easy way at one of my club's project nights. I love the way they look.

Leslie

Vines: If you don't want to cut and glue thousands of leaves on, you can try Stretchy Lanscaping Foliage. Woodland Scenics #51 and #52 are the kind I have used with good success. Very easy to use and looks real too!

Roz Weitzman

Ivy leaves: Here's a free alternative, and depending on where in Oz one lives, it may still be possible to get them - Birch Tree Catkins. These are the dangling flowers/seed cones of the birch tree.  If you pull them apart they are made up of hundreds of tiny leaves with the seeds tucked between them. The silver birch is particularly good but other types of birch also have catkins that contain leaves.

I think there may be two types of catkins on the trees (male & female? Or mature & immature) some were 12-20mm long and around 5mm wide, others were only 2-3 mm wide;the fatter ones worked best.

Sandra

Tree bark: The process I use is, after I have the trunk twisted up from copper wire, I wrap it with Creative Paperclay. After I have the trunk and limbs covered with a thin layer (about 1/8 ") take a stylus or round off the end of a bamboo skewer and then rake the bark. After the bark is dry, paint it with successive thin washes of acrylic paint. To see a sample of an old oak tree, go to my web site and look at Crossbridge Cottage. http://community.webshots.com/user/rikpierce

Rik Pierce

Tree bark: Have you thought about perhaps using a gnarled dead branch to make a mini tree? For example, a piece of grape vine or even an old, mature rose bush on its way to the next life? They look gorgeous, and you don't have to make bark.

Maureen