Stable: For the person who wanted information on equipment for horses for her stable, have a look at this great web site: http://www.riorondo.com/products.html. They make all sorts of tack such as saddles, bridles, halters etc. Being a former horse person myself, I bookmarked this site as I liked their products very much.

Cheryl from Brampton, ON

Stable: For your stable you will need water buckets, baled hay and feed sacks, though my neighbor keeps her feed in metal garbage cans to defeat mice. Two types of tack box. A large one that usually looks like a plain wooden trunk with a lid that lifts. These often are parked outside a stall. Some people keep all the tack inside them, but some will hang a saddle on a wooden rack on the wall of a separate room. Bridles will be hung on wall hooks. A saddle blanket lying on the tack box could add some nice color. There is also a small tack box like an open tool box with a handle across the top. This will contain a hoof pick, brushes, liniment, a pulling comb for tails and manes. You might want to set up cross ties, which are simply two lead ropes that attach opposite each other on the walls of the open 'hall' between stalls. This is used to restrain a horse for saddling or a visit from the blacksmith. No stable is complete without a barn cat or two. You could have barn boots, too, but be sure they're NOT clean :). You could include a long whip used for lunging- which is just holding a rope and using the whip to encourage the horse to trot in a circle around you for exercise. Well, hope this helps.

Linda in Leroy,

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

One-room school: I am also doing a one-room school and I found my greatest help was just on the internet. I just typed in "one-room school" on the search and a whole list came up. There is one site there called "Iron Hill School" which would help you because it was an all black school. It showed what type of floors they had, what colors they painted their walls and everything. Also under "American Schools" you can find all black schools. From what I read the only light they had was from the windows. Students sat on long wooden benches with their work on their laps. Blackboards were just boards painted black. Erasers were rags glued to small blocks of wood. Hopefully this is of some help

Teresa in Calgary

1940's school: I started school in a poor mixed race neighborhood in Canada in the 40s, so it may not have been very different from your model. There were blackboards along the front of the classrooms, and they were black slate, each about 4' high and 8' wide. I don't remember coloured chalks being used; only white. The blackboard erasers were flat brushes of 1/4" felt strips - red, white and blue strips about 3"x6" with a wooden back. They were cleaned by "good" students who were allowed to take them outside and thwack them against other brushes or on the brick walls. We kids sat at individual desks -the old fashioned all-in-ones with metal frames, wooden seats and a "box" desk with a lift up lid. There was a groove about 1/2" deep all along the width of the desk, just above the hinged lid. This was for pens and pencils. There was a circular hole about 2 1/2" in the top right corner for your inkwell. The desk lids were deeply carved with assorted initials and mottoes. We sat in straight rows facing the teacher - none of these democratic circles! We used straight pens or fountain pens with the little levers and rubber bladders; very messy! And blotters - envelope sized pieces of thick white felted paper. We had math sets in metal boxes -with protractors and set squares, very like those still used today, and pencil crayons in packets of 8 colours or crayons for colouring.

Some of us carried satchels to put our books in; most of us carried them loose. Girls always wore skirts and blouses or pinafores, NEVER trousers, even in the dead of winter. There were cloakrooms near the entrance for coats and galoshes. We carried lunches in brown paper bags, or went home for lunch. (12 - 1:30)

The teacher had a large oak desk at the front of the classroom, and a matching oak chair. No cushions! There were pull down maps like window blinds - with extensive red areas representing "the empire", and a twirling metal world globe on a stand. We all had our own exercise books, small "readers" and "Think and Do" books featuring Spot and Puff and Dick and Jane. Although the classes were mixed sex and one grade to each room, sexual segregation was the rule. Girls and boys had separate entrances to the school. We had to line up in front of our specific door before school began, and spelling "bees" and math quizzes were always divided boy vs. girl.

I don't think fluorescent lights were available back then. I seem to recall long flexes with bare bulbs, some with the upside- down cone shades that were green on the outside and white on the inside.

Donna from Devon

1940's school: I went to school in the south in the mid to late 1950's and 1960's. I went to 3 different elementary schools. We lived way out in the sticks in AL for a couple of years where there were only 2 elementary schools, one for white and the other for AA students. The AA students had the newer building, but I never went inside, so I couldn't tell you about that, but I can tell you about the inside of our much, much older school.

We had the green chalk boards on 2 walls, the one behind the teacher's desk, and along the inner wall that was adjacent to the hallway and there was narrow bead board wainscoting painted white and the walls were very pale green. There were two doors into the hallway, one at each end of the room. They were 1/2 glass doors with transom's. There was a cloak room across the width of the room at the back of the classroom with a door at each corner (a total of 4 doorways into each classroom, 2 into the hallway and 2 for the cloakroom). The ceilings were very high, the windows were tall and narrow with a row of them along the outside wall about every 2 feet. Under the windows were bookshelves with encyclopedia's and other reference books. These shelving units were of dark wood.

The desks were the row type that bolt to the floor where the fold up seat for the desk in front is attached to the front of the desk behind, the was a hole in the desk top for an inkwell and a groove across the top edge for a pencil. The support structure for the desks were ornate iron.

Rusty in Ky

Kids Project: I taught a class called Teeny Tiny Garden to kids in grades 3-5. Each year I do this I learn a little...this year I cut way back on the complexity of the project because a lot of it has to be done by me before the class! The classes are only 45 minutes long and there is not much time for glue and paint to dry. This project started out with a white fence on a painted-green wooden base. Then the students were given shredded foam grass, foliage, punched flowers, a birdbath and a bird to arrange any way they wanted. I gave a short lesson about scale (with flowers in vases in full size, 1", 1/2" and 1/4" scales for visual comparison) and demonstrated a couple techniques such as cupping the flowers with a blunt toothpick on a piece of craft foam. Each student came up with unique ideas, some I would never have thought of! There were even moments when you could have heard a pin drop, they were working so hard. I actually had time to take some photos this year and DH stopped by so I am even in some of them.. http://albums.photo.epson.com/j/AlbumList?u=1664953 look in the Kids College 2002 album on my Epson site. This was one of the most rewarding things I have done with minis!

Chris in Minnesota

Ballet Scene: A very effective and simple scene is to use a picture frame with some shadow box depth. ( Use any frame and put a box behind it.) Put an interior door at the back and wallpaper the walls. Put a mini framed photo of your ballerina on the wall and hang ballet shoes over the doorknob and on a clothes hook on the door, hang a tutu. If there are any pets, they could fit in the room with the tutu too.

Laurie Sisson

Castles: Anyone who may be interested in suits of armor, candlesticks, pewter articles etc. Take a look at Tony Knott's web site. He has made pieces for film sets and the like, all beautiful stuff! http://www.tonyknott.com

Peter and Annie

50s dinette set: You could probably bend heavy wire (maybe coathangers if you've got good pliers and wire cutters) for that 50s dinette set, then super-glue it in place and use the chrome nail polish I mentioned a couple of issues back to get the right finish.

Loretta.Sniarowski

Tinker Toys: After my last post I checked my files. Go to http://www.cottageofminiatures.com and check Artisan. David's bag of tinker toys is $16. and it gives information on how to place an order.

Ruth

Aged Paper: I can tell you how I make my old scrolls, papers, and maps. It's easy and you can't mess up because the more you ruff them up the older and better they look. I use Velum paper. It is a little expensive but a pad can fill 10 mini libraries. To make the paper look old, I usually stain by rubbing a wet tea bag over it, letting some areas stain more that others, then let it dry.

After dry you can put it through the printer or you can hand print it with a very fine brush and water color. Cut the pieces of paper to size, and then roll or fold the paper the shape you desire. Velum holds the shape well. Then very carefully and gently burn the edges of the rolled scrolls. You don't need to burn them much at all. Rub the excess ashes of the paper. I've also herd some people putting paper in the oven to give it the old look too. But I haven't had too much success with that. Burning makes the paper look old because "real" old papers are actually burning extremely slowly too. That's why they are brown and brittle.

If you look at my web site you can see some of my miniature old scrolls, papers and books: www.evminiatures.com

Ericka Van Horn

Asian (oriental) style minis: http://www.simbatta.net/ made in Korea

Alice Zinn

Dumbledore's Room: I have used one of Debbie Jones's "Kitz" theatre kits and made a room for Dumbledore from Harry Potter. I made it bigger by putting both the bottom and top on the top, one half flap opens, and I used the false back for the floor and I used a piece of thick cardboard for the sides with the kit sides glued to inner walls. It came out so handsome for him, and I used not one skerrik of pink as it was the mighty Dumbledore head Wizard of Hogwarts and he demands respect, not frivolity with pink!!!!

robbie roo

The Dutch house: My initial feeling on the Dutch house was that with the interior bulging with wonderful things, the outside didn't matter, but I realised that was wrong, and the front had to be as good as the inside. Groan.   The work could be divided into 3 parts.   I had removed the American Colonial style door and windows that it had been fitted with, and I had decorated the top with with two big fish with a window between them, papered with very realistic (and amazingly expensive) Dutch brick paper the rest, and the lower part was rendered (filler and glued on tissues) and painted cream.  It then sat around for months while I did everything but..  coward me.

I had really wanted to put in a stable door (I believe you call them Dutch doors in the States) but chickened out, so that left me with only two things to do. :O)

First I made the glazing for the windows - only the upper half of the windows were glazed, with leaded glass. I've seen this is many Dutch paintings - the lower half is glassless but with shutters.   I cut the acetate, wrongly, so had to do it again.  I tried using lead paint, lines went wobbly, blobby, too thick or all 3 at once. Quivering slightly, I changed over to using mega fine strips of golf lead, cutting so SO carefully so I didn't hurt myself with my safety razor.  Finished applying the lead - it was out of scale.  I clenched my hand in my frustration, forgetting I was holding the razor, so cut across my palm and some fingers. Ouch.  Cleared everything away.  Now leaded glass looks so lively because, being small separate pieces of glass, they all catch the light differently, so I bought acetate with a printed lead design on it, and painted each diamond in a different direction with clear gallery glass paint, which made the windows look gorgeous - the glass blurry and soft yet very lively.  Hurrah!  There, that was worth all that blood and stuff - wasn't it?

Next I made the shutters from Starbucks stirrers - I scrounged a whole box of these from our local Starbucks and they are so useful. These are half shutters to go across the parts of the windows with no glass in them.   I cut to size then butt glued the stirrers, painted, aged with weathering powders used by railway modellers, then glued the shutters either open or shut so they made a dynamic pattern of open/close across the front of the house.  The closed ones have twiddly black hinges from Phoenix miniatures on them.

The next day the doors were made of wood, and I veneered them with oak veneer to look like planks, gave them a wash with acrylic, and fitted them, having made small metal door handles from twisted wire. I glued them so they are partially open, as the house which sells drinks downstairs, is full of people, and trade is brisk.

Helen from York, England

Japanese house:  I purchased a 1/4" tearoom kit from http://japaneseminis.homestead.com/FirstPg.html   It was very easy to assemble, and it looks great! It was the first 1/4" project I attempted. I don't have a picture of it yet on my webshots album - will have to do that! Anyway, I would definitely buy from him again. Very good quality.

Lauren in Abingdon

So far I have Tai-Nee Toys, MBC (Miniscule Bank of Commerce), Jojo Café (Coffee Shop), Demi Dimensions (Dress Shop), Le Petit Bebe (Infant supplies store), NewYouConcepts (a day salon and spa), Bitty Bath and Boudoir (A place to buy fine linen, candles, soaps, etc, and Tiny Ivy, a mini fine dining restaurant. If anybody wants to snatch my idea, feel free!

MsPBody

TV Program Sets: I recommend you try to locate the following book: "TV Sets - Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes" by Mark Bennett. It was published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, NY in l996 and distributed by Workman Publishing Company, NY./TV Books, Inc, NY. (ISBN: 1-57912-107-1) This book contains floor plans and furniture layout for "I Love Lucy" and many other classic TV programs (35 programs altogether). However, the book does not contain any actual photographs of the TV programs - only floorplans/layouts.

Nancy Faye Roach - Port St. Lucie, FL

Medical clinic printables: I have come across some very good web sites that have printables, one that I found was:

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/miniboopin

They had some medical labels, and if you go to links you may find more of what you are looking for.

Kathy

Gift Room box ideas: Just choose the one thing that really makes her happy, her greatest interest. I'm planning to do a box for my mom on her favorite pastime: community theater. I want to do a birds-eye view type of layout that encompasses the front stage with a curtained stage and a row of seats, and a behind the curtain area with all the stacked props and backdrops, and a door to the "stars" dressing room with all the mayhem that goes on before a performance evident (ex: costumes and a make-up mirror cluttered with scripts and make-up, theater posters, etc.)

I'm also working on a Disneyesque nursery roombox for my best friend who just found out she's expecting and being a Disney fanatic will of course be doing her baby's room in that motif. I only have 7 more months to complete it! If any one has any ideas for either of these themes, please let me know.

Diane in Holtsville, NY