Egg House: We did a great little project in our club. We made little bunny houses. First pierce the end of the egg with a needle on both ends, and blow the egg. Helps if you can pierce the yoke. (you can make the hole a bit bigger than just the pin prick, or you will blow yourself silly). Don't worry too much about the size of the hole as you will be covering it with tissue anyway. But do keep it as small as possible. After blowing out all the egg, rinse well and let dry. Paint the egg any color desired w/acrylic paint. Set the egg on the table and see which way it wants to lay. Pierce the front edge of the egg with 2-3 holes to make a small enough opening to get your cuticle scissors into the space and cut an opening. Or you can just use your tweezers to break off small pieces in the shape you want. We made oval openings. (Make the opening fairly close to the bottom edge and this will be the floor space for your little home.) (I think the chipped opening is more effective/natural but you choose the effect you want.) Cut a piece of card stock for the floor and cover with paper flooring or paint as desired decorate as desired (we used 144th metal mini's) 2 or 3pieces is about all that will fit. We cut a piece of poster board and landscaped a garden w/stream, hill, trees, and mine has a tiny veggie garden with lettuce and fimo carrots. We used the tiny Easter Bunnies (used for Easter trees) cut the loops off, and placed them about the garden. We placed the whole scene in a clear plastic box. (Size you garden to fit into your box.) A fun quick project and the children love looking at them. Have fun!

Diane

Magazines: I have found mini magazines at Books-a-Million. You can order magazines from the web site if you don't have a store near you. The three I have found are:
Dollhouse Miniatures (American publication)
Doll's House and Miniature Scene (British)
Miniature Collector (American)
I like the British one the best. There are often free dollhouse plans, clothing patterns, cut-outs, and every month there is a column on making foods and objects with Fimo You can go to Angie Scarr's website for good free projects. http://www.compclub.demon.co.uk/asmini.htm). You can go here http://www.emfpublishing.co.uk to order DHMS online. I have done this and the service is good. They also make a Miniatures Projects magazine which is more expensive (about $12/copy) but has lots of do-it-yourself projects and the issues are big. It is put out 4x/year. I don't much care for the Miniature Collector for DIY projects (although there are some in there that are very good). It is more of a "Showcase" magazine that shows the best and most interesting dollhouses...and for that reason is still a very good magazine.

Lynn

Once I saw a picture of a lady in a magazine, who was making a mini vase out of clay. She had a large bump of clay on the rotation wheel and on top of it she had this little vase 'growing'. Couldn't you do something just like that: take a large bump of fimo and let your little doll grow out of it? It's worth a try, I think.

Marjon de Haas

I took a workshop in sculpting a fimo doll with Cat Wingler. The most important thing she emphasized was that the oven fire clays would get too soft to sculpt the face. The way we got around this was to pre-fire some of the head. First you buy or make the eyeballs and bake them. Next you roll an egg shape to the proper size for the head and halfway down the egg push the eyeballs in until they are buried halfway. Then you bake it. Now you can add more clay for the forehead, cheeks, chin, neck etc. and sculpt the features on the hard base.

HRKorff

50s Moderne Open House: I finished my quarter scale 50s Moderne House and would like to invite you all too see it.
http://www.wishbooktoys.com/dollhouse/50s

John Medeiros

Roomboxes: There are several different size wooden roomboxes, but if you are going to make them yourself, I wouldn't be held to a standard size. I would make them the size that I needed for the project. The rooms in your house are not all the same size, so roomboxes shouldn't be either. If you make a project that requires little space, it would look out of place in a standard sized roombox. On the other hand, if you have a large, or very busy project, I have found that a little larger space so it is not quite as crowded looks nicer. I think that itis strictly up to the individual.

Rusty

Foamcore Roomboxes: The May 2000 issue of DM has an excellent how-to by Frank Lerner. He makes it very easy. Or you could do like I do and just wing it. Make it any size you want it to be. How big is the largest item going in, going to be? Go on from there. Whatever looks right is what I use. Also check out Joann Swanson's Wizard room in the October 2000 issue of DM. She uses foamcore for the walls, floors-everything.

Pam in St. Louie

my first kit is a country store. I know nothing except I was trying to save money for stuff for my store so I scribed the floor to make it look like a real wood floor. Then I stained it and varnished it. It came out great. Then I scribed the ceiling to look like tong and grove with ceiling beams. The bottom floor looks like 2X6 wood decked plank floor. I put tiny hole for nails. Wish I would have used some of your ideas and made it look like real nails but I just put tiny hole where the nails went and stained it. It has thousands of holes so the "real nails" would have taken me forever. I really love the way it says "this kit takes 3 to 4 hours to put together." My next step is wiring. I am so afraid to start that project.

Diana

Dutch Interiors: I found a new book on Dutch interiors at Cosco yesterday. It is called Country Houses of Holland" by Barbara Rene Stoeltie. Taschen publishers. A very good book for those of you wanting to do a Dutch house. I also found it on Amazon, for those of you without a Cosco.

Kaye in LA

1/144 Amusement park: the model railroaders have lots of stuff in N scale, which is a little bit smaller (1/160), but which might do, since these machines come in different sizes. I have a 1999 N-gauge Walthers catalgo, and there's a merry-go-round kit, a chairoplane, game booths and concession booths (made by Faller), a Ferris wheel and carousel by IHC, swing boats and a ghost train by Vollmer. These are I think all kits, and some can be motorized and lit.If you want to do it all yourself, I'd still suggest searching through model shops for wood or styrene products that will enable you to build unusual structures. Walthers has a big site at http://www.walthers.com 1/144 Amusement park: I once found what I later learned was a display wheel for Easter eggs at a garage sale. It screamed "Ferris wheel" at me - I will guess that the wheel diameter was about 8"-9". It worked just like a Ferris wheel does; as the wheel went around, the egg holders rotated so the eggs were always upright. But check places that sell holiday things - maybe they have off-season things in a corner somewhere. (OK, it's late and I just did the math - this would probably be way too big for 1/144 scale. Maybe 1/4 scale would be closer!)

Chris in Minnesota