Get the Lead out!

If you have occasion to get your hands on any lead wine-bottle seals found on some imported wines, usually the expensive ones, hang on to them. They are a source of very soft metal that can be easily cut then shaped with simple tools to make mini cooking and eating utensils, fireplace tools, period hardware for doors etc.... NOTE: If you are a Boomer or Zoomer and worried about handling lead, wear plastic gloves.
The metal cases from the tea light candles are great sources of soft metal for all sorts of things. The metal can easily be cut with old scissors and bent to shape.

Reflective Material for Signs, Ornaments, Mobiles

Chris the CD Crusher in Canada
It was an accident! Honest!!

As for this week's T2T I have just a small one concerning CDs and DVDs. When one is smashed under a car wheel in the driveway, :-} if you look you may find little bits of the silver film sticking out from the broken edges of the clear plastic interior. When you find some, use your fingers or a pair of tweezers to GENTLY coax the film to pull away from the plastic base. It is finicky to do but the reward is worth it because you now have in your possession micro-thin pieces of full-spectrum reflective material. These can be attached anywhere you need something to reflect light with the colour depending on the angle it is viewed from. I don't know how else to put the effect in words, but if you you hold a CD disk in the light and tip it around a bit, you'll see what I mean. Thin strips can be used to outline a poster or sign and added to just about anything in a modern setting, and if glued to light-weight paper, can be punched out when dry and the shapes used as desired. Gluing some film on both sides of the paper means you can punch out shapes to use for hanging ornaments, mobiles, store displays ......... Well, you get the idea.

Corn husk angels

Finally the hot, humid weather has gone, so last weekend I cooked up some of our fresh Ontario corn inside, instead of on the BBQ. I was putting the husks and silks in my green bin container and thinking about how soon Christmas would be upon us and what tree decorations I would have to replace, when the light turned on. Here were the makings of more corn-husk angels to replace the ones that the cats had mangled a few years ago ...... AND why not use the same husks to make mini corn-husk angels? My original angels were just shy of 2" tall, reduced from instructions I found on-line, but they could be made any size you want by using the thinner husks found closest to the cob.

The green husks and silks are easily dried by letting them air dry in a collander or strainer for a few weeks, or they can be laid in a single layer on a paper towel, covered with another towel and micro-waved. I did mine for 2 minutes on high, let stand for about 5 minutes, them flipped them over, paper towel and all, and nuked them another 2 minutes. I then spread them out on a clean paper towel and let them sit out overnight. Voila, 'almost instant' dried corn husks for free, versus the $4-$5 craft stores charge for a 'kit' consisting of a few corn husks, a cotton ball to use for stuffing the head and some photocopied instructions, probably taken from the internet.

Tonight I made a "HUGE" corn husk angel (LOL!!!), a hair over 7/8" tall without her halo. I wanted to start big and work my way down to 1/2" tall so she would fit into either a 1:12 Christmas scene, or minus wings and wire halo, serve as a decoration for a country style home or a pioneer child's doll. . Her eyes ran due to the fibres of the husks so she looks as if she hasn't slept in a long time, so if I do eyes on another, I'll seal the face first. And I'll use regular bunka for the hair, or some brushed out acrylic yarn, not the stuff I snipped off from the fringed pillow beside me.

Today I made another, this time measuring in at 9/16" including her halo. This size would fit in well in a 1:12 scene, as most RL cornhusk dollies are 6-7" tall. And except for it being a bit fiddly when the time came to tie parts together, she was just as easy to do as her big sister. Next time I plan to go for 1/3, and if that works ............ .... :-D

Pack up your tent

Ever think about moving, First Nations style?
Now what WOULD a girl carry with her?


Whaddya do with the toddler not old enough to walk - make a portable playpen!

What to do with a Toilet Paper Roll

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Paper-cuts-Rolls/241623

Street of Houses

Quarter Scale Minis and Roomboxes -part 3

Fern Rouleau has come up with a wonderful way to display her 1:24 scale houses in her living room, behind the sofa, installing mirror tiles so they would reflect the inside of the homes. She and Bob plan to enclose the project in Plexiglass.

The Dog Days of Summer

Mary Kennerly writes in the Smallstuff digest:
I found some years-old dried material in the garage and took a picture, though it doesn't include all the species used for the flowers. I bought some of this stuff (most notably a thrift-store hearth-broom - it bleaches nicely and has lovely twisty stems), but generally I found raw materials from this time of year on into fall while dogwalking in vacant lots, along roadsides, and in neglected residential alleyways. The blossom shapes are mostly the calyxes that cupped the original flowers. The most delicate material was the awns of some cereal-type plant, plus some superthin stems of quaking-grass (the "flowers" are pale pink and stuck into one of those awns.

Those red tulips (for a change I tried to make tulipish leaves) came from a hairy, sticky, quite unlovable-looking weed. A more delicate species-tulip starts from another weed, nipplewort. And a head of garlic, or its ornamental garden allium cousins, is yet another source for deeply cupped shapes.

(Teazels are the armature for a couple of the standard plants, providing both the trunk and the head into which greenery is glued, instead of using a plastic ball. Globular seed-pods from the sweet-gum tree also have holes that can be used the same way.)

Once you have the dried stuff, making blossoms is pretty quick. Add stems; paint; and there you are. So very easy. I hope somebody is inspired to do a bit of neighborhood foraging.

In the snapshot of made-up flowers, on the left there's a bunch of orange-petaled flowers with dark-rimmed yellow centers. They're made from feverfew. But feverfew calyxes are even more realistic-looking with the stem clipped short and turned upside down. I seem not to have any on hand to photograph. Worth mentioning, I think, because feverfew, with its bright green foliage and its miniature daisy flowers, is nice to have in the real-life garden. One stem is like a whole bunch of flowers to tuck in a little pitcher.

Mary's album with more information:
http://s891.photobucket.com/albums/ac111/Lutherphotos/MINIS/

Ed. Note - Look for Queen Anne's lace, put a bouquet in a jar with water and food colouring of your choice, and the blossom will pick up the colour.