and two more dealers

Tina MacDonald, MiniMinutia: will be selling laser cut kits (in both 1:12 and 1:48), fabric, 1:48 building supplies and pottery. www.etsy.com/shop/miniminutia

Tina has been president of M.E.E. and is currently our workshop co-ordinator.

Barb Striethorst, Bits by Barb: will have flowers (kits and assembled), landscape items, German ornaments, pots, dishes, fruits and vegetables.

Barb teaches at least one workshop per year at the club.

Joanne and I met with the catering manager at the hotel today and it looks like everything is in place for September 15.

Dollhouse for sale on Kijiji

As a club, M.E.E. is often asked about selling dollhouses and other miniatures. We do have a committee which looks after such sales on a commission basis. 

Individual dollhouses, however, don't fall in that purview. But we make every effort to encourage and help sales of those dollhouses.

Accordingly, I'm sharing this Kijiji listing of a dollhouse with you.

https://www.kijiji.ca/v-hobbies-craft/edmonton/miniature-doll-house-for-sale-partially-built-unfinished/1455424469?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

Miniature Doll House for Sale - partially built/unfinished 1 inch to 1 foot scale The Base measures 21 inches by 32 inches and the height of the house is 37 inches. The House has been partially finished and needs some tender loving care to complete Includes extra doors and windows which are not installed Asking price $150 obo The house has been wired for electricity. The rear of the house can be removed for access to the interior as well as the front Serious buyers only

From the pictures, I'm very impressed. It's great that is has been tape wired.

Please share this with anyone you think might be interested.

Dealers of the Day

Judy Mitchell (Wee Dreams and Cobwebs)

Judy wrote on her dealer application that she sells 1" scale dollhouse miniature accessories. That's true but it doesn't begin to describe her wares. They're the little pieces that can perfectly complete a scene...sewing baskets, baby layettes, etc. Last year, she had some wonderful witches' hats! And some lovely crocheted Christmas wreathes.

These are a few of Judy's things from my stash.

From left: a bathroom corner cabinet with someone just out of the bath; a basket of valentine suckers or cookies; a tealight with a little house scene on top (looks wonderful lit up) a little girl carrying a doll.

Hoanie Yong (Live a Little Miniatures)

Electrified chandeliers and various other light fixtures. And NEW this year, genuine leather handbags and purses.

This is the chandelier I bought from Hoanie.

Faux books. Adding to my stash!?!?

What the heck am I thinking?

Awhile back, I think I mentioned that I had cleaned out the bookshelves  in my bedroom (got down to one). Many went to our building's library and some to the Put and Take. Some were so old that there was no place to put them so I tore off the covers, put the pages in recycling and used the covers to make faux books.

Thank you, Dick Tabor, for giving me this idea.

Here are some of the book covers...

This is the edge of one of the covers:

And here I have put my ruler about 1/2" from the edge:

I've used my utility knife to cut that off:

Then I used my Easy-Cutter to clip off the edge of that piece:

And used the Easy-Cutter to clip off 5/8" to  3/4" pieces from the remaining strip.

This is a collection of the "books" I cut:

And now here are some of them on a bookshelf!

Being the avid reader that I am,  I want LOTS of books in my scenes.  This "trick" from Dick enables me to have lots of faux books in shelves.

I can still have some of my own printable books  plus some others from Barbara Brear in South Africa and some from LeeAnn Borgia.

I love my books!

Two more dealers

Those of you who are regulars at our Show and Sale will be pleased to know that internationally renowned Janice Crawley, I.G.M.A. fellow in ceramics, is back again this year. Her tea sets, novelty tea pots, dishes and tiny dolls are so dainty and lovely that they are very popular with our customers.

For a peak at some of her work, you can check out SP Miniatures.

Sherri MacRaild, I.G.M.A. artisan, is back for her sixth year as a dealer. She has toys, seasonal decorations (with a twist), Noah's arks, candy buckets for all seasons and plants in unique pots.Sherri has a Pinterest page.

 I'm looking forward to seeing what she has to offer this year.

Two new dealers from Ontario

Kim Stewart, an I.G.M.A. artisan in Furniture/Wicker, will be here with her wicker furniture, kits and supplies. You can see pictures from one of her classes at Guild School here.

Janet Harvie of Maggie Melinda Custom Miniatures with her 1:12 furniture, draperies and accessories. She does lovely work and I'm fortunate to have some of her furniture pieces.

The red couch and chair in the music room in my DBIL Grahame's memory were made by Janet.

Kim will be teaching a wicker trunk class on Friday, September 13, and Janet will be teaching us to dress a bed on Saturday, September 14.

Stay tuned. We have more great dealers coming.

We had 21 dealers last year and this year, we have 22 so far.

And we will have the children's make and take table and the club grab bags.

Our Show and Sale....just a teaser!

MINIATURE ENTHUSIASTS OF EDMONTON CLUB invites you to take part in their

23rd ANNUAL FALL SHOW & SALE

Sunday, September 15, 2019

10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Trademark by Wyndham Hotels

(Formerly theExecutive Royal Inn)

10010 – 178 Street

Edmonton, Alberta

T5S 1T3

Please note: Only the name of the venue has changed. The location is the same.

Even though Victoria Miniland and Another World Miniatures will no be here this year, it will still be the wonderful Show and Sale that you remember.

We have eight new dealers! AND the same number of dealers that we had last year!

More info tomorrow!

WORST NIGHTMARE....bright spots in day...Show and Sale

I logged into my computer this afternoon (Wednesday) and got the message "updating Microsoft". 

Okay...but when I looked for the file I needed to update - it wasn't there! None of my files, pictures or bookmarks were there. Major panic attack!

I did manage to enter and print out a file I needed for my Condo Board meeting tonight but couldn't even save it to where it needed to be.

However (thank God), when I rebooted the computer after the Board meeting, all was where it should be. So I could breath again!

Earlier in the day, however, Barb (upstairs) had asked me to join her and Bev (our newsletter lady) to mini with them. 

Just as I was planning to leave, I had a call from neighbours who needed to give me a cheque for the guest suite. When they came, they spent close to an hour checking out my miniatures. They plan on coming back later to take a closer look. I love showing my minis off and they certainly enjoyed seeing them but knew they would need much more time to really enjoy them.

As I was so late getting upstairs, I didn't take any mini work with me. Barb was working on a lovely flower and Bev was working on her cabin from the quarter scale class that Tina had taught some time ago. 

Lots of mini (and otherwise) discussion.

(Later)
Once I got the computer going again, I spent some time trying to confirm dealers for our Show and Sale in September.

I think I checked with everyone but if you would be interested in being a dealer or know anyone who might be, please email me  
We need to know by this weekend although the paperwork doesn't have to be in for a couple weeks.

The mantle

Thanks, Sheila, for the great suggestions. I even have some small geodes that I thought might work.

BUT when I woke up yesterday morning, it came to me! I had already thought of tucking a small picture of mom, my sisters and me in the room box so I decided to put a 4" x 6" picture of the five of us on the back of the roombox with a thank you note for all Mirabel's caring and I will miniaturize that and put it on the mantle.

Great progress with Mirabel's roombox

Got a great spurt of energy and ideas going...

Cannot get a good picture of the salad bowl that shows its iridescence. Trimmed it with a strip of silver (really) that was in my stash. This is wider than the fingernail tape that Leanne gave me.

Mixed some of the salad greens with  a clear glue that I found at Dollarama then put it in the salad bowl. (A friend also told me that he used hair spray to keep salad in place in salad bowls in a scene I had given him and his wife.)

Then I stained the ends of two tooled end toothpicks...

Clipped them off...

And stuck them in the salad as servers ...

There is it at the upper left hand side of the table.

Found this pair of running shoes in my stash and will use them by the couch. The book 'Alice in Wonderland' will be put in temporarily - not sure it's what I want but it's one of the few readable books I have available right now.

So this is what it looked like...

Then I switched the brass tall clock with the cloisonne vase...

The clock actually works - or would if I could find a replacement battery for it.

Still want to add something to the fireplace mantle between the candlesticks but don't know what!

It's coming together but it's not quite what I want it to be so I think I need to leave it for awhile and take another look at it later.

Got a little (very little) done

I sat down in front of the TV and didn't want to start another book so I got out two shoeboxes of accessories to bag and sort. To my delight, almost everything was already bagged so I managed to get everything in one shoebox. I'll wait to put them on the bulletin boards as the easiest way to do that is to put all the bulletin boards in the living/dining room and that's a big job.

With that out of the way, I decided to make the grate for the fireplace in Mirabel's roombox. I thought I had one in my grate but couldn't find it if it's there.

So I decided to use this modeling metal mesh (from Dollarama years ago). It's lightweight and can be cut with scissors.

I cut a rectangle to fit the fireplace and folded it up front and back.

I ccut a second piece slightly smaller than the first and coloured them both with a black marker. It's thin enough that the marker filled in all the nooks and crannies.

Folded the second, smaller piece then glued it with Gorilla glue gel to the bottom of the original piece.

Put the grate in place in the fireplace and added some logs.

The book covers

I was tidying up my desk today and found the originator of the book covers that I showed on Friday, August 2.

Thank you very much to Patricia Paul who shared the book covers and accompanying tutorial on her blog.

Patricia is an IGMA Fellow who makes wonderful quirky miniatures. You can find her blog at
https://www.patriciapaulstudio.com/blog/im-not-addicted-to-miniatures-miniatures-are-addicted-to-me

Making your own 'vinyl' flooring

This is the flooring I have in the bathroom of my Bombay house.

It is simply customized graph paper from this website printed on photo paper.

Start at https://incompetech.com/graphpaper/ There are lots of choices and you may want to go through it and just play with it.

I can't remember offhand how I made the one above so I'll walk you through making a octagonal one.

On the home page, scroll down to Patterns and click on Octagonal.

I left line thickness at .7 points

Changed the octagon size to .5 inches

Color: clicked on Green

Clicked on the size and customized it to 8 x 10 inches for the photo size and asked for a margin of .3 inches.

Then clicked on Download PDF.

And when that came up, I printed it.

Have to admit that I couldn't find any of my 8 x 10 photo paper so I just printed it on 8 1/2 x 11 printer paper so I could show you how it turned out.

Actually, if you're experimenting, this is probably the smartest thing to do until you get exactly what you're looking for.

I think maybe I should have tried the line thickness at 1.0 points.

Give it a try and see what you can come up with! I think it's a lot of fun.

Incredible eye candy

Joanne came over for a quick visit and got a bead she needed for a current project.

Then we got talking about a laundry room she had planned and I told her to check out the basement in Fay Zerbolio's dollhouse.

I could not believe I had never told her about Fay's miniatures. Especially since it is one of the websites that I recommend to Leo Nickerson Elementary students when we go there every fall.

Please make your day by checking out her website!

Got a bit side-tracked (what else is new?) LOL

I'm trying to tidy up around the house, including the desk in my workroom. I came across these three items printed on photo paper and decided to cut them out and put them on my bulletin boards rather than simply shuffle them to the "deal with it later" pile.

The first two sheets were photocopies from Miniature Collector Magazine of 1" scale MC and 18 other magazines that Scott Publications published. Cut them out and saved them for future use. These used to be available online but since Scott Publications ceased publishing they are no longer available there. However, you can find them in old issues of Miniature Collector.

I am now committing a cardinal sin of bloggers. A blogger made these book covers available online and I have to admit that I cannot be certain who she was. If you know, please tell me and I will most certainly give her credit.

I printed three copies on photo paper and cut out the 38 individual book covers (lower right). Took one hour!  And that was just the covers! Will save them for later to actually make them into books. In the meantime, have cut the large sheets down (upper right) so they will fit easily on my books/magazines bulletin board.