What was I thinking?

After dinner, Joanne wanted to stop at Rona and Home Depot to see if she could find some Minwax Wood Hardener  Some quarter-scalers recommend using it to coat and strengthen the small kit pieces in laser cut kits before removing them from the sheets. In a review of it, it's also suggested that it can be used to strengthen card stock.

We didn't find the wood hardener but while we were in Home Depot I took the opportunity to buy a sheet of builders foam (rigid insulation). It's easily cut, carved and painted. The castle project at Camp Mini Ha Ha was made from it (sorry, no pictures). Miniland in Victoria has a tutorial on making stone steps from it. I've always wanted to try it - think it will be make great stone walls for my planned Secret Garden.

That project has been on my list for several years and maybe now I'll get around to tackling it. VBG

The 4' x 8' x 1" sheet was just under $16 and store staff cut it in half for me so it could be easily transported.

Barb R. came downstairs yesterday to return a year of Nutshell News and pick up another year. We discussed her plans for her Christmas house and I told her about the dollhouse miniatures Wiki and told her I would send her a link to the Christmas section which should give her more ideas than she'll know what to do with.

Somehow the conversation got around to my oriental room.

A couple of years ago, Cheryl H. and I headed off to Calgary for a mini-weekend with friends. We got caught in a terrible traffic jam just outside Red Deer. It took us over 2 hours to get to Bowden (normally a half hour drive) so we decided to spend the night in Bowden and resume our trip in the morning. After breakfast on Saturday, we spotted a sign for a community garage sale. We found some great things at rock-bottom prices! My deal of the day was a fibre optic lamp for, IIRC, $1.50. I knew it would be perfect for an oriental scene of some sort.

Well, you know how these things go. Suddenly I had a shoe box full of "possibles" - way more than could possibly fit in the space I had. LOL!

But I really still wanted to use the lamp! So I sorted through the box and found three black lacquer pieces I had bought at the garage sale of Joyce Buchanan's, a round oriental look rug that Sue in Calgary had given me, and a few other pieces and put together this little scene.

Very simple but think it will be a good example of using unusual containers to house minis.

So that's one exhibit ready for the Show and Sale on Sunday!