A wonderful Sunday visit

Last week, Barbara W. invited Joanne and me to meet for coffee at this wonderful new pastry shop/restaurant on St. Thomas Street.

Well, we met on Sunday morning and had a wonderfully delightful visit. Joanne took her latest 1/4 scale scene for us both to admire and Barbara had some wonderful goodies for us.

Barbara gave each of two of these wonderful little stands with domed covers. Total height is 3" and the base of the dome is 2 1/4" in diameter.

I immediately thought of the little brass trees that DS Marie gave me last year. (Think I have a half dozen of them in my stash along with a lot of other brass miniatures - including a partial fireplace tool set I can use in Mirabel's roombox. But more on that later.)

The tree was too tall so I clipped off the original stand...

Cut off 1/4" from a 1/4" square piece of strip wood...

Started a hole with a pushpin then added it to the bottom of the tree.

I painted the new tree stand with red nail polish. And also cut several other pieces from three sizes of strip wood.

I got out my puff paint to put 'ornaments' on the tree.

And I pulled out several pieces of coloured foil from my stash. Most of them are from Hershey's Kisses and other candies.

 I painted two of the pieces of strip wood with silver and green nail polish. I then 'decorated' the  tree with bits of red and green puff paint. Glued the tree to the middle of the stand.

I trimmed a piece of foil and coated the underside of it with glue then wrapped it around the piece of wood. I used the end of a toothpick to make the folds in the foil.

And here is the first package.

Repeated the procedure with another piece of foil and wood.

Here are the gifts around the bottom of the tree.

And with the dome in place.

Barbara also gave us each a set of these books she had made.

All three of us are avid readers so the conversation lead to sources of printed books and we discussed several websites.

Ann Vanture's http://www.paperminis.com/ Free newsletter and complimentary projects available.

Lee Ann Borgia's great books. https://minibooksleeann.blogspot.com/

Barbara Brear's incredible books http://bbminiatures.homestead.com/ Barbara also has some great tips in the section about her dollhouse.

And one of my all-time favourites https://www.wannainelpaso.com/ Wanna is a consummate story teller and miniaturist. She has tutorials and trash to treasure also. My favourite of her stories is https://www.wannainelpaso.com/fantasy/the_pigness_protection_program.shtml You will need a big, big chunk of time to look at the website.

And, of course, the Small Stuff (formerly Jim Collins) pages and pages of printable minis.