This is my first attempt at printables so they may not be perfect but I think they'll work - they did on my printer. What you'll find is some sheet music for piano. One or two of the pieces had color covers but most of them are ivory and black in "real life" so they work fine on a black ink printer and I hope they work okay on a color printer. I have a lot of other music - more piano, some clarinet and piano and some violin and piano. So if there's any interest in these, let me know and I'll add some more. Hope you enjoy them and to get to them just click here
Miniature Needlepoint at About.com
HAR Ranch Miniature Project Index Ann Fisher's Art Works Minicraft Tools Abigail's Fantasy Earth 'n Tree Shaker Works West Danish Woodworks Private Collection Miniatures Out of Africa
This site has lots of good stuff and some of the most wonderful ceramics I've seen! I've been thinking about a teapot collection, and I think this is where it will start. And the Faberge egg...fantastic!
The English Kitchen
You know, I'm wondering what it means that so many of my favorite links have to do with food! But here's another one with absolutely delicious and beautiful "cuisine". If you're hungry, better not go here. :)
Currently, this site does not seem to have a manager, but Janet Perry, the past manager, set up a vast resource center for needleworkers. You will find all sorts of information, tips, patterns, needlework site links, etc., at About.com, so if stitchin's your thing, settle in for a long visit!
This is a site I discovered through eBay. They specialize in miniatures for horses, tackle and things like that. I know nothing about horses so I can't really tell you about it but if you're looking for horse "stuff" you may want to check it out. If you visit their site, scroll to the bottom to find the link to their minis. They also sell some 1" scale and 1/2" scale wicker furniture - I've ordered a piece of 1/2" so will soon have a good idea of the quality.
Here's a neat link from NAME (National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts) - this is a search mechanism for finding articles in all the main magazines going back quite a ways. For instance, I just went and did a search to see where I might find an article on making a breakaway box, and back it came...Dollhouse Miniatures, April, 1998. Really a wonderful resource when you're desperately searching for help or ideas on something.
Art Works is an appropriate name for Ann's Fimo items. I listed this site right after my two oriental sites because Ann has a shrimp stir-fry that is out of this world! Then comes the bread-making counter with a bowl of puffed up dough, a little muffin tin filled with clover leaf rolls, etc., and then a gorgeous picnic basket with French bread, fresh fruit...umm, umm! She also has a collection of Fimo Raggedy Anns and Andys that are extremely well done.
This is the page for those power tools that operate on transformers - mini table saws, drills, sanders, etc. I haven't ever tried these tools myself, but I'm very tempted.
This is Dorothy Haw's site. She is an IGMA fellow and offers very special little folk, handpainted furniture, doll kits, and other lovely "must haves". And, there are pictures of "The Borrowers' Fairy House" - I'm proud to say my cross stitch wedding sampler is in there someplace!
This is the web site for a dollhouse store that's a dollhouse store! They have kits for dollhouses that are different from any I've seen. I believe these are their own designs and they are beautiful - all different styles and periods. These go beyond RGT, Walmer, etc. If you love to build, visit this site.
Ken Byers, an IGMA artisan, shares with us a large collection of furniture, mostly authentic Shaker pieces, that are very fine.
Lars Mikkelsen uses beautiful and rare woods to create the most fantastic turned vases and bowls! Some are so thin they're translucent! Mr. Mikkelsen is an IGMA artisian.
This is Renee Kutcher's site. Renee is also an IGMA artisan with a beautiful line of laser-cut, hand-finished wood floors and faux finish marble tile floors.
These are probably all fairly obvious ideas, but whenever I'm working on something I think to myself, "oh, I should post that as a tip to my newsgroup" and then, of course, I never do. So, now when I do something and think that, I'll just add it to this list.
I discovered when I was installing the windows in my last house that a little piece of baseboard molding (the kind with the shoe molding attached, not the straight down to the floor kind) makes a perfect window sill if you use it upside down. Just cut it long enough to extend maybe 1/16 of an inch or so beyond each side of your window casings. The shoe part is the sill, and the baseboard part is the strip of molding below the sill (the apron, I think). I think it really looks nice and it's so simple!
I like to keep a 1-1/2" or 2" regular paint brush handy (the nice soft kind that you use to paint your real house's woodwork). I find it's great for dusting pieces of trim, etc., after I've sanded them, it's great for dusting out the floors of your dollhouse as you work on it, and when I'm covering a really big surface with glue (like a floor), it's great for that too.
Speaking of spreading glue, if I want to spread a stiff glue (like Aleene's Tacky) over a large surface, I drizzle it around all over and then take a small piece of scrap wood and spread the glue with that. Much faster and neater than a brush.
Another "housecleaning" method I use to pick up miniature dirt is just wrap some masking tape around your fingers and pat it around over the dirt.
I may be the only person in the world to do this, but I finally quit using Quik Grab glue for my clapboard siding. It is really great as far as sticking right away, but I always found it really difficult to work with and I could never get it close enough to the edges and my overlapped seams never stuck as good as I wanted them to. On my last house, I cut all my pieces of clapboard for one side of the building, stacked them all up in the order I would put them on, and then spread Elmer's wood glue all over about the first half of that side. I placed my pieces of siding down, spread glue over the rest of the wall, and laid the rest of the pieces down. I used masking tape at the edges to hold the pieces from shifting apart, etc., and then put a flat piece of scrap lumber across the whole thing and weighted it down. It worked beautifully! You do have to wait until one side is dry before moving on to the next side, but I've always got something else to fiddle with.
If you're not a cross stitcher, you don't need to read this. If you are, here's a couple hints in that area. If you're making your own frames, always make the frame first (after measuring the finished needlework to see how big you want the frame to be). Then after the frame is completed, measure the inside dimensions and cut your fabric and mounting board to fit that. A couple of my first tries were done trying to make a frame to fit the already-cut fabric and that is much, much harder! Also, when I'm mounting my finished picture to a piece of posterboard, I use a glue stick. It holds well and there is no fear at all of it coming through to the surface. Then after I've got the picture mounted and in the frame, I rub the glue stick all over the back of the frame and the posterboard that's in the frame and turn the whole thing over onto a piece of thin brown paper (like a lunch sack). I rub and rub to make sure the paper is stuck down well all around, then let it dry and carefully cut off the excess paper with my craft knife. Another thing I've learned after much stitching and ripping - when you're selecting colors for a miniature cross stitch, always test each of them in a little block on the fabric you're going to use. I've discovered that the lighter colors have a tendency to disappear in miniature cross stitch (particularly yellows) and you need to use what may seem like a really bright shade to get it to show.
Click here to learn "everything I know about working with fabrics and always wanted to tell somebody". It's all black and white with no graphics so you may print it out for future, personal, reference.
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