Murder in Miniature (23 page)

MINIATURE TIPS FOR FOUND OBJECTS

Your junk drawers, sewing baskets, and button jars are a treasure trove for dollhouses and miniature scenes.

• Look through your button jar for ones that can be furniture “feet,” bowls, lamp shades, a piece of sculpture, or artwork for a wall or curio cabinet.
  
• Rounded buttons can be used for drawer pulls on furniture or cabinets.
  
• Belt buckles or watchband buckles can be picture frames.
  
• Drinking straws can be cut for use as lamp bases, long or short. (Add a filigree for a fancy look.)
  
• Lose an earring or two? The other one in the pair can be used to trim miniature hats, purses, or other accessories.
  
• For that tiny scrap of fabric: Cut in a small circle and put over a cylindrical piece of wood, painted a food color. Add a string around the top and you have a jar of homemade preserves. Make several and line them up on a kitchen shelf.
  
• The small metal cap from a carbonated water or beer bottle is a perfect pie pan. Fill it with liquid fabric paint of a natural color and dot it with “blueberry” or a fruit color of choice. You can also leave a section empty, as if a slice has been removed, and paint “spilled” filling.
  
• Clear plastic caps that come with bottles of cold medicine, or on tops of sports drinks, are excellent wastebaskets. Paint them or use as is, and fill with scraps of paper. Vary the scraps: some can be wadded up, some flat; others newsprint or colored paper. Mark a few scraps to look like letters and envelopes.
  

MINIATURE TIPS FOR FOOD

• For spaghetti: Cut many pieces of heavy thread or thin string into various sizes. Arrange on a plate (any circular piece of heavy paper, cut to size, will do). Use paint or hairspray to hold pieces in place. Add pools of red fabric paint mixed with clear glue for tomato sauce. Meatballs are dabs of brown paint.
  
• Use the pits of “real” fruit for miniature fruit. A cherry pit painted the appropriate color can be an orange, a peach, or a plum.
  
• Use strong scissors to cut a red-and-white-striped paper clip, and you have a candy cane!
  
• That annoying Styrofoam packing can be crumbled to look like popcorn. Pile crumbs into a bowl made from a domed metal or plastic button. You can remove the button backing or simply cover it over with the “popcorn.”
  

MINIATURE TIPS FOR SHOWER CURTAINS

• For the curtain: Use thin plastic from a shower cap, a food storage bag, or a plastic bowl cover. Cut to size, and run through a glue bath (equal parts white craft glue and water). Manipulate the wet plastic to form appropriate draping (not sharp pleats). Allow to dry, then punch holes at the top of the piece, for inserting rings.
  
• Rings: For the rings that hold the curtain, start with old-fashioned pencil-tip erasers, which now come in a variety of colors. Snip a ring from the bottom (the part that fits over the pencil). You should be able to get three or four eighth-inch rings from one eraser. (Save the triangle-shaped tips to use as trees in an outdoor scene!) Cut a slit in the ring for inserting into the holes in the curtain. Glue the ends of the ring back together once they’re in the holes of the plastic curtain.
  
• You can also use small metal jewelry findings, but they’re harder to open and difficult to thread through the plastic holes.
  
• If the bowl cover or shower cap has no design, apply one with dabs of paint or tiny stickers.
  
• For a rod, use any dowel of the right diameter, or cut a drinking straw to fit.
  

MINIATURE TIPS FOR WINDOW SCENES

Location, location, location!

Move your dollhouse or room box to any location by adding a scene outside an already cutout window or by adding a “fake” window.

• If there is a cutout window, tape a postcard, a scene from a magazine, or your own drawing or photo to set your house or box wherever you choose. If the back is to be displayed, cover the entire section with a piece of felt.
  
• If there’s no cutout window, glue the scene over the kitchen sink, for example, or behind a sofa, and add curtains or drapes, giving the effect of a window where there is only solid wall.
  

GERALDINE’S EICHLER HOME

ABRAHAM LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL
MULTIPURPOSE ROOM
CRAFTS FAIR LAYOUT

CIVIC CENTER

LINCOLN POINT, CA