Ghosts: An effective way (and kind of cool) to make ghosts is to take a picture of someone or a pet and take it to your local copier place. Get them to photocopy it onto a fairly stiff clear plastic sheet. It's totally see through and sort of faded out. Glue a clear plastic base under it so it'll stand in the middle of a room or by a window and it looks pretty nifty.

Debi Kolenchuk in Quesnel

Ghosts: Take a needle pin and drape some glow-in-the-dark Fimo around it. Add black eyes and an ugly mouth and there is ghost. You can also drape some tissue around the pin and dab it into glow-in-the-dark paint. Another idea: take a very thin plastic bag and make see-through-ghosts!

Marjon de Haas in The Netherlands

Wood shavings tip: What I did was to create a fairy dwelling. I started with a small balloon. I covered it with kite string fairly heavily. Then I coated it with Elmers glue and let dry. I popped the balloon and disposed of it. I cut a hole in the ball of stiff cord for an opening and glued it down to a piece of oddly cut foamcore board. I then used the wood shavings in their natural state as a covering. I used some green and brown mosses as well. I covered the foam board with moss also. Then I decorated the inside with found things to furnish it. Finally, I turned a keychain Barbie into a fairy and it was complete. It was a fun and very easy project and the person I made it for loves it.

Dottie in Florida

Fairy Dolls: go to http://msatminidolls.minilists.com/projects.html for some great step-by-step instructions on several different fairy dolls (you can order body kits), as well as some other great projects.

Also, the Frills & Fancy newsletter at http://www.miniatureart.com/ has some great stuff. They also sell dollmaking supplies and kits for the dolls at the first site above.

Graceanne

Directions on how to make a mini-crashing witch: Inspired by the real-sized crashing witches seen locally as Halloween decor, I made one in 1" scale. I am assuming that you want this to look like a witch outdoor decoration. If you want her to be a REAL witch, make her cape of cloth instead of plastic.

You need:
1 mini straw broom (or make one from a twig with raffia)
a bit of fluffy stuff for hair (unraveled Bunka, yarn, whatever)
mini-sized doll with moveable (or amputateable) arms & legs with feet with shoes (I used a small $1. plastic bendable witch from Meijier's and painted the hands a nasty greenish color. You could model them from Fimo instead or use a cheap small doll.)
Black plastic garbage bag or black cloth
mini witch hat
several inch piece of thin black ribbon or thread

Arrange the witch figure so that her arms are extended straight out to the sides from her shoulders. You may need to dismember and duct tape them back on. Only her hands and lower legs & feet will show. Arrange her feet & legs so they are extended as far apart straight out as possible. You can paint on striped hose if you want. Glue on fluffy hair, and glue on witch hat over hair.

Glue her sitting on the broom so that the broom straw is sticking out from her backside and the end of the broom handle is flush with the front of her crotch. You may need to cut off part of the broom handle so it is not too long. Cut out a cape with a stand-up collar from the garbage bag. ( Size depends on the figure. I cut out a 4" square, then notched in the top a bit for the collar. You want the cape to cover all but her hands and lower legs/feet. ) Tie the cape around her neck just below the collar, using a piece of thin black ribbon or thread. Cut jagged pieces from the sides & bottom of cape, so it looks ragged. Push up cape a bit in the middle so the broom straw sticks out. Glue cape in a few spots to hold in place. Voila! You can fun-tack (the plastic squishy adhesive stuff) her front flat to your house, building, etc. Or, wrap her arms & legs around a tree trunk. Her face should not show. You should be able to see only the back of her head, wearing the hat, plus the cape with her hands & feet sticking out in a X shape, like she crashed into the house in midair while distracted. I did a life-sized "Harry Potter" style crashing witch for my friends' excellent Murder Mystery Book Store and a popular little touch was the cell phone clutched in her cold, dead hand.

Terri Rowe

Polymer fairy instructions: Sue Heaser has a great little fairy to make step by step:
http://www0.delphi.com/polymerclay/PCC/suefairy.html

Marilyn, Mini-ing in RV

I have a step by step how-to on making a sleeping baby fairy on my site. http://gerdesdesign.com/northwest.htm It was also in Dolls in Miniature a few years ago, and Viola Williams may have a back issue available.

I also made some elves following the basic methods of Maureen Carlson from her excellent book, recently mentioned here, "How to Make Clay Characters". Just made the ears pointy, skin green, and gave him an acorn top cap: no longer human, now an elf! There are pictures of my elves too, if you go to the URL above.

Anne

Kitchen cabinets are basically boxes, often with a face frame (somewhat like a picture frame), shelves or drawers inside of them and possibly a door. On the wider cabinets two doors. The current standards for kitchen cabinets work out easily for making them in miniature. A base cabinet is 2 feet deep by 3 feet high in a real kitchen, so in miniature that is 2 inches deep front to back including the face frame and 3 inches high. The width of a cabinet varies depending on its use, but generally they are created in widths of 12", 18", 24" 30" and 36". However, all kinds of odd sizes do get made for custom applications.

Filler strips generally take up any kind of odd inches left over at the start or end of cabinet rows. In miniature you are looking at cabinets that are widths of 1", 1.5", 2", 2.5" and 3". This is pretty easy math for designing, which is why cabinets have standards in these even increments. The upper cabinets are 1 foot deep, including the face frame, so in miniature the depth front to back is 1 inch. Upper cabinets are placed 18 inches above the countertop in a real house, so that is 1.5" in a dollhouse in 1:12. The width of the upper cabinets are found in the same size ranges as the lower cabinets. The height of the cabinets is going to vary depending on your dollhouse ceiling and if you are making short cabinets such as above a refrigerator or normal height cabinets and if you want the cabinets to reach all the way to the ceiling. That is where you need to use your best judgment as to how tall to make them.

The face frame on the front of a cabinet is usually made up of pieces that are 1.5" wide on a full size cabinet with a 3 inch dividing piece in the center on a two door cabinet. In 1:12 scale that makes the pieces .125" wide (1/8") and the center piece is .250" (1/4"). Full size cabinets are constructed using 3/4" plywood. In miniature that thickness is .0625" (1/16th"). With this information you should be able to design your own cabinets on a piece of graph paper and not have to worry about confusing measurement instructions, except for referring to the pictures to see how they go about cutting and making them in the article.

There are design decisions to be made about the cabinet doors and drawers as in a real kitchen. Will they be flat panel, raised panel or just a flat slab doors? They might be inset flush inside of your face frame, this style is more typical of old houses or they could overlap the face frame in some fashion as on a more modern house from about the 1940s and onward. The most modern styles have no face frame at all which is another design consideration. Modern cabinets have a toe kick area. This is a slight recess under the main body of the cabinet at the front edge to make it easier to get in closer to the countertop. It also prevents marring on the cabinet bottom. Cabinets in older homes usually did not have this recess, but it was occasionally found.

Cutting with a table saw advice: Saw tooth set -- This refers to how the cutting teeth on the table saw are designed. A slitting saw has all the teeth the same width as the main body of the saw blade. Most other saw blade types have teeth that project out in some type of arrangement from the main body of the saw blade. There are all kinds of arrangements and number of teeth depending on the material the saw blade is designed to cut and also if the blade is meant for ripping material the long ways with the grain or cutting across the grain. When setting up your saw to cut to a particular width, sometimes you cut in pieces to width in the area between the saw blade and the fence. For those you measure the distance between the inside of the edge of the closest tooth on the saw blade and the fence to make your setting. Look closely to find the widest tooth, as some teeth may project more than others, that blade depending on your saw blade's design. Sometimes you make cuts that require you to measure the distance to the outside edge of the widest tooth on the side of the saw blade furthest from the fence. In other words in your math calculations you have to account for the width of the saw blade itself on setting up for some types of cuts. In a situation where you are cutting a rabbet or dado, you need to account for the width of the saw blade itself. If you wanted to cut a channel (dado) for a piece of
wood that is 1/16th thick to fit snugly into, you will need a saw blade no wider than 1/16th and depending on its width you might need to make more than one pass. Therefore you will have to make two calculations. One involves measuring to the side of the saw blade the farthest away from the
fence and the other one requires you to measure to the side closest to the fence to create a channel of the proper size.

Karin Corbin - 17 May 2004

For neon looking lights without actually using electrical lights you can create the sign using fluorescent, Day-Glo colored monofilament line. Two sources I know of for this material of various thickness are weed-whacker trimmer line and fly fishing supply shops. I have seen the trimmer line in transparent, fluorescent, colors of orange, yellow, red and green at various hardware and home center stores.
Using a hair dryer or heat gun will help soften the line enough to form it into tighter curves.

If you wanted to try lighting these pieces you could try an experiment and see if it is possible to polish the end of the monofilament line and use a light against that end as a light tube similar to side emitting fiber optic lighting. An ultra bright LED light would probably make a light source that is cool enough to use in a dollhouse without over heating the dollhouse or the plastic line. LED lights are made for DC voltage so you will need to use a battery pack or put a rectifier into your 12 volt AC dollhouse lighting system to provide the correct current for the LED. Ultra bright LEDs are available from a number of sources including Radio Shack. They come in various voltage ratings. LEDs come in a range of colors, blue, yellow, red, white, green and orange are some of the ones I know about. There are some LEDs that are multicolor. Now that would be an interesting thing to rig up as an alternating colored flashing Neon Sign made from side emitting fiber optic materials. The problem is that fiber optic line does not like to be bent into a tight radius so it would be hard to pull it off for miniature lettering.

Karin Corbin - 25 May 2004

There are three ways to simulate neon that I know of. One is to use the edge lighting techniques frequently seen on the "today's special" signs in luncheon restaurants. A number of regular light bulbs are edge set into Plexiglass or Lucite panels (somewhere out of sight under a frame or such). Drill edge hole to just fit the bulbs and distribute along the perimeter. "Draw" your neon tubing onto the Lucite panel with the markers made for that purpose. Works best if the panel is backed in black. I built a 50's diner rooftop sign with this system. Took some experimenting but came out very convincing in a low light environment.

System two uses light tubing similar to fiber optics and available through fiber optics suppliers. I did a theatre marquee with this stuff in 1/4 inch scale and worked wonderfully, though the source light has to be VERY bright and well concealed, but with ventilation for cooling.

The least effective is to paint the tubing with "neon" paint or markers inset into your piece and illuminate it with focused, concealed lights. I did a gas station clock this way in 1" scale. It suggested the idea but not well enough to market.

Mel K. - 25 May 2004