2014 Tony Award winning Musical, this years feature for Broadway night.

The 35 Give-Aways are being packaged up and there is a list for when and where those will be awarded to show attendees. There is a growing list of fun and intriguing questions that will reveal how much the Anniversary Dinner guests know about the Guild-participation is not mandatory, but there will be prizes! There is a list of items to be packed into dealer goodie bags-we do like to be known as a friendly show, and of course, there is a very long list of things still remaining to be done before heading out that door.

Lest we haven’t stated it often enough, there is a roster of wonderful classes taking place Thursday and Friday before the show, many still have space available. You can join the theater group going on the Broadway Night excursion Thursday evening, they’ll be seeing ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder’, this year’s Tony award winning musical, and will enjoy dinner at La Trattoria Trecolori beforehand. Mike Barbour will be taking a group into town Friday morning for a romp through the garment district-fabric and trim stores galore! And if none of that appeals to you, there is a list on the website of other events and nearby destinations varied enough to suit anyone and everyone’s interests. Friday evening the Gathering of the Guild features artists demonstrating various aspects of their craft at tables along one side of the Grand Concourse, and along the other is an eye-popping and possibly diet-busting FREE buffet of desserts and crudités.

A scale model of the Cutty Sark created by Ron Stetkewicz, Sr., will be on display, along with several other model ships, in the exhibit at the 35th Anniversary Guild Show.

Saturday the main event-the 35th Anniversary Guild Show opens its doors to IGMA members at 9 a.m. and to the General Public at 10 a.m. Dealers, and shoppers, will be attending from around the world and many treasures await discovery. The Small Beginnings sales area hold treasures for the younger collectors and their limited budgets while outside the salesroom doors silent auctions held during during show hours provide yet one more shopping opportunity.

After the show on Saturday comes the big Anniversary Party, beginning with a cocktail hour, cash bar, and an abbreviated live auction featuring items that represent people and programs from Guild history. Will you find something here by which you’ll remember this momentous occasion? Dinner follows with delectable carving and buffet-style stations from which to fill your dinner plates. More prizes and fun remembrances from our past will wrap up the festivities and a great time is virtually guaranteed.

The show winds down on Sunday, still with significant events to attract and welcome first time and returning attendees. Free crafting projects will be taking place in the Grand Concourse from noon to 2:30 p.m., with a variety of projects for a variety of skills; from the ultra-simple-punch and shape paper plates in 1/12 scale, to more complex-assemble one of the Chrysnbon kits that a generous donor provided for this event.

Directions to the show hotel can be found on the website along with a link to our special room rates. Our block of rooms is only guaranteed until July 22, so don’t waste any time making your reservations. Once the rooms are released, the price can fluctuate widely.

And there you have it, a very long list of events for a very fun weekend. We sure hope to see you there!

Basics of Basketmaking taught by Kazuko Nakamura.

One of the things the Guild does especially well, is to provide educational opportunities for its members, and for miniature lovers everywhere. We’re celebrating 35 years as an organization with a host of festivities at the Guild Show this year, and as part of that celebration there will be many educational opportunities, from classes to demonstrations to a make and take opportunity during the show on Sunday.

Angled fireplace in corner room box class by Peter Kendall.

Pre-show classes will begin on Wednesday, August 6 with a 2 1/2 day room box class taught by Peter Kendall, a Fellow member of the Guild and a master teacher of that genre. Thursday and Friday the roster of classes increases exponentially with equally talented IGMA teachers and includes an expedition into New York City to trawl amongst the fabric and trimming shops of the garment district, discovering treasures galore for your current and future projects.

Georgian-style music stand taught by Bill Studebaker.

If a structured class is not on your agenda, be sure to join us after dinner on Friday night, August 8th, for the annual Gathering of the Guild. The Gathering has evolved over the last couple of years into a festive evening, now knows as Desserts and Demonstrations. The Desserts are set up on one wall, and the demonstrations are opposite them so you can enjoy a bite, have a seat and talk with friends, or gather round the demonstration tables and learn about new tools and new techniques that will provide a whole new approach for your next miniature project.

Lastly, but not least…during the show on Sunday, we are in the midst of organizing a make and take project, or projects, to encourage miniaturists of all ages to come and check out the fun.

The Charlton Coffeehouse in Colonial Willilamsburg, recent inspiration for a study program project and fascinating historic building to explore.

Working both sides of the miniatures hobby, as I am frequently doing, I have just returned from teaching at the Guild Study Program in Williamsburg, Virginia. While many of the IGMA Study Programs are held in locations around the country, this one has been held annually in Colonial Williamsburg  since about 1995. There have been so many really neat projects offered here that I have almost gone as

The barrister’s wig box and wig that was the inspiration for one of the class projects this year. It was brought out of storage during the museum tour for students to view.

a student many, many times, but, I’m in the same boat as many others, I just can’t afford to do everything I’d like to, so when the opportunity came up to teach there, I happily took it.

This year there were 4 classes offered,  35 students divided among them, a handful of guests to round out the group and, just as at Guild School in Castine, a gathering of miniaturists is a really fun event!

The wig box class hard at work with the wool roving from which the wigs were made.

There was a museum tour to examine some really wonderful examples of early American furniture, lots of great food, good shopping and plenty of other things to explore and enjoy.

Next year the Colonial Williamsburg

Mornings started out a little chilly, but that didn’t stop these herbs under their protective glass cloches in the colonial garden.

Study Program will offer classes by Pete and Pam Boorum, Bill Studebaker, Phyllis Hawkes and Pat Richards, yes, I’m lucky enough to be invited back for a second year in a row! Projects are as yet, not firmly decided upon, the Boorums have tentatively selected a ladderback chair and Bill Studebaker thinks a spinet might be a nice challenge. More information will be posted on the IGMA website later in the year.

The next study opportunity with the Guild will be the classes on offer in the 3 days prior to the Kensington Dollshouse Show in London, England. The next Study Program will be held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire at the Strawbery Banke Historic Museum in September. More information on that program will be found on the IGMA website when it is available.

Miniature Christmas scene with brush trees.

This year I’ve been noticing a proliferation of tiny paper houses designed for miniature holiday displays. They look really neat on miniature mantels or under a miniature tree. There have also been

Brush trees atop a 1/12 scale toy piano made by Tracey Meeker.

discussions about where to get, or how to make tiny trees with which to landscape those displays. Sometimes you can find  small bottle brush type trees in the craft stores, and I know I saw a post somewhere about how to make your own. And, someone once wrote about bleaching the green store bought ones so you could have white trees or other colors. Yipes!

On a recent visit to a friend and fellow miniaturist’s house, I noticed some tiny perfectly shaped little trees in her displays and asked her where she had gotten them.

DenTek brushes ready to be put to alternate uses!

Well, she laughed as told me-and now you can be in on the joke, too! They began life as dental brush tools for cleaning  your teeth. Tiny, perfect, little, conical brushes on a plastic handle. You can paint them any color you wish, add glitter if so desired, then clip them off the handle and plant them in a small scrap of wood. The hardest part is to plant them squarely into the base so that they stand correctly. The brushes come in various sizes from about 3/8 to 1/2 an inch tall and can be found in most drugstores. Make sure you get the conical shaped style as some are just straight up and down and not that typical tree shape.

Miniature pencils and composition notebooks.

So, you’ve got your pencils made, its time to make a composition notebook to go with them. The composition notebook is an equally simple project. To start out, place two sheets of copy paper, neatly lined up on top of one another, on a cutting board and cut into 1″ strips. Gather the strips into a pile, with all the long edges on one side aligned as closely as possible. Use a couple of binder clips to keep the layers all together, and spread a layer of glue along that edge, taking care to get glue on every sheet in the stack. When the glue has dried completely, take the clips off and cut the strip of stacked paper into ‘book’ lengths, I cut them each 1 1/4″ long.

The strips for notebook blanks being glued together.

The composition print covers were made by scanning the pattern from a full-size notebook and printing it out at a greatly reduced size. Again, you don’t really want a copy that is exactly 1/12 scale because the white areas will begin to fill in, so reduce it until it looks good to you. Printing one copy at about 25% will yield enough of the print in a convincing scale to cover one notebook. If you want to cover a number of books, make several copies and piece them together to make a larger sheet and then make copies of that.

Cut your printed cover to the height of the book, in this case 1 1/4″, and wrap it around the book blank, creasing it around the spine, then remove it. Apply glue along the spine and replace the cover on the book. When the glue has dried, you can trim the edges of the cover with scissors or an X-acto knife. Use a black sharpie to create the black spine, coloring along the spine and a narrow border on the front and back next to the spine.

Your mini students are now ready for mini school!

Miniature pencils and composition notebooks.

I say, for the kids, because I wasn’t truly concerned about the pieces being exactly true to 1/12 scale, and most kids don’t care as much about that, but it’s a fun and easy project for anyone. Is there anything that says ‘back to school’ more than the iconic composition notebook and a freshly sharpened #2 pencil? I know, I know, I couldn’t tell you the last time I actually saw anyone using a #2 pencil, but most of us can still see an image of one in our minds.

The pencils, made from dowels, paint and markers.

The scale of the pencil was determined by the size dowels that are readily available, and the smallest I could find was about 1/16″ in diameter. You can make dowels finer by pulling them through a draw plate, but for this project I went with the size available at the art supply store. A good sanding is always the first step with a wood project, then a coat with that bright yellow paint, followed by another sanding to smooth out the finish. Follow that up with a coat of clear sealer in either a matte or glossy finish-or something in between. The painted and sealed dowels then get cut to length. I used a chopper with a stop set to 1″ for cutting multiples, but an X-acto knife works just fine. For the kids, I had them use an emory board to sand one end to a slight point-don’t want to make them dangerous here-and then use a black sharpie to color the tip black. At the other end, dipping it in a dark red paint, just to coat the end (I used Americana’s Georgia Clay), and when the paint is dry, create the look of the metal ferrule by drawing a stripe around the ‘eraser’ with silver uni-ball marker by Sanford.

Check back next week for the instructions for the composition notebook.