NOTE: I shared this idea several years ago on one of my
groups and apologize if you've read this T2T already, but with Christmas
coming up it may be helpful to some.
Here are three easy steps to make teensy silver tree garlands and curly-cue icicles:
1) Find a guitar player who uses metal wound strings on the 3 or 4 lower
strings and ask him/her to save the old strings the next time the
strings are changed. (Classical guitars strings are the best source
because they are real silver wound over a fibre core, but any metal
wound acoustic guitar strings will do the job. I haven't tried using
violin strings, but the G and D strings should work as they are close in
diameter to the higher guitar strings.)
2) Cut one end of the string off at the point where the string
straightens out, find the end of the metal strip and gently pull it to
unwind the metal from the core. Hold the core end in the other hand and
go slowly so you don't stretch the 'spring&# 39; out of shape.
3) For icicles, cut the spring into 1/3 to 1/2 inch lengths stretching
the springs if needed to open them up a bit. Attach a loop of sewing
thread to one end with CA glue. For garlands, slightly stretch a long
piece until it looks good to you and wrap it around the tree, outdoor
pillars or railings, a mailbox or whatever you fancy.
BTW, you can also use the metal strips in jewellery both RL size and mini, and it can be soldered.
Chris in Canada
The new thing is that we are encouraging people to contribute during the calendar, e.g. today we are asking people if they have mini villages as Christmas decoration in their home.
I have been busy with my several projects and have not been hanging around on Mini treasures wiki for awhile. Now I saw that only 8 calendar pages have been reserved so far. Haven´t you got any Christmas projects to share with us? If you don't I do :).
Just a warning: in the end of this month I am going to reserve all the remaining pages and fill them with stuff I find, e.g. from our Flickr pool or some nice YouTube videos about (e.g. about miniature villages) and so on. So think creatively: you can use also stuff created by other people. Do you have a favorite miniaturist artisan you would like to interview or whose minis you would like to showcase for us? Or maybe you have a favorite Christmas poem (or story) you could write and use other people's mini pictures in it?
We are starting to reserve the pages of our traditional advent calendar.
It is a fun way to promote your miniature projects - for free.
Last year some of the people also organized a lottery. One of the people who had left a comment on their page won the mini on that page. Hopefully this tradition continues this year too :).
I just learnt about List.ly and wanted to try it out. And you can be my test bunnies. :) I want to use it to learn about what kind of mini projects you are currently working at. I added 10 proposals but hope you continue to add topics. For me, a kitchen is not a topic as there are kitchens in almost every dollhouse but a restaurant would be a topic. Hope you get the idea. :)
I just finalized our list of 25 biggest traffic bringers to Mini treasures wiki. In the beginning of MTW most of the traffic came through miniature blogs, sites and forums but now the situation has changed. People have bookmarked our site and most people visit it via Google and other search engines. So now I needed to go back to 255 biggest traffic bringers to get this list. The links on this lists are mainly blogs or website hosted by either private people or companies. They are sites where I can leave comments telling them about the prize they have gotten. I also found some inactive blogs and secret blogs which were left out from this list as I could not reach their owner.
I want now to thank these wonderful sites for the promotion efforts you have done for Mini treasures during the last year. Keep on the good work :).
If you want to be included on this list next year, start promoting our wiki now. Add a wiki button on your site and tell your blog's readers about our wiki and what it means to you. :) The winners are found also on our 4th birthday page.
The world of Mini treasures consists of many places in social media but the most important of alll Mini treasures wiki. This blog tells news from the wiki and the mini world around it. The blog is hosted by Johanna Janhonen from Finland and she has one dream: to have a bigger blogger group filling this blog. So contact Johanna if you would like to blog about Mini treasures wiki, interview our readers or start arranging new campaigns for Mini treasures.