Sunday, 12th September, 2010

Welcome Lainie and Marlene!

Hi Marlene and Lainie and welcome to my blog.  I hope you enjoy it here and visit often.  I really appreciate you taking an interest in my ramblings vbg.

Mini-ing with Shailee

Something different to share with you today. Our grandsons Cameron and Luke were intrigued with the latest of the Town Square series (Dickens Bookshop) that I did here while visiting, and want to do some miniatures. I promised them that when Pa arrived I would ask him to cut some of the thin MDF I have so that they could build something.

In the meantime, our daughter Kylie’s neighbour and friend Fiona and her two daughters also came to admire Dickens Bookshop and the younger one Shailee (pronounced Shay-lee) in particular was keen to do some miniatures too. Fiona asked whether Shailee could come and watch me do some work on my miniatures, then remembered that she had been given a kit for a small wallhanging of a fruit and juice shop in a frame.

So Shailee brought the kit down to the caravan today and I helped her put it together. Shailee is just nine years old, and like many of us has been making small things out of foil, cardboard, fabric, paper and other bits and pieces for quite some time. This is her first ‘formal’ introduction to miniatures and what fun to be the one to introduce her to the pleasures of this fascinating world!

She was surprised that it wasn’t as difficult as she thought it would be and as you can see in this photo she really concentrated on it. I showed her what to do and then she did it herself. I did help some of it but she did 90%. Not a bad effort at all!

Shailee was very very proud of the result, and so was I – of the result and of her efforts too.

I asked permission of her mother then Shailee herself before I included photos of her on this post. They were both happy for me to do so.

And by then the boys had returned from bowling with Peter. I cut some of the MDF scraps to make shelves for them like the shelves in Shailee’s vignette, and they started to glue them together. Cameron is 7 and Luke is 4 so their patience can’t be expected to last as long, but they got them glued partly together. They were waiting for me to cut more shelves and for the glue to dry and went off to play, and will finish them tomorrow or the day after. And Peter will be cutting something else for them tomorrow as well.  I am really looking forward to doing some minis with them as well!