After going to two gatherings in Chicago and earlier this year to MAVG I
was really surprised that I still had
trouble
fitting in the seminars I wanted to attend. There were so many great ones and they were totally different then those
I had seen before. I attended a session
presented by Charla Bold where she explained how to make streets and sidewalks
for your village. The streets were cut
pieces of roofing asphalt. You can buy a
normal size roll of this and never run out! She also demonstrated a brick making machine that is a modification of a
pasta maker that makes clay bricks. This
is available at Michaels. I also
attended a seminar by Ken Shirley entitled “Backdrops Add a Finishing Touch”. Ken says that backdrops allow closure to your village and allows
attention to be paid to village details.
He showed how to make terrific backdrops with Styrofoam. If you want to add lights to your back drop you use two pieces of foam
and simply floral pin a small set of Christmas lights to the back of the front
piece.
This allows the light to reflect
off the back piece of foam.
He made a
backdrop for every village including a realistic looking sparkling city for
Christmas in the City.
One of the most
impressive seminars to me was Ed Speakmon’s presentation on “How to Electrify
Your Village”.
Ed does this
professionally.
He showed us simple ways
to run an electric line through the village by using a length of simple lamp
cord available at Home Depot etc. and then adding any type of plug or outlet to
it.
Since each house light takes about 4
watts and the lamp cord will carry approximately 250 watts, you con string
together quite a few houses.
The
electrical sockets, etc are available in bulk online at
www.Nationalartcraft.com. They can also
be purchased at Radio Shack.
He even
added Lemax spot lights to the line!
I
am going to check this out for my curio cabinet. It seemed easier than the Place and Plug system I have now. Tom Taylor
and Miles Wood presented “Mountains without Hotwire”. This was a delightful presentation. I met these two at the first Chicago gathering and thought they were a
hoot! They did not disappoint at this one. The session showed how you can take a simple table fork and use it
to scrape craggy looking mountains from your Styrofoam. I have to admit that after it is painted you would not know the
difference.
It is a messy process. Have your vacuum cleaner ready.