Miniature Time Traveller Issue 1

Miniature Time Traveller Magazine Issue #1/13 This workshop was a club project to be displayed at the Dunedin Convention in 2012. The kit that members were given comprised of the picture frame, the sides, top and bottom of the box part, and a back. It also included a base and ceiling piece for a bay window and the card sides with windows marked on them. The Bay is the only piece which projects from the back. The rest is an optical allusion. Stiff card is used throughout. Other materials were left up to the members. They had to source all the twiddly bits. Also included in the kit were photocopies of the houses of the era. These are standard shapes for villa fronts and they could personalize them anyway they liked. About a dozen houses were made, all framed in identical frames so that lined up they made ‘a street’ effect. Some members got the bug and reproduced frontages of their own houses. The chimneys were made of carefully cut out pieces of paper clay and/or painted on the back board as was the scenery and the roof and verandas. Pieces of sandpaper were used to make the bricks in some cases. A fence along the front gave depth. Any furniture in the front room or light fittings or curtains was put in place before the bay is fixed to the back of the box. Some clever members did give themselves an option to open up the back to rearrange the furniture. Some had lighting. The backing card was removed from the picture frame and an identical piece of MDF or heavy card was cut the same size, call it (A) An opening was cut into (A) so it would frame the house and then this was screwed to the room box front edges. It was covered with coloured card or paper. The weight of the box would be taken up by the hooks on the back of the box to fasten it to the wall, so it was safe to fit (A) back into the photo frame, behind the glass, and crimp the fasteners back over it to secure it. Hooks screwed into the back of the box allowed it to hang on the wall. VictorianVillas - a project by the Lower Hutt Miniature Makers Images of Villas for members to use as a guide. The theme of the 2014 NZAME convention held in Dunedin was around Kiwiana. The objective of the Lower Hutt project was to create a street of frontages of New Zealand villas for the convention exhibition and then later members could hang them on a wall. As most members are a bit tight on display room this was a very popular and thoroughly enjoyable project.