We were planning a trip to visit Pat's sister, Martha. At the very last minute, I had an idea. (Most of my good ideas tend to occur at the very last minute.) I decided I needed to make a little miniature scene to give to Martha. I sat down at my craft table and reviewed all the stuff I had readily available. (There was LOTS of stuff.) I decided to try to include several of her favorite things:  books, grandkids, music and cooking. I really didn't allow myself enough time to do a really good job on it, but one of the nice things about MicroMinis is that the errors and goofs don't show up much. However, they're rather blatantly obvious when you use a macro setting on a camera, as you can see in the photos below. The thumbnails below show only a very small portion of the entire picture. Click on the thumbnail to see the whole picture, full-size in a new window. Close the new window to return to this page.

The cover of the matchbox - I put the arrows on the front so she'd know what direction to open the box.	The left end of the box hid all the wiring and the battery. There is also a small switch to turn the light on and off.	Inside we have a wooden bookshelf. One shelf is full of books and the other has a tiny 1/144 scene. This was all put together very quickly, in a few hours, before our trip to see her. I wish I had had more time to clean up some of the details.
Here you can see the recessed lighting on the upper shelf. It makes the details of the scene much easier to see.	To make the tiny books, I painted wooden coffee stirrers, then just snipped them into tiny little pieces and glued them into the shelves. The large set of shelves were made from 1/64" thick sheets of wood.	The corner bookshelves were metal miniatures that I painted and filled with books. The piano and mirror were also metal miniatures. (Oh my, look at the glob of glue! That's where the mirror slid down the wall before it was totally dry. I guess I should have scraped it off before I gave it to her, but without the camera, you can't see it.)
Here you can Martha with two of her grandchildren. I know the couch looks pretty large compared to the size of the figures, but that's deliberate. It's actually closer to real life than you'd think. When she sits on her own couch, her feet really don't reach the floor.	Just like me, she has stacks of books everywhere. There just aren't enough bookshelves to hold them all. If I'd had more time, the tops and bottoms of the books would have been sanded and painted. That's what I get for trying to do the whole project in one afternoon.	The bottom shelf contains a lot of books by Martha's favorite authors, as well as several cookbooks (our family does love to cook and eat - she's raised three chefs!) and children's books. There are all removable and can be opened, although the pages inside are blank. The covers are scanned replicas of the original books.
	Here are some vintage cookbooks.