Patricia S. is certainly committed to this wonderful hobby of ours - so much so that she takes supplies with her wherever she goes. In her own words, she explains her recent vacation, where she befriended a young local girl and setup a "mini" friendship:
From Patricia:
Inspired by Debbie's great story I'd like to share my
adventure of "encouraging a young person by teaching them how to make a
child-friendly mini".
This winter my husband and I got to spend a bit of time in
Mexico. There we became friends with a lovely family who run a little
restaurant . One night their 12 year old daughter Mary was there working on a
school project, which was actually a very small scale miniature. She had to
create a landscape showing a diverse number of sources of water / waterways and
she could only spend the equivalent of maybe $2 on materials. (I'll send you a
photo or 2 of it in another e-mail.)
Seeing the young lady was so talented I offered to do some
miniature projects with her. (Naturally I never travel anywhere without at
least a small assortment of "mini stuff".)
Our first attempt was to make one of those little sheep that
you have already seen as my Christmas ornament entry. Now the fun of doing this
together was greatly increased by the fact that I speak about as little Spanish
as Mary speaks English. Yet, with a few words, google translate and plenty of
sign language we had a great time, in spite of the fact that it was by then
night time and the lighting quite poor.
This picture shows Mary working with the felting needle to
fluff up her sheep. At our next visit I learned that Mary had already used the
extra materials I left with her to make another sheep.
More about our second session below...
... Here is a photo of us working on miniature fairies.
I had brought a model of a "child friendly fairy"
and had drawn simple sketches of how to cut and shape the chenille stems to
create the fairy's body. I had also prepared a paper pattern of the little felt
tunic, which Mary could use to cut a tunic from felt in the colour of her
choice. Then there were flower petals for her to play with to assemble the
fairy skirt. The hardest part was teaching Mary the basic sewing stitch needed
to secure the tunic on the doll, but Mary worked at it with great patience. It
was her first try at sewing ever.
For this first attempt I had painted several beads painted
as fairy heads, even some dark skinned ones, thinking they might appeal more to
my young Mexican friend. In hind sight though it was no surprise that Mary
chose what was more "unusual" to her culture- a fair skinned fairy
with blond hair.
Mary holding her fairy tightly as the glue dries...
...and the final fairy friends:
Before we went home, I left most of my supplies with Mary,
and we found some links for fairy making on the internet, even one in Spanish.
We're now connected with her Dad by e-mail and
are hoping for other miniature adventures in the future.
Here some photos of Mary's awesome project...
This is the 3rd school project of this kind this school
year. I sure would love to go to that school. I'm sure I would have learned my
Geography lessons way better if they had let me built minis in Elementary
School...
Enjoy, Patricia
Thank you so much for sharing these, Patricia. You've certainly qualified for your bingo square with this entry!!!
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