More on the life and times of the Ipswich Mini Crafters - as featured in Dolls House and Miniature Scene Magazine. We hope you enjoy reading our stories and, if you aren’t already part of a miniature group, it has given you a taste for how much fun you can have sharing your passion with others. Following is a brief recap of our past year – a few of our doings that didn’t feature in earlier articles.
First however some of you may be wondering how the Congregational Sunday School, a project that featured in one of our earlier articles, has progressed. It is nearing completion and Sally is very focussed on her end-of-year target. This photo shows how far she has come with this large job, to be honest it turned out to be bigger than we thought, with the sheer number of windows proving to be a real challenge. Alan and I who have helped along the way, enjoyed the new challenge but will be equally overjoyed to see it finished.
We recently had a display at the inaugural Oxley Mini Hobby Expo. The show had a big focus on model trains however we had a corner to show our skills, with Joanne running mini-manufacturing demonstrations for the visitors, making pipe cleaner teddy bears, umbrellas, and perfume bottles out of beads.
Our public presence continues to grow with thanks to our Facebook, Pinterest, and web site activities. We launched our website www.ipswichminicrafters.wixsite.com/ipswichminicrafters thanks to WiX who I can’t compliment enough as a reasonably priced, easy to use platform for creating your own web site – being a small craft group we are very grateful it has a free option, and a Pinterest page https://www.pinterest.com.au/ipswichminicrafters/ earlier this year, to complement our Facebook page. There is a vibrant mini crafting community on the internet, with a phenomenal number of skilled artisans showcasing their wares and running tutorials on everything from walls to working kitchens, Instagram and YouTube are packed with new and exciting minis and how-to’s.
We were recently approached to restore a very cockroach nibbled model of the Brisbane Spiritual Church where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle laid the foundation stone on a visit to Australia in 1921. There will be many challenging hours ahead repairing this cardboard, paper and plaster building. See the club gallery images for its progress.
This time last year we had just finished renovating a dollhouse in preparation for donation to Ipswich Hospice Care for their Christmas Raffle, to raise much-needed funds towards their invaluable work. This dollhouse belonged to one of our members (Helen Williams) who sadly passed away from a brain tumour. This was a small way of saying thank you to Ipswich Hospice Care who provided an enormous amount of support to Helen and her family.
There have been a few comings and goings in the club, with one member having moved interstate and several new members joining following a couple of our shows.
Thank you very much DollsHouse and Miniature Scene magazine for inviting us to submit these articles, giving you a peak into the doings of our miniature club. We hope you have found them inspiring, we have enjoyed writing them and particularly look forward to receiving our magazine subscription each month and being challenged and wowed by the many, many talented people who contribute to our truly varied crafting addiction.
As we move into the Christmas season we start planning our annual Christmas dinner and creating our Secret Santa presents, our tradition of making a small mini related present, to be exchanged at the dinner. We hope you all have a magical miniature filled Christmas ;-) By Vanessa Williams
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