Workshops at the NZAME Miniatures Convention, October 2014

A tiny tin shop used for a workshop at Convention

At the NZAME Convention in Nelson this year at October's Labour Weekend, there is a wide selection of workshops you can choose to do. Ranging from ones taking 2 days to complete to ones taking 1/2 a day, there's lots to tempt us mini-makers!
  Here's a sampling to get you thinking of what you'd like to do!

• 2 days -         1930s kitchen, and a gourmet shop doorway scene of Provence
• 1 1/2 days -    European Christmas Market stall, and a setting using card, paint and foam to make food and furniture.
• 1 day -           wooden country kitchen table, and tin houses and shops like the one in my photo to be furnished with 70 laser-cut pieces of furniture & accessories (very fiddly!), and a glitter Xmas village, and tea in the conservatory, and a woven oval basket.
• 1/2 day -        hats, and a park bench, and several on polymer clay food, and a garden arch, and an inside/outside kitchen on a turntable, and kumihimo braids, and a street barrow, and using gold leafing, and dressing a bride doll, and making a cabinet with pots, and glass decanters on a revolving stand.

Workshops are allocated on a first come, first-served basis. Find out more on the NZAME website.

A Foodie Theme for This Year's NZ Miniatures Convention

Baking a Lemon Pudding in 1:12 Scale

"Bon Appetit' - that's the theme for the NZAME Convention in New Zealand this October. I wonder what food you would 'cook' for display. Would you do a baking scene, or a vegetarian dish or perhaps a roast lamb? With pavlova for dessert, of course, for the quintessential Kiwi meal!

Preparing vegetables for dinner

A food preparation area, or vignette, could have a duck to pluck, a brace of pheasants hanging or vegetables to be washed & sliced.
 

Tudor food for a feast

Perhaps your food could have an historical theme, like my Tudor feast, complete with boar's head, made for me by a friend, lampreys, jumbles and soft white bread rolls for the'upper crust'.
 

The window display in a cake shop/tearooms

The food theme expands to take in buildings as well - a restaurant, tavern, bar, cafe, corner shop, or tearooms. How about a well-stocked pantry to show off bottles & preserves in jars, sacks of flour and tins of biscuits. Or if you'd rather have your food outdoors, a picnic basket filled with goodies to eat and drink would make a great display.

Of course, your miniatures could take us on a gourmet trip around the world to a sidewalk cafe in Paris, a pizzeria in Rome, an oyster bar in Bluff, a Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong, a burger bar in L.A. or a fish and chip shop in London.

Whatever the food, miniature or real, there will be lots of it in Nelson at Labour Weekend. look on the NZAME website for more information. Bon Appetit!