This is Rebel reporting on our trip to the Atlanta Miniature Society Retreat in October of 2025. The theme was Rock N Roll.
We decided to stay in a hotel instead of at the center but we did eat on campus. The food was adequate. The campus is nice. The activity room was good. There were tables for classes, silent auction and for dealers. The room had a kitchen as well.
Ace Mack and I didn’t take any workshops. Although the Friday night one, a garage, was outstanding. I’m tempted today even to find out if I could get one. Instead we worked on some kits I had made but not assembled yet.
The garage was offered in both 1:12 and 1:48 scales. Yall, the garage door was positionable and it was lighted. You can see the larger one in the middle of the picture above and the smaller one to the right.
Plus behind us you can see the dealer tables and the silent auction and garage sale items in the middle of those tables.
In other activities, a group come in and did line dancing which we were encouraged to participate in. We were up for it.
Sole Mates is the group who came. They were great. It was a lot of fun.
Our sales table is on the right above.
Afterwards we went out to the campfire ring and made s’mores or just enjoyed watching the fire.
Sunday morning, I took a small class by Donna Vanselja to make fairy dolls. One was a pink fairy and the other was in black and when I realized that this could be from the movie Wicked, I was okay with it. Because in the OZ books there was some witches and this is fantasy. It helped that I had actually seen the movie. It was a great class.
I didn’t finish them in class. I wanted to use my glue gun to make the skirts drape around them. The painted flowers were stiff so the petals stuck out.
The flowers were already painted by the instructor, and she also had made for use the fairy wands, crowns and brooms. We just needed to do the hair and put them together. Oh and make the pointy hat.
The carriage mirror kit was a gift.
This month I was finally got around to doing something with our souvenirs from the retreat. We both received a guitar, speaker, paint cans, and a kit to make the clock. Plus an engraved keyfob.
To make this vignette, I started with a box to fit the items. Next I looked thru my wallpaper/flooring book and found this scrap. I decided on my arrangement of the items making sure to leave room for the box to slide over them. Then I used super glue gel to hold them in place. These items are bigger than I typically deal with since they were 1:12 scale so I didn’t bother with tacky glue. I made sure to leave the box off until the glue had set at least 24 hours. That was to avoid the super glue fogging up the plastic.
For the clock I planned on going to the center of the box that was going over the items. However I used some sticky dots for holding it. When I was putting it in the box, it fell in the corner. It’s hard to get those dots off without scratching the plastic so I went with it.
The two hearts came from the box we received our souvenirs in.
Unfortunately the box is hazy on this side I chose to be the front. With the clock in place, I was stuck if I wanted to keep using this box.
Our 36th wedding anniversary was this week and my gotcha for Ace was to put the finished box in his music studio. He didn’t notice it was there until afterwards. It was not my intention for it to be a gift as he knew I was doing it. But putting it in his studio and him finding it by surprise, plus the two hearts was perfect timing.
BTW, Ace and I won two silent auction items. Both of which we were pleased to get. We also came home with a few of the garage sale items.
I am looking forward to the next one.
Happy miniaturing!
Preble
