Alice Zinn, a professional miniaturist and good friend, endured not only constant physical pain from a bad back but had to cope with all those terrible weeks of hurricanes of Summer 2004. Alice, however, is a very resilient, tough-minded person and if anyone can make lemonade from lemons, she can.

After the last hurricane had passed, Alice was surveying the damage in her yard and noticed little orange round things with screws through them were scattered all over. They had been used to hold the blue tarps in place on roofs ruined by the earlier hurricanes, but later they were blown off, too. When she saw them, she thought immediately, Aha! Frisbees! So, true miniaturist that she is, Alice removed the screws, designed and printed out a label for front and back - and behold: The Florida Flyer; I Survived Hurricane Season 04.
She decided to sell these for $1 each, ultimately selling 500, and that $500.00 went to
help relocate pets that had lost their homes because of the hurricanes.
I ordered several, and when my granddaughter Jenna wanted to do a project, that's what we used.
We discussed what we might do with them, and we came up with the idea of a dog that wanted somebody to come play Frisbee with him. I looked through my stash and we each picked a dog. Since it was autumn, we decided it would be nice to have some colorful leaves, and then we decided that somebody had been raking those leaves and putting them into a basket.

To make our baskets, we used half of a Jet Dry Water Softener basket. We first painted it black, then dry brushed it with silver to suggest metal.

Here Jenna is drybrushing on red iron oxide to suggest rust on her basket.

We decided there needed
to be something taller in the scene, so decided on a section
of the fence. "Maybe," Jenna said, "the
dog has been put inside the gate to keep him away from
the flowers and he's lonesome."

Here is Jenna's scene, complete with overturned leaf basket and flowers by the fence. I glued the Frisbee in place with a bit of Tacky glue and then a touch of super glue and used stacked up Legos to prop it until it dried.

Our base has a brown paint and glue coat, then a mixture of sand and landscape foam sprinkled over while it was wet.

We glued a strip of florist foam across the back, coated the fence base with glue and poked it into the foam, then landscaped along it. Jenna chose her flowers from my stash.

And here is Jenna with her Florida Flyer Frisbee scene!

This is my scene. My Frisbee was easier to glue in place because the dog is rubber. I just cut a slit in his mouth and then glued the Frisbee in place. Much easier.

This must be very rich soil. Look how big the sunflowers grow. And just imagine the size of that maple tree to have such big leaves! Oh, and by the way, we grunged up the fence a little to show that it had been there a while.

I kept the back of my scene simple. Just a couple of scrawny weeds.
I still have a few Frisbees left. They would be great in a playground scene, in a child's room or toybox, near a picnic table, at the beach .....
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