Materials sources.

Most of the tinybuildings are made from business cards, usually from restaurants, but sometimes stores or museums or even companies. Some of them are made from packaging, usually food.

Whenever I am in a place that I have enjoyed visiting and want to recall later -particularly if I'm there with my kids- I collect a small stack of cards from the cash register/reception/maitre d' desk - especially if the design of the space and the graphics of the cards are memorable. It is a little game to get away with not one, not two, but, maybe six-to-eight cards.

It is very satisfying to know that I have the cards stored away in boxes in my work area, even if it might be years before I use them to make a tinybuilding. I can open one of the boxes [there are drawers full!] spread out a stack of the cards, and let my memory wander through good meals, good times, nicely designed spaces.

Then, one day, one of the stacks will 'call my name'; and I will think about some special menu item or some great toy purchased, or there is someone I think will really like a tinybuilding memory, and a new tinybuilding is underway.

The food packaging is much harder to work with than the business cards. It is usually a light weight cardboard and is softer and less rigid. I can't get the crisp corners and clean cuts like I can with business card cardstock. That's why the form of the roof on the Carr's Cracker box is rather messy; and the windows are larger - it is almost impossible to make the really little casement windows in cardboard. But, sometimes, I just have to use it because I am eating some caponata on a Carr's Cracker and I remember a sunny afternoon with wine and snacks from 20 years ago...Got to memorialize that!