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Welcome to the collection and holiday-themed
scenes of GIjOE first entered
my life as a gift on my 6th birthday. It was about then that
my wife and I realized we needed to have some toys for kids to
play with whenever friends and families visited, so we started
picking up figures at various thrift stores. Our kids quickly grew up and we knew we no longer
"needed" the toys, but by that time we were hooked.
Today, we have a large chest of drawers full of figures and about
1/8th of our attic space is filled with various accessories--all
for our own enjoyment!
In our old-fashioned home diorama, the fireplace was a clock that did not work from a local thrift store. I removed the clock and placed the plastic flame there. We added items to put on and in front of the mantle in addition to the items molded on. The "cast iron" pots and pans are Barbie items spray painted flat black. The shelf was found at a thrift store and we found the miscellaneous items to go on it at thrift stores as well. The rifle is a souvenir pen my wife found with the ink cartridge and tip pulled out. I made the gun rack from scrap. The old home diorama is our consistent favorite and is STILL evolving. It stays up all year round in the enclave of our hutch with our antique Currier and Ive's dishes. We hope you enjoy our photos. ---GIJay, Virginia |
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Let's
take a closer look at some more of the figures in GIJay's collection
And Don't Miss... Collections
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I
soon learned that a cute little redhead up the road had a lot
of the Barbie stuff (and some GIjOEs!), and I enjoyed visiting
and playing with her and the toys. Unfortunately, some ten years
later, I sold ALL of my Joes and accessories for a whopping FIVE
dollars to a kid down the street and didn't think of them again
until I was about 37.
Primarily,
we create seasonal themed dioramas for up on top of our entertainment
center. Friends and family really enjoy seeing them and go over
to them immediately upon entering our home. At Christmas, we
add additional scenes on other shelves and furniture to add to
the enjoyment. During Christmas of 2008, we were unable to host
an open house for Christmas so my wife turned the top of our
dining room table into a 1/6th scale Christmas party. 
We have a lot of
fun doing these. Our all-time favorites have been a farm, a kite-flying
picnic, a Christmas house (with staircase) and a rustic cabin
scene. Since the photographs of the latter, I've replaced the
little carpet with a braided rug (a place-mat that is perfect
scale) and will soon use 1/6th scale elk antlers for a new gun
rack. I have especially
enjoyed detailing items like the boom box in our spring kite
flying picnic scene. I made the kites from scraps as well and
I was really proud of my palm trees in the beach scene.
