Killing time at the craft store

[nachoman]

Yesterday, I visited two craft stores in the hopes of finding some kind of cheap material suitable to represent metal building siding. Considering the outside 110 degree temperature and lack of other appointments, I decided to just browse the stores from one corner to another looking for any items potentially usable for model railroading. I did stumble upon some items that have potential:

1) some kind of scenic sand product. It looked like it was used for making dinosaur dioramas for kids. But, it was fine enough and the earth colors could make it suitable as ballast or groundcover. It also came in bright colors like blue or green. I am not sure what the use for those colors would be.
2) Rubber blanks and tools for carving your own stamps. The rubber blanks were pretty cheap. If one has a simple custom RR logo, it would not be that hard to hand carve a custom stamp.
3) Rub on lettering. In the drafting aisle, they sold rub on lettering in various sizes for much cheaper than the hobby store. Unfortunately, the only color I saw was black, and only a few styles. Actually, there were also a few other tools in the drafting aisle that may be useful.
4) Old west unpainted figures, 1/72 scale. Yeah, they are an odd scale, but considering Harold (hminky) notes many figures are over or undersize, perhaps they are oversize enough to use for S scale.
5) various textured paper. This could be good scratchbuilding material.
6) various inks and paints - and silkscreen ink. I never knew what variety of inks and paints were on the market or that the inks come in such a wide variety of color.
7) Some kind of rub on pigment used to give things a metallic patina. It comes in various colors, but all are intended to be somewhat metallic. I could see a few areas where it could make an interesting weathering medium.
8) An adhesive copper foil strip used for making stained glass. I guess it is used to wrap around the edges of the glass pieces so the pieces can be soldered together. I am not entirely sure what the model railroad use would be for such an item - but a PCB-tie utilization sprang to mind.

These are just the items I remember (but didn't have the money to buy and test out). I found some textured paper amongst the christmas decorations that may work as metal siding - but I think I may try something else first. My point is, if you have time to kill it could be worthwhile taking a half hour browsing every aisle in a craft store just to get ideas for future projects.