First let me kickoff with the series which I shot recently, my mini drift cars. They are about the size of your palm and they are built with serious details. Since I have only a SB-800 so most of the stuff I shot at home are using just one light source.
The setup is pretty simple. I placed the cars on a piece of black cardboard, and used a black cardboard at the back and side of the cars. I placed a semi-translucent coroplast on top of the cars using it as a diffuser. Then i placed my SB-800 to fire on the semi-translucent board on top making it a huge diffuser to lit up the top part of the cars. Then i placed some smaller pieces of white paper as reflector on the sides and front of the car just to fill-in the lights to the sides and front of the cars.
Finally, the white reflectors are removed from the shot using Photoshop and voila! There you have it. Just a simple lighting for these little cars.