Tiny British Phone Booth

 Since we are often making things that reference our love of British culture (Sherlock Holmes pillows, a Ms. Marple room box, etc.) we decided that it was time to make a little phone booth. The phone booth is small enough so that it can rest on a desk top or be included in a railway scene or used for whatever you want! I used blank Shrinky Dink paper but you could also make a phone booth out of cardboard, fimo, or fabric. The directions that follow are to make it out of shrinkable plastic. One drawback of this is that you will not wind up with perfection. My phone booth is a little crooked and the edges do not line up perfectly. However the translucence of the plastic does make for a nice effect.
Materials

• shrinkable paper. I used two sheets size 5 x 8 inches and had some scraps left over for future projects
• thin black Sharpie
• colored pencils
• scissors
• printout of a phone booth image, taken from directly in front, sized at 3 x the size you want the final phone booth to be  

Steps

1. Work on the scratchy side of the Shrinky Dink paper. Trace 3 identical phone booth sides around the outside and where the windows will be and cut them out around the outside carefully.
2. Use colored pencils to fill in color and accents like the gold crown at the top
3. Write the word "telephone" backwards and trace that using the Sharpie. Fill in around it in white
4. Leave the windows blank
5. Trace the back. This fourth side will be solid red
6. Trim the booths so the top edge does not curl out like it does in real life, or it will be hard to glue them together, Make a straight line on three of them. 
7. Bake in the oven at 350' for 1-3 minutes. This is where you can run into problems. You want the pieces to curl up while they are shrinking then relax back to being perfectly flat. You may want to use a toaster oven for better control and bake one or two pieces at a time. Flatten them with a spatula once they have relaxed back down and are still pliable.
8. After the pieces cool you can assemble them. Mine did not line up perfectly so I made a tiny box out of card stock and glued the pieces onto this.  
9. Enjoy! Now you can make one in blue, write "Police Box" on it, and make the Dr. Who fan in your life very, very happy.

Ping Pong Ball Thanksgiving Turkey

    

I noticed lately that we have several ping pong balls rolling around the floor of our house but no ping pong table. I think they are left over from some science kit we have long ago parted ways with so I decided to use the ping pong balls for some Thanksgiving crafting.

 I made some really cute Easter birds last spring using plastic eggs as a base. I decided to use the same technique to make some tiny turkeys for the holiday table using roving and the ping pong balls. Wool roving is this really beautiful fiber that people use for felting projects and also to spin into yarn. You can buy small amounts of it in various colors at craft stores.

Materials

• Ping pong ball
• Wool roving in a turkey color like medium or dark brown
• Tacky glue (Elmer's will not stick to the plastic.)
• Feathers
• Red yarn or embroidery floss
• Tiny yellow felt triangles for the beak
• Beads for eyes
• Red scrap of fabric or felt for the wattle
• Cardboard
• Circle of felt to cover bottom (optional)

Steps 

1. Cover the ping pong ball with pieces of wool roving. Do this by applying glue to small areas and attaching the wool, then moving around the ball until it is all covered.
2. After the wool and glue dry you will want to fill in some gaps with additional roving.
3. Now you need to make the head and neck. 
4. Form a ball and stem (the neck) out of roving and glue. Wrap red yarn around the neck to hold it together.
5.  Glue on a little piece of red felt for the wattle and the yellow felt beak pieces.
6. Glue the bead eyes on. These are so tiny I use superglue so that it will not show.
7. When everything on the turkey head is dry, attach it to the body using tacky glue. Hold it or prop it up while it dries.
8. Attach some feathers to the back of your turkey I used one each of white, brown and black. You may prefer to use feathers that are already multicolored.
9. Finally, I added a circle of purple felt-covered cardboard to the bottom of my turkey to make it look more finished and to help it stand up nicely.

Gumball Dome Pumpkin Treat Basket

Here is a quick project to get your dollhouse ready for Halloween next week. Take a plastic gumball dome, paint it orange, and glue on a thin strip of black felt for a handle. Use a black permanent marker to make a face. that's it!