Ice-skating rink from an altoid tin

Follow

Using an old altoid tin, a magnet,  paperclip and my drawing abilities, I made this cute, portable little toy!

Using a magnet on the bottom, she really skates around the "rink".

My 4 year old son was so impressed by this, he couldn't believe I made it!

I love when I can impress my own kids, it's very rare!

Tiny Stained Glass Replicas- Featuring Wright and Sullivan

Follow

          

 

 

 
This is a very easy and fun way to make tiny stained glass windows. They would be good for a dollhouse or a model of a church or for jewelry or window hangings.
You need to start out with some stained glass windows to trace. What I did was visit Google Images and find some pictures to copy and print out. First I looked for "church stained glass" and found a panel that I liked. Then, since I am from Chicago, I thought of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan. Both men are most famous for their architecture but they also designed gorgeous windows for many of their buildings. There are a multitude of Frank Lloyd Wright images available online. You can also purchase or locate a Dover book that features his stained glass patterns. For Sullivan I found a round window from his Auditorium Theater to complete my trio of pictures.
I printed the images out (remembering that they would shrink about 40%) and used a black Sharpie to outline them onto plain Shrinky Dink paper. You color on the rough side of the paper so that the ink adheres. I then used colored pencil to fill in the spaces. I cut out each image. You may decide to reverse the images before printing them out so they will be facing the right direction when viewed at the end, assuming you view them through the clear side of the Shrinky Dink.

 

After tracing them I punched holes using a hole punch in the Sullivan and Wright ones. The religious one I left plain as I think I want to build a frame for it and mount it in my daughter's dollhouse. I followed the directions and preheated my toaster oven to 350' with a foil-covered tray inside while it was heating up. I then lay my little windows on the foil and watched them shrink. You are supposed to cook them with the colored side up. In a minute or two they are ready to be removed from the oven. You can tell because they will have curled up and then relaxed. The second you get them out of the oven, transfer them to a flat surface and use a rubber spatula or cutting board or anything to flatten them.You have only a few seconds to do this before it hardens. If it does not dry flat you can always soften it again in the oven and try again. I know many people have been making really cool Shrinky Dink projects for years, but I am not one of those people. We never had the blank sheets before and so we just colored in lame shapes from the kits and made little, ugly jewelry. I really enjoyed this project and look forward to many more.

Tiny Tibetan Prayer Flags

Follow

I often hang a strand of Tibetan Prayer flags on my back porch. They are made of untreated cotton, block-printed with prayers and images.They weather in the sun and wind so they start out as vivid primary-colored flags and wind up shredded and faded. Here is what they look like, taken at the Field Museum Tibetan exhibit in Chicago yesterday. There are also a bunch of gorgeous shots of them in action on Google Images, cascading down mountaintops and off temples.

 I have always believed that the flags are supposed to be directing good vibes to my home: peace, kindness, strength, and wisdom. Or are they acting to protect my family? There are many interpretations of these Buddhist talismans.The five colors represent the five elements (water, air, fire, earth and wind.) They can be displayed vertically (Darchor) or horizontally. (Lung ta) I urge you to read further on the topic if you want to create your own mini flags, perhaps at The Peace Flag Project.

But I am digressing. If you want to know how to make your own flags please read on.

First you need to download the flag template. It is located at Google Docs. Print it out on fabric transfer paper. You can find this at office supply stores. You print onto the transfer paper then wait a 1/2 hour (yes, you do need to do this. I speak from experience.) You then iron it onto thin cotton. Your second choice is to use the imminently more excellent printable cotton and fabric that you can buy at Dharma Trading Company and possibly other places. I used the fabric transfer paper and it worked well but was pretty stiff. I wish that I had exercised some patience and ordered the softer, printable fabric. Maybe next time!

After you have ironed on the flags you are ready to cut them out.

Now you can glue them onto thread or embroidery floss or onto a toothpick if you want the vertical kind.

I built a simple triangular stand out of balsa wood.  My balsa wood stands were so light I wound up having to glue some sea glass onto them so they could stand up. You can probably think of other stands. you could use twigs or simply tie your flags between two objects. If anyone comes up with a better stand please share it with me.

Now you are ready to display your flags. You can bring some tranquility and prosperity to your desk, situate some in various window sills around the house, make a really long strand and run it up a banister, and so on. Happy New Year!

Day 20 -Miniature Glitter Houses

Day 20's tiny craft is mini glitter houses. You can start from the beginning of our 25 days of 

tiny Christmas crafts, right here!

I have a collection of vintage Christmas decorations, and one of my favorite items are the 

tiny houses, usually made from paper and often covered in glitter.

I thought it would be fun to make some myself, and even cuter to make them very tiny.

These are a little different process, using wood blocks to start (much easier!) and a plastic tree,

instead of  those bottle brush trees. 

But you can do whatever you like! They are easy enough to customize to your taste.

Just google image "vintage christmas glitter houses" and you will find tons of inspiration.

Day 1: Shrink your Favorite Books

Follow

We will be featuring tiny holiday projects every day until Christmas! This is the December 1 project, we just jumped the gun and released it early. Please check back December 2 for our mini walnut knitting ornament!

With the holidays approaching I am once again struggling to come up with some inexpensive, original gifts for my family. How about you?
 First order of business for me: a present for my mom. She has a home filled with festive dishes, Matryoshka dolls, quilts, tea sets and books. I try to make her a gift every year. My mom is rather obsessed with the Bloomsbury Group. She collects their various first editions, gives a dramatic slide show detailing their capers and love affairs and for many years even had a big picture of Virginia Woolf hanging in her sewing room. (If you would like to see the Virginia Woolf quilt she made it is on Tumblr) So it did not take much imagination to determine that I should make her something featuring her favorite tortured author. I decided that at the same time I could make my daughter something for her dollhouse.

Walnut Shell Mayflower - place-card holders

Walnut boats are a classic craft to make with kids. We even posted about these on our blog here.

I thought about using these boats as place card holders for Thanksgiving, but making them Mayflower boats for the occasion.  This is perfect for the kids table, and they can keep the boat to take home too! Plus they float, so they can even be displayed in a water glass.

In our other post, we used clay, this time I thought wax would look nice.

1. I used white card stock for the sails. Either cut into a rectangle, or

 trim a curve in the sides like I did.

2. I used my tiniest hole-punch, to make the holes at the top and bottom 

of the sails.

3. Decorate your sails. I added the names for a place-card.

4. You will need 2 toothpicks for each boat. I trimmed about 1/4"

off one, so the front sail sits lower.

5. Stick the toothpick through one of the holes on the sail.

6. Then through the other hole.  Set these sails aside.

7. I heated up the wax with a candle wax warmer.

8. Once melted, I used a plastic spoon and fill the walnuts carefully to 

the top.  Then let them cool. 

Once they are almost dry, stick the sails in, and allow the wax to finish hardening.

When you are done, the boats are ready for the water! 

Enjoy! 

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Polka Dot Bakery

I  went to a Barbeque last weekend and the hostess carried a big cardboard dollhouse out into the yard for some of the kids to play with. This group of socially awkward, clingy kids suddenly had a lot to talk about and it was a majorly successful icebreaker. My daughter has a huge Greenleaf dollhouse that weighs a ton and is not going to get carried in and out of the house at will. Ditto for my son's even heavier wooden farmhouse. I started thinking about making a small, lightweight dollhouse toy that we could take with us places like that barbeque or even when we go on vacation and leave the rest of our toys at home.

There is a site called The Pretty Penny that has really adorable kits so that you can make fabric fairy houses. I love these "wee folk dwellings" and suggest you check them out! I wanted to do something easier. I am reasoning that the structure itself is not as important as the cute things that go inside. Therefore I took a Hafflinger clog shoebox and a lot of odds and ends and made my bakery out of felt and glue and cardboard. I had a lot of different trim which came in handy to cover corners, window edges and door.  On the two smaller sides, I glued on decorative windows and did not cut them out. For the front I wanted actual see-through windows. I cut two squares out and a door. Then I glued pieces of plastic over the window holes. I used a presentation cover from Staples but there are probably lots of other sources for a square of plastic.

The side that opens has a loop of embroidery floss sewed to it so that it can close and latch onto a button sewed onto the top.

I made ample use of trims, ric rac, pinking shears and ribbon to hide the flaws and I think I cam up with a cute building. The inside is wallpapered with polka dot paper so I decided to call it the "Polka Dot Cafe."

Now for the fun stuff: the interior! Bakery shelves were assembled out of tiny thimbles (found at The Family Dollar) and microscope slides. I used superglue to connect them. You could put a third slide underneath to make your shelf steadier or just have it stand on the two thimbles. 

Fimo or Sculpey baked goods are fun for the whole family to make. The loaves of bread and hot cross buns were easy to make by mixing brown and white to get a nice bread color. We also made some cute trays of tiny cookies, and had mixed success with cakes and pastries.

The table is made of thimbles and a cork top from the awesome American Science Surplus store (where I also got the glass slides.) I glued the whole thing to a flat button so that it will stand up nicely. You also can buy the tables and shelves at our Etsy store.

Now you are ready to play with your bakery!

Please join us at our Tumblr page. We are a little late to the game but are finding it to be a really good vehicle for sharing our own dollhouse photos as well as pictures of other dollhouse art out there. Also you can submit pictures of your own dollhouse crafts to add to the mini blog!

Miniature Greenhouse

Follow

I have always wanted a greenhouse of my own. Until that day comes,

this miniature greenhouse is keeping me pretty happy.

I finally found a good use for all these old thimbles. They make

perfect planters for tiny succulent plants.

For the greenhouse,  I used a glass terrarium that was no longer, housing any plants.

Look around for terrariums terrariums and glass domes). there are lots of options out there

for creating a small greenhouse.

Besides thimbles, I used plastic bottle lids, for planters. They also sell very tiny little terracotta

pots, you can use. Be creative, any small waterproof container, that can hold dirt

should work.

A view from the top.

I just took snippets from plants already in our garden.

I used some old wooden bobbins, and wood block for tables.

                                            The kids helped to build the rock table in the back. 

They loved stacking the rocks so much, they came up with

their own little project,.

Throw in some tiny tools, (we had from other toys), and your greenhouse is ready!

Set it outside, and if you're lucky, you may have some little visitors!

If you like what you see subscribe to our blog, over on the right sidebar, or by email. 

We are posting new ideas all the time!

***If you enjoyed this post and like tiny things, check our latest post

And you can make a cute and tiny scout sash. like this one.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Pinterest, and we love comments, suggestions and

 ideas from you guys!