Little Clover Clips- for St. Patricks Day

You can make your own luck...or lucky charm this St. Patrick's Day, with these cute 

Four leaf clover clips.

You can clip a note to them, as a holiday surprise..clip to a treat from 

a leprechaun. Or even stand the clip upright, and use as a place card holder.

These are really simple to make. In fact my kids came up with the idea, when I let them play
around with a bag of random wooden shapes and some Popsicle sticks.

 I used a regular, wooden clothespin, and then I had

a bag of irregular wooden shapes, you can find at most craft stores.

Pick out 1 star, and 4 little hearts, the same size.

The star will be your base, add glue to this, and attach the petals

to the glue on the base. 

 All points toward the center.

 Then allow your clover petals to dry.

You can attach these clovers to anything...when my kids made these, they

attached them to popsicle sticks, and we displayed them in our plants.

 Then attatch to your clothes pin....the end that pinches things...not the 

end you press on.

Then wait for it to dry. They look pretty cute natural wood color, but 

I liked the green for the holiday, adding a little gold glitter paint over the final coat.

Have a Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Tiny Herbal

Follow

We are reblogging this very old post because no one really noticed it the first time around and we think it deserves a second look. Also, Corinne is sick with a cold and she takes all of our excellent photos (the dark and blurry ones are all my work) so we are going to put a brand new post on hold till she is ready to take some excellent picutres of the tiny Amish quilts we are making.

I decided to add some books to our dollhouse library. I thought an herbal picture book would be perfect as it could have pictures of herbs that I like, and I wouldn't worry about text for this first book.
First, figure out what your cover will be made of. I used felt but faux or real leather would also be nice. Fell free to alter sizes. I will give you the measurements for the book in the picture.
 

• Cut the felt into a 2 1/2 x 1 1/2 inch rectangle.
• Glue a small rectangle of thin paper on to it.
• Glue on 2 3-inch pieces of string.

• Next make some blank pages for your book. These will be 2 1/4 x 1 1/4 inches. They should be on thin white paper except for one end paper which should be colored or patterned paper.

• Now find some tiny pictures to add to your book. I used Google Images to find lots of herb images. Your rectangles will be folded in half to make two pages so make sure to locate small pictures.

• Cut out your blank pages and fold the white ones in half. Leave the endpaper flat.
• Glue your pictures into the book.
• I used three pages. 
• Stack your pages together with the colored endpaper facing up.
• Use a sewing machine or stitch by hand right down the center.
• Glue your end paper down on top of the felt.
• Make a title and glue it on. I used Harrington size 8.

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.

Day 16 - Embroidery-redwork snowflake

Day 16's tiny Christmas Craft is a redwork snowflake.  You can start from the beginning of our
tiny crafts with Day 1, Shrink your favorite books.

I have always loved the look of  redwork embroidery, the simple red lines against a white background.

You can learn more about redwork here, if you are interested.

Day 10 -Paper hats, boats and boxes

Ah, we are on to week 2 of our tiny Christmas crafts, with Day 10's, tiny paper goods!

Feel free to start from the beginning of our list, with Day 1- Shrink your Favorite Books.

Since Christmas is coming, you may be wondering what you should get for your dollhouse family. 

Here are some fun, things you can make from paper, using origami.

You can use decorative holiday paper to be festive, origami paper or newspaper, for a traditional paper hat/boat look.

Day 9 Mini Christmas wreath

This is Day 9 of our Tiny Christmas Crafts. If you'd like, you may start at the beginning, "Shrink Your Favorite Book"

You can make this very simple dollhouse wreath using all sorts of materials. I used bells, a ribbon scrap, beads and a pipe cleaner.

If you want to make your own stone fireplace, learn how to here.

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!

Easy Pipecleaner Mushrooms

                                       

I have had fairy tales on the brain lately, and these easy, little pipe cleaner mushrooms seem to add the perfect cute and magical touch to a storybook setting.

I learned how to make these simple little mushrooms from

 this Japanese craft book. (ISBN978-4-277-43144-6)

Start with the base, cut between 1 1/2" to longer, just depending on what you want

the length to be. Make a super tiny little loop on top, to hold the top on of mushroom in place.

The top, was just red or brown pipe cleaner, twisted around. Starting at the top, then wrapping around,

larger as you go. You can wrap this around your pinkie finger to help with the shape, or kids hands are great for this too! The sizes can vary, just so it looks cute on top of the white base.

You've got the top and bottom, so ad a little dab of craft glue to hold them in place.

Then, using craft glue again, the tiniest amount, add some tiny white seed beads to the top.

And there you go!

So many things you do with these now.  Add them to a fairytale environment, use in a wreath, add

to little girl headbands or barrettes, or I think they could be gathered into a cool brooch.

They are also pretty cute just to sit around.

They make me pretty happy.