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.

Day 7 Fireplace and Stockings

We are posting a daily miniature craft leading up to Christmas, you can start at Day 1 with our "Shrink Your Favorite Book" post and check out the daily updates.

Every dollhouse needs a fireplace. This one is decorated with tiny pebbles and looks good year-round but especially at Christmas when we can use to to hang our stockings. We provided instructions for the fireplace a few months ago. All you need is a small box and some stones and some heavy-duty glue.

                             

For stockings you can use fabric scraps, felt, trim and anything you have laying around. You can sew them up or glue them together. Many people find an orange in their stocking on Christmas morning so it might be fun to make some tiny oranges....or lumps of coal!

Check back tomorrow, for Day 8 - Tiny  paper chains.

Day 6 -Tiny holiday records

We will be featuring tiny holiday projects every day until Christmas! This is the December 6 project. Check back tomorrow for another adorable idea.

One of the first things I do in December is get out all of our Christmas records so we can get into the holiday spirit with some of the Oldies. Why not print out and assemble some tiny dollhouse albums for your little holiday revelers?

For a turntable you can visit this site and learn how to make an awesome one. it very cleverly uses the back of a pin as a needle. It is also way too big for our house so you may want to modify it.

You can find our record templates at the Google Docs site. To assemble the record cover print out the templates. Cut and fold. Glue with the tabs inside.
We made our records out of a black vinyl folder, using a one-inch circle punch. Make a tiny hole in the center, add on a small circle label and you are all set. I include some blank records with the template so you can make your own. Simply find album art you want and shrink it down so that it fits in the box. Or draw your own covers!

A Tiny Cage for Spot

Our dollhouse has a resident dog, little Spot. I decided today to make him some tiny accessories, starting with a doghouse. I began by deciding how big a house I would need. Based on Spot being on the small size I got the measurements for a doghouse and adjusted it for the 1/12 ratio. I came up with a house that would be 2.2 inches square.

• go to Ideogram and use their box template maker to generate a pattern 2.5 inches square (or the size of your choice.)
• print out the pattern and cut it out.  
• trace the pattern onto thin cardboard. (I used a Triscuit box, but a Milk Bone box would have been even more appropriate.) Save the paper template for the roof.

• Cut a half circle out of the cardboard for a door. You can do this freehand.
• Cut out the rest of the cardboard pieces and score on the fold lines.
• To assemble, glue one or two edges at a time and use making tape to hold the piece in place while it dries.
• 

          

• make a roof by using two of the squares from the template and adding a triangle. (See photo.)
  
  
• the roof goes on last. it should fit over the bottom part. I glued it and used tape to hold it on while it dried..

                                  

• I painted my doghouse with multiple layer of acrylic paint. I went with the old standby red and brown but you could match the doghouse to the dollhouse for more cuteness.

• After I painted the doghouse I thought it looked sort of flimsy so i wound up gluing over the side and roof with felt and fabric. I think it looks much better. you can see both finishes in the pictures.

Add a sign and your tiny dog has a tiny house!

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!

Old-Fashioned Desk Set

I just finished a whole bunch of Sherlock Holmes books and am thinking about making a little corner of Holme's sitting room that would comprise of Doctor Watson's desk and chair and book case. I am having a lot of fun figuring out what to include in this little scenario. I got started with the project today by making a desk set for Doctor Watson's desktop. I loosely interpreted my desk set from the awesome book Making Dollhouse Miniatures with Polymer Clay by Sue Heaser. Sue's desk set is way more professional-looking and also uses metallic silver powder to give it a great finish. I used silver Sculpey III that I had and what materials I could find in our house. I still think the results are pretty cute!

Step 1- Roll out some thin Sculpey and cut out your tray. I cut a rectangle of paper 1 3/8 inch x 3/4 inch and used it as a guide to cut my silver Sculpey rectangle.

Step 2 -  I rolled out some very thin tubes of clay and added it on as an edge.

Step 3 - Find two glass beads to be your inkwells. They should be around 3/16 inch diameter and a cylinder shape. Stick them into the tray hard to make an indentation where they will stand. Use a toothpick or sewing needle to make a mark where a pen would rest.

Step 4- Not pictured very well but roll out small silver clay balls and cut them in half. Use two of them as lids on top of your beads and one half in the middle as the pen stand,

 

Step 5- Make a feather. If you can find a tiny one that would be the best solution. I did not have a small feather so I cut a feather-shaped template from paper and glued a toothpick sliver onto it then covered both sides with pieces of white feather. When it was dry I trimmed it.

 

Step 6 - Roll up 4 tiny balls into feet.

Step 7- follow your directions and bake in the oven. Feet will not be attached yet and feather will not be included. Glass jars will be stuck into their spots.

Step 8 - After it all cool glue the balls onto the bottom.

Step 9 - Add your feather and you are all done! Note that my trim did not stay on the tray very well. I probably should have done a better job scoring it and attaching it.

Little Bear's Chair

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Corinne and I are making an entire Goldilocks and the Three Bears house complete with handmade rustic furnishings and pom pom bears. At least that is our plan. Right now I have a lot of materials that I have gathered this week in Northern Michigan and a chair and a half to show for my efforts. Making tiny rustic furniture is tricky! I can't give step by step directions because I suspect every chair I make will be very different, but here are some general guidelines.

First, collect lots of twigs. When I started, I gathered any twig I saw on the ground. The furniture made from this hodge podge looked sort of like Frankenstein with different colors and textures. Not good. So sort twigs by type of wood. There are lots of beautiful birch trees up here so I amassed a giant pile of birch twigs.
Second, use clippers to cut your twigs into manageable lengths. I made lots of small and medium straight pieces and a few curvy ones so they were on hand and ready to work with.
Third, decide what kind of glue you want to use. I used regular tacky craft glue. You might want to consider super glue as it might eliminate the difficult clamping positions I found myself in.
Fourth, lay out some chair parts like the back, the seat, the legs, and glue them separately. I used masking tape to hold pieces together or propped stuff up while it dried using anything I could find. Here I am using a box of paperclips to hold the front legs up while they dry.

 

In the next photo I am using masking tape to hold pieces onto Papa Bear's chair, which is still in progress.

 

I can tell there is a huge learning curve on this. There are excellent instructions on making a rustic heart chair at About.com. 

Coming soon: the beds!

Miniature Checkers

This game board was inspired by a very cute backgammon board I found among my old dollhouse furniture from the seventies. It looks like it took a lot more time than it actually did and you can't tell that most of it is made from cardboard so it is a very rewarding project.

I used white cardboard. I stenciled a 2 inch square onto it but did not cut it out right away.

I drew 7 equal lines down each side to make the checker pattern, and colored in alternate squares using a black permanent marker. I tried to use regular marker pen and colored pencil but the cardboard has a bit of a shine to it and only the permanent marker worked. After I filled in the squares I cut out the board using a razor blade.

To make the game pieces I took black and red fimo (or sculpey) clay and rolled out two tiny tubes. The tubes should be smaller in diameter than your finished game piece will be. I used a razor blade to cut 12 pieces in each color. I cut pieces that were thicker than the ideal game piece, then flattened each one with my finger on a piece of tinfoil. I have had some bad experiences laboring long and hard on a Fimo project and then burning it to a crisp in the oven. These pieces are so incredibly tiny I just put them in the toaster oven, tinfoil on top of a tray, at 225 degrees for 8 minutes.

Next I took a strip of balsa trim that I bought at a craft store. It is 1/4 inch wide. Balsa wood is excellent because you can cut it fairly easily with a razor blade or exacto knife. I cut 2 pieces 2 inches long and glued them to opposite sides of the board. Then I lay the trim across the 3rd and 4th sides and marked with a a pencil where the cut should go. I used the razor blade to cut an angle where the two sides meet.
To finish up I glued a square of green felt to the bottom to hide the bottom.

Finally, I glued the pieces to the board. A more realistic checker board would have some loose pieces on the side that have been captured. I don't think my children will be able to keep track of tiny loose microscopic checkers so I glued everything down.

Gumball Dome Tiffany Lamp

If you've ever thought you might want to construct a ship out of toothpicks or engage in some other seriously tiny work this is a good starter project for you. It involves very tiny pieces and is a little tough but it is a lot smaller than a toothpick vessel and does not take very long to complete. You take a gumball dome and turn it into a stained-glass lampshade. There seem to be two sizes of gumball domes floating around out there. I got one that is tiny (1 inch diameter) and that seems to be just right for a dollhouse lamp. I would not recommend using one of the jumbo ones that hold giant gumballs as that would be way too big for your tiny house.

I cut tissue paper into very small pieces and glued it to the shade, leaving tiny spaces between pieces. I used regular tacky glue for this. I put the glue on a small section of lampshade and covered it with tissue scraps (a wet finger works well for picking them up.) After each small section I would take a break and do something else before continuing so that section could dry.

 When the shade was covered with tissue and dry, I filled in the spaces with a thick black Sharpie (permanent pen). For the base I glued a nail through a small button and then glued the whole thing onto a washer. There are lots of other bases you could make. You could use other found hardware items,or rig something up with pipe cleaner and bottle cap or whatever you can find laying around the house that looks elegant enough to sport a Tifffany lampshade. I used modeling clay to wedge the shade onto the nail head, dug out one of the adorable staff members from my childhood dollhouse for a formal touch, and the lamp is complete!