Little Bear's Chair

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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!

Simple Dollhouse Sofas

It is incredibly easy and fun to make a sofa out of a sponge.
Here's how to do it:
  First, you will need

                    
(and some straight pins)






• Take a small kitchen sponge and cut an inch off the length.




(We tried a "wavy" sponge for this tutorial, which is just a little bit more work, than the straight sponge. You just have to be sure to pull the fabric tightly against the waved edge.)









•   Wrap this piece and the larger piece in the fabric of your choice. Use fabric glue or a hot glue gun to attach the fabric, using straight pins to hold it in place while the glue dries. Wrap it like a present. Trim excess fabric so it isn't bulky and try to tuck in edges so it lies as flat as possible against the sponge.

• Glue the smaller sponge, onto the large sponge, making a back for the couch. (at this point, it was easy for the 4 & 6 year old to really get involved. Glue and hold is a good job for them!) Let it set a few minutes to dry.

• We made feet out of wooden beads, stuck into the bottom of the sofa with straight pins and glue.   Glue the feet onto the big sponge piece.  
• We added "Rick Rack" to this couch, and some fancy trim to one (below) , but you could also leave a trim off completely. The fancy trim turned out to be a bit of a nuisance because it totally frays where it is cut and it is hard to glue down all the little loose pieces without having it show on the front of the sofa. If you use trim, you may want to use something that will cut with a neat edge, not something bulky and inclined to majorly unravel.

• Pillows- for such a tiny sofa we decided the pillows do not need stuffing. Just sewing two squares of felt together makes a cute, easy pillow.

                                 

                                                                       The fancy trimmed couch.

                                                  Looks pretty good, even if it's a little extra trouble.