Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone from our home to yours!!!!!!!!!!

Dollhouse Miniature Walnuts

Watch the video here

This week for Trash to Treasure Thursday I thought I would show you another little trick that has been around for years. I had forgotten all about this until it was mentioned on one of the online mini groups I am a member of. I am not sure why it slipped my mind but I should have shared it a long time ago.

Coriander seeds should be fairly easy to get your hands on. I know it is used in cooking a lot around my house. If you aren't familiar with it in the seed form you might know the fresh herb as cilantro, which is a fairly common herb in several styles of cooking.

You really only need a few seeds for your dollhouse display so hopefully you have some of these in the kitchen cabinet if not ask your friends they may have them.

As with any real food product in the dollhouse you will need to be on the watch for critters of all kinds that decide you have provided these for them. Just check on them regularly and it should be fine.

You might also try sealing the seeds into the bowl with some matte finish sealer like Mod Podge. I think that will help keep things out of your display.

For a bowl you can see from the video you can use just about anything, I couldn't find a bowl today but a wooden button did a fine job. Just check your stash of buttons, bead and wooden shapes to see what you come up with. 

 

Dollhouse Miniature Gingerbread House

Watch the video here.

This week I decided to show you how to make a gingerbread house for either your dollhouse or for Barbie and her friends to enjoy. I purposely didn't complete the decorating on mine because I wanted to leave it up to your imagination. I would love to see what you do with this project so be sure to post the pictures on the Facebook page.

We start out with a pattern to cut out the walls. Feel free to either draw your own or you can use mine. There are also tons of patterns online for real size gingerbread houses that you could easily adapt to the doll size.

My side walls measure ¾” x 1 ¼”

end walls ¾” x 1 1/8”

Roof ¾” x 1 3/8”

In real life gingerbread houses come in all sizes from tiny to huge so let your imagination go wild. You could make yours a castle or a cottage or anything in between.

I used some of the candy I made in last week's video to decorate along with some other mini candy I had on hand. I also used some of the Tulip Beads in a Bottle just because I have been wanting to use them for minis since I got them. I am sure I will be finding some more mini uses for them in the future.

For our frosting I am using just some plain old latex caulk. You find this in the painting/ home improvement section of the store. It is a very useful and inexpensive item to have on hand. It makes pretty foolproof frosting and cleans up with soap and water before it dries. You can also mix it with acrylic paints if you want to color it. It can be piped like frosting or just spread on so it really is pretty versatile to use.

To decorate your house you can use anything you have many beads and buttons would look great. You can make “cookies” out of the left over clay and use those to decorate.

Look online for pictures of real gingerbread houses to get your inspiration if you need help getting started. 

 

Dollhouse Miniature Wreath

Watch the video here.

I thought for Trash to Treasure this week I would show you a really simple Christmas wreath. This one again can be made in a variety of sizes and since real wreaths come in many sizes it will easily cross over to Barbie scale too.

I like to use the split rings that I show in the video because they are pretty cheap and easy to find. They are the same rings that are on most key rings I have ever owned. In fact the first time I made one of these I used the ring off an extra key ring that was laying around.

For the size shown in the video (package says the rings are 33mm which for those of us that aren't good at metric they measure around 1 ¼” in diameter) I like to use 3 chenille stems to get a good coverage. You might be able to get by with just 2 but 1 won't go all the way around.

Then it is on to the fun part of the project. Decorating! I just did a very simple decoration on mine but feel free to go wild. I would have done more but it was freezing in my work room the day I filmed.

Look through your ribbons, buttons and beads to find items to attach to your wreath. I am sure that you can also make little paper shapes, use tiny stickers or whatever else your imagination can come up with.

If you make a wreath or any of the other projects I have shown on video be sure to post them on the Facebook wall. We all love to see what you are making. Also feel free to post pictures of any of your mini projects on there or to post questions too. 

 

Dollhouse Miniature Christmas Candy

Watch the video here.

This week we are going to play with some polymer clay and create a few Christmas candies. I only got to show you two varieties in the video. There were a couple of reasons for that: I knew the video was getting a bit long, I did tape a third one but I didn't like how it turned out so I decided to not use that one, and most importantly I was beginning to get a sore throat so I just didn't feel like talking anymore. I gave a wonderful base to work from though so use your imagination and come up with more ideas on your own.

Just a hint we might be using some of this candy next week on a project. I hope things go well and we can anyway.

I did make a video a few years back on how to make candy canes and you can find that here if you would like to make those too.

For the video I used all Fimo brand clay but any brand will work just fine. I do feel you need to add a translucent clay to each of the colors and I vary the amount depending on what I am making and how I feel like mixing it that day. It is not an exact science so have fun. I am not sure what the proportions were on the candy cane video but they were probably different than I used on this video. It is really up to you how much translucent clay you use in the mix just be sure to use some.

The colors I used were: Tropical Green, Indian Red, White and of course Translucent, but you can use any colors you want. Any red and any green will work for Christmas candy I just pulled out the ones I can to first in the box. I really wanted to use Pearl for the white portions but I seem to be out of that color so I used the white. You can even use the glittered clays for candy, really anything goes.

If you change the colors out you can make these same candies for any holiday or any season. Again let your imagination go wild and see what you come up with.

Salad for the Dolls

Watch the video here.

This week for Trash to Treasure Thursday I thought I would show you a quick and easy way to make some salad for your dolls. This is a project that will work for just about any size doll.

The secret to this salad is the snow flake stuff that the stores sell around Christmas for placing along with the Christmas villages that are so popular. You will need to get the variety that doesn't include a lot of the iridescent flakes, if your bag has some be sure to pick them out (they just don't look very convincing as salad)

It is totally up to you how many colors of green paint you use, I usually use between 3 and 5 colors of green and I almost always add a purple too. In real life I almost always buy the bags of salad that have lots of types of greens in them and that include the purple radicchio also so that is what I make for the dolls too.

This time the colors I used were:

Delta Ceramcoat- Leaf Green

Seminole Green

Village Green

Grape

FolkArt- Olive Green

If you are unsure of what colors to use just stop by the local produce department and look at the bags of salad for an idea of what colors are in there.

You can of course just use one color and sometimes I do that too.

For display purposes you can toss the colored, dry salad with a bit of white glue and then place it in whatever container you wish to use. It will then stay put for many years.

If you want to add some “salad dressing” you can paint in a color to give the effect you are looking for.

This salad also looks great when you toss in some polymer clay additions like slices of radish, carrot, olives, tomatoes, whatever your dolls would like to have.