Dollhouse Miniature Tabletop Christmas Village

 

Watch the video here.

 

I really tried to make this a short video but I just couldn't make it the length I wanted to and still get all the details in for you guys. I hope you enjoy the project. It does turn out so cute and it really is easy to do. You can vary the colors of paint used to make it go into your dollhouse and you can make the houses any height you want to give you the look you want. This tutorial is really just a starting point on this one.

So we are starting out with a green chenille stem, a jumbo craft-stick (¾” wide), a regular craft-stick, a slim stick (or a skinny stick) and a little more than 4” of ⅛” x ⅛” strip-wood.

Make a mark a on the sticks on each stick a bit from the end then use this to like up your cuts. Cut the ends at 45° angles to form a roof peak.

Paint the about 1” of ends of the sticks and allow to dry.

These are the colors I used for mine.

I also used a white paint pen to paint all the roofs.

Measure the height of each house and mark.

Cut to size. Also cut the strip-wood into 2 pieces that are 2” long.

Glue the houses between the two pieces of strip-wood and clamp to hold. Make sure everything is straight and the bottom is level and lined up.

 

 

 

Add windows and doors if desired.

Coat with mat Mod Podge.

Use the chenille stem to make a tree to go on each end of the row of houses. These are made just like the trees I made in last week's video which you can find here.

 

 

 

 

Lightly brush the roofs and trees with some more Mod Podge and sprinkle with white glitter.

Allow to dry and you have a cute little Christmas village for the dollhouse.

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.

Dollhouse Miniature Santa's Mailbox

 

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This week we are making another cute and easy Christmas decoration for the dollhouse, a Santa's mailbox. I have always loved these and decided that one would be perfect to sit on the post next to the steps on the front of the Beachside Bungalow. I made this entirely from stuff I had on hand and I bet a lot of you have these supplies or something that will work just as well in your stash.

We are starting with a jumbo craft-stick, the kind that is ¾” wide which we will cut 1” pieces from both round ends. These will form the ends of our mailbox. If you want to make yours shorter than I did make this piece a bit shorter. I like the taller mailbox because it gave me more room to write. For the base I am using one of the Dollar Tree tumbling tower blocks (their version of the Jenga game) which I cut to be 1” long. In addition we will also need a strip of white card-stock that is 1 ⅛” wide and a short piece of a wooden skewer.

First step is to glue the craft-stick pieces to the ends of the block piece. Make sure the bottom and side edges line up and the ends stand straight up and down. Allow this glue to dry.

Pre-curl your paper strip by carefully running the blade of your scissors along the back (like when you are curling ribbon for a bow) then line up one end with the bottom of the mailbox and glue the strip around the sides and top. We'll cut the extra paper off when the glue is dry.

Now paint the mailbox with some red craft paint. I used True Red by Anita's. 

Once dry add your lettering with white paint and paint the end of the skewer with white paint as well and allow to dry. You could opt to use stickers or stamp the design on your mailbox if you wish.

Add red stripes to the skewer and touch up as necessary on the mailbox.

Add some white paint to the top of the mailbox to look like snow.

Cut the skewer to make the handle on the door of your mailbox (mine is just a bit bigger than ¼”)

Once all the glue and paint is dry give a coat of Mod Podge to the entire mailbox. Allow to dry.

Brush a bit of Mod Podge over areas where snow would be sitting, the top where we painted it white and the top of the handle. Sprinkle with a white sparkly glitter. Allow to dry completely.

See that was really easy wasn't it?

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.

Dollhouse Miniature Large Serving Tray

 

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This week for the Saturday food related video we are making a large serving tray. Since every kitchen needs one I figured the dolls would love to have one too. This one is plenty big enough to hold the turkey we made a while back on the channel. I have some more ideas for things that can be served on it that I am planning to do in future tutorials also.

We start by cutting a piece of wood to form our tray over. This makes getting the shape so much easier. You can vary the size of the form you use to make other size trays/platters/plates. I will probably re-visit this technique in future projects also. The piece is cut 1 ¼” BY 2” for this project.

I like to use a clay that is equal parts translucent clay and colored clay. For the pieces I am making currently I am using white for the color then using chalk to color the outside of the items. I love this effect and I am really enjoying getting to use the pretty chalks that I usually don't get to use in food projects. You could also use a colored clay to begin with or use paint to color your project.

I used two craft sticks to help make sure my clay was rolled out to a consistent thickness. Then cut the clay oversize and start to form around the bottom and sides of the wood form. Do some smoothing to begin to get the shape then stick this in the freezer for about 15 minutes to get the clay cooled down to make it easier to work with. Take it out and immediately work on shaping it further, trimming excess clay away as needed. If it becomes too soft to work with stick it back in the freezer to firm it up and continue to work with it until you are happy.

Next color the bottom and sides with chalk in the color of you choice. I am loving this blue I am using lately. So pretty and it is going to look really nice in the dollhouse kitchen.

Now bake at 275°F for 10 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature before proceeding.

Now if you chose to paint instead of using chalks do that now.

Once you are finished it is time to give the tray a really thin coat of gloss Mod Podge. It is much better to use two thin coats than a thick coat of gloss Mod Podge on polymer clay. I find thicker coats tend to stay sticky while I don't usually have that problem with very thin coats.

Once dry your tray is ready to display.

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.

Dollhouse Miniature Tabletop Trees

 

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This week I have a really quick and easy project to help the dolls in the dollhouse get ready for Christmas. I was inspired to do this one because I have seen so many similar little trees being used on the Christmas decorating videos lately. I figured if they are that popular for real size decorating this year the dollhouse should have some also.

Because both beads and chenille stems come in so many variations the possibilities for the this one are practically endless. You can vary what you use based on both what you have and the style/colors you want to use.

In the video I used three different chenille stems so you could see how they each worked and how they looked in the end.

The green one I used was fairly much just a slightly fuller version of the regular chenille stem. I have bunches of these in all the colors of the rainbow and they are really easy to find. Your color options with these are practically limitless.

The white one is one of the extra fuzzy stems, I don't have a label for them either but I think they are usually labeled as “jumbo” chenille stems.

The one that looked like a tree branch I have had in my stash for many years but I do see them from time to time, especially at this time of year. I think Dollar Tree might have something similar either as a stem or a garland if the haul videos I saw recently are a good indication.

I also know there are some bumpy chenille stems sold in some stores and that would save some of the trimming if you have those in the right colors.

As for beads I used all wooden beads because I felt they would go better in my dollhouse with the style I am using to furnish it. The cube bead was about ¼” in all directions. The round one was about ½” in diameter. And the cylinder shaped one is about ⅛” in diameter and about ⅜” long. Just look through the beads you have to find something that will work in your dollhouse/scene. Colored plastic or glass beads would be lovely, metallic ones elegant, not to mention the ones that are decorated for Christmas already. Let you imagination go wild and show me the pictures of what you come up with!

If you are using either the fuller “jumbo” style stem or the one that looks like a branch those tend to lay better one way than the other. Decide which way the fuzzy part lays more naturally and that will be your tree top. I like to start the process of trimming before I cut. I find it is easier to cut the tree the to a pleasing length if I know a little about how it is going to be shaped. I cut most of mine anywhere from just under ½” to around ¾” long. Remember part of the stem will need to go down into the bead. The fuller the stem the longer you need to cut it.

Just dip the cut end into a bit of glue and slide it into the bead and allow to dry completely.

Once dry you can trim to the final shape you like and display the trees pretty much anywhere in your dollhouse.

If the beads don't want to stand up you might need to sand the bottom a bit to smooth it out.

I do recommend using a bit of sticky stuff to help the trees stay in place. The repositionable glue dots work pretty well for this. If you aren't sure about using anything sticky on your mini furniture you can always glue your trees to a tray of some kind that can be placed and then removed easily.

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.

Dollhouse Miniature Block Porch Sign

 

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This week for our Sunday tutorial we are working on decorating the front porch of the dollhouse. Please note that when I filmed this video I was intending for it to be a short Tuesday video. Then the project took way longer to make than I had anticipated so I decided to move it to being a Sunday video. 

So we were able to do this with one regular sheet of card-stock and 3 strips of quilling paper. If you have narrow ribbon in the color you want to use that will work well too. I don't have any narrow ribbon in blue right now but I have a mess of quilling paper that escaped it's packaging a while back that I want to use up.

The three boxes are: 1 ¼” by 1 ¼” by 1 ¼”

1” by 1” by 1”

¾” by ¾” by ¾”

I started the project by drawing a grid for the boxes. I forgot to take a picture of the grid but it is very similar to the one we made for the moving boxes a few months ago.

After the grid is drawn it is a simple matter of cutting and scoring on the lines that we drew.

Once you have the box cut and scored we need to decorate the fronts. I used an alcohol marker to do the two letters and a ballpoint pen of a similar color to make the snowflake. Once the letters are on the boxes we glue the boxes together starting with the tab and then the flaps.

Add a ribbon if you wish then glue the boxes into a tower and add a bow.

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.

Dollhouse Miniature Fall Cake

 

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This week we are making a cake to display on the cake stand from last week's tutorial. If you missed that one you can find it here.

This cake is going to be designed to be displayed as the whole cake. It would look lovely in a lot of mini scenes, in the kitchen/dining room of the dollhouse, in a mini bakery, in a mini cafe, etc. We will make some sliced cakes later on but this one I felt was just better this way.

I was inspired by a cake that I saw in a magazine article about fall entertaining. The cake in the article was a beautiful 3 layer carrot cake with beautiful buttercream frosting, pecan halves on top of piped frosting swirls and the bottom had a beautiful band of chopped pecans. There was also a nest of shaved carrot strips on the top. I was planning to replicate all but the carrot strips but I was so happy with how my frosting was acting on the top I decided to skip the piped frosting and just add the pecan halves to the top. I am glad I did, I think the way I was initially planning to decorate it would have been a little too much on the small cake top.

The first step this week was to make the pecans. We need to use mostly translucent clay with just a small amount of an off white (beige, very light brown) color to tint it a bit. For the pecan halves we just need to make tiny balls then flatten and mark them with 3 little lines from a pointy tool (I used my trusty dental pick)

The pecans were then colored with a brushing of chalk in brown/ red brown/ golden colors. Pretty much the same colors as I use when I make bread or any baked good, maybe a touch darker but a similar color.

For the chopped nuts I rolled out a thin slab of the same clay coated the top with the same chalk mixture and then used my pointy tool to just “tease” off little bits. They don't need to be perfect or even strictly in scale we just want irregular shapes the resemble chopped nuts. We will chop them further when we are ready to use them. I made a lot more of these chopped nuts than I need for this project, that is because I had the clay there and I felt I might as well just use it up. I can store the finished chopped nuts in my clay tool area and they will be ready to use in future project so I don't have to do them again for a very long time.

Both the pecan halves and the chopped ones were baked at 275°F for 10 minutes.

Next up was the cake blank, back when I used to sell minis I would make these up in bulk and have them on hand to decorate whenever I needed to make a cake. For this use an inexpensive white clay. I used Original Sculpey rolled to ½” thick and cut it with a ¾” round clay cutter. The clay cake blank was then baked at 275°F for 30 minutes and allowed to cool to room temperature before using it.

If you don't want to use clay for this part you can cut a piece of ¾” dowel to ½” and use that. It does have to be cut perfectly flat though.

Once the cake blank has cooled it is time to frost it. I am just making some frosting from polymer clay. I again used some Original Sculpey mixed with just a tiny bit of a very pale yellow Sculpey III, I don't know the color because that part of the package was missing. It just takes a tiny bit, like in the video, you just want to give the frosting a more “buttery” look than the plain clay would give. Once you are happy with the color mix in enough TLS (Translucent Liquid Sculpey) to give it a frosting consistency, pretty much just like real frosting.

Now I like to just frost the sides of the cake then bake it (5 minutes @ 275°F) then frost the top in another step. This is much easier and a lot less messy.

Since the frosting on the top swirled so nicely I decided to just add 8 of the pecan halves directly to the top of the cake. Try to keep them evenly spaced.

Bake the cake again for 5 minutes at 275°F.

 

 

Once cooled again use a toothpick to add a thin bead of frosting around the base of the cake and add the chopped nuts, chopping them as needed to be in scale. Once you have gone all the way around bake again at 275°F for 10 minutes.

Now give your cake a really good look over and fix any areas that you are not happy with. I did have to add a few more chopped nuts in a spot I had missed. I also spread a bit of TLS around the base of the chopped nuts on the bottom of the cake to make them a bit more secure.

Once cooled your cake is ready to display in your favorite mini scene.

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.

Dollhouse Miniature Snowy Tree Doormat

 

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This week we are making a winter themed doormat for the dollhouse front porch. I love how it turned out even if I did end up having to hurry to get this video done. You see this is not what I had planned to do today, I had something else in mind that I actually made. That video turned out so long that I decided to make it the Sunday video instead of today's video. I really want to keep these Tuesday videos short for you guys. Sunday is still (and probably always will be) my “main” tutorial on the channel.

So just like all the other doormats we have made I cut the base from the same brown felt that I have been using. This is felt from the fabric store that is purchased by the yard and is 72” wide. It is heavier in weight than the stuff that is sold by the piece in the craft store. Either will work just fine. The mat is cut 1 ½” by 2 ½” .

 

 

I gave the doormat a coat of matte Mod Podge to seal it so it takes a lot less paint. It also makes the top surface a bit smoother for painting on details.

Once the Mod Podge was dry I gave it a coat of this pretty blue paint that Plaid sent to me. It is Bright Blue by Apple Barrel.

 

 

Then onto the details, I wanted some simple rustic trees so I used some white craft paint (White by Apple Barrel) and a small brush to make 5 trees that were very simple. I then added a “snow bank” to the bottom of the trees and some dots for snowflakes in the sky above them.

That is really all there is to this one. It was super fast and really fun and actually turned out better than I thought it would.

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.

Dollhouse Miniature Bird Feeder

 

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I was sitting here thinking about what I wanted to do for today's tutorial the other day while I was looking at the front porch on the Beachside Bungalow. I was toying with a couple of different ideas when I started thinking back to when my kids were little. This is the time of year we always got all our bird feeders in order for the winter. We would make sure they were all clean and do any repairs that needed to be done. This was also when we usually replaced any that were starting to not look very good. We would be talking about all the birds we would be enjoying over the winter months as they got food from those feeders. And making sure our books on identifying the different birds were close by the window. So I decided that the doll family should probably hang at least one bird feeder on that front porch.

This is actually one of the items I used to make for sale years ago when I sold minis. I made a lot of them and they were always popular, I think I sold out every time I listed them. The feeder we are making today is pretty close to the same on I used to sell. I did simplify a couple of steps for you guys so the video would go together a bit faster. And also came up with a couple of improvements too. 

This bird feeder is made of some really simple parts that most of us probably have on hand.

The first step is to prep the feeder base and the wire that will become the hanging loop. For the base I used a ½” button, these can be found in fabric stores and also in a lot of craft stores. The one I used to day had four holes while I usually try to use one with only 2 holes, this is what I had on hand. Also I loved how it went with the bead cap I used for the top of the feeder. I am not sure what gauge wire I used since the packaging is totally missing.

Slide the wire down through one hole in the button and then back up through the other hole. Use some pliers to twist the wire around itself as close to the button as possible.

The underside of my button had a nice recessed area which was very handy for this next step. I needed to figure out a way to prevent the tiny beads I am using as the “bird seed” from falling out the bottom of the feeder. I used just a standard hole punch and made a disc of white card-stock (grey would have been better but I couldn't find any) and used some glue to attach this to the bottom of the feeder.

Once the glue was dry I used more glue to add some no-hole micro-beads in black to the top side of the button to be the seeds that are waiting to be eaten by the birds.

Now it is time to cut your tube portion of the bird feeder to size. Today I used one of the protective covers that was on my new paint brushes. It was the perfect size. When I used to make these to sell I used the flexible plastic tubing from the aquarium section of the pet store. Whatever you use cut it to be 1” long.

I added just a small drop of super glue to the top of the beads and slid the plastic tube in place. Allow the super glue to dry before you go on to the next step.

Now we will be adding the “bird-seed” for this I am using some more of the same black micro-beads. Since my feeder represents a thistle seed feeder this works really well. When I used to sell these I also made some with some really coarse sand that was different shades of brown and tan. I think it was from the pet store in the area where they have stuff for lizards and the like. It did a good job of looking like mixed birdseed in scale.

Now we need to put the lid onto the bird feeder, for this use I am using a bead cap from the craft store (jewelry section) I used another drop of super glue to hold this in place. Just add the glue to the top of the plastic tube and slide the bead cap down the wire until it is in place. Again we need to wait for the glue to dry.

Next we need to add some more bird seed and make sure it is going to stay in place. For this I used a bit of gloss Mod Podge and a small old brush. I do try to use an old brush for this step because I really want to cram that Mod Podge down into the beads that are already in place. Both the action of the really pushing the brush into those beads and the fact there could still be a bit of super glue that has not dried all the way I don't want to risk my good paint brushes for this step.

Now once Mod Podge dries we need to trim the wire and make a loop for hanging at the top.

For the hanger you can do a couple of different things. For this video I took the easiest route and simply cut a piece of wire to length and bent each end to form a hook. You could also use some jewelry chain to make a nicer hanger which I might do in a future video if I decide to make more bird feeder options.

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.