Dollhouse Miniature Toy Boats

Watch the video here.

I have still been working on trying to organize my craftroom/office and once again found myself distracted by looking at the magazines I was trying to put away. It is just so darn tempting to page through them as I sort them out. LOL (by the way the oldest one I have is from 1975, so the collection is huge)

As I was looking I happened upon a photo of a miniature bedroom for a little boy. One of the items that caught my eye was the collection of toy boats on a shelf. These were totally cute and although I didn't stop to read the article they looked pretty easy to re-create.

One again I pulled out the box that I put the small pieces of scrap wood into. It is just one of those plastic shoe boxes and it is pretty full. I have odds and ends of a lot of different types and shapes of wood. Some are off cuts from projects, some are leftover wooded pieces I have purchased and a few wooden beads have found their way in there as well as a few craft sticks.

I just grabbed an assortment of items and started playing with sticking them together.

I knew the boats needed to have pointed fronts so I got out my Eazy-Cutter since that is my favorite wood cutting tool for small bits. I also grabbed a couple of bottles of craft paint. It was really fun and after a little while I had a couple of little boats that looked pretty good I think.

Start with the base of your boat, I used some craft sticks (regular size and jumbo) and also some scraps of strip wood. Just keep scale in mind when you work on this.

I wanted my boats to be anywhere from a little over a ½” long to just under 1” long. I found I liked this part painted white the best but any color would work. I think a slightly larger one painted all in gray with black details might be really cool too.

I also painted an assortment of small beads, small dowels, and small strip wood at the same time. (I even got to use the drying rack I made for last week's tutorial)

When all the paint was dry I got out my glue and started to assemble my boats. I am not trying to replicate any real boats but I am sure it would be fun to do so. (If you do that be sure to send me a photo)

I was going to try to make some sail boats but totally forgot when I got started. To that all you would need to do is cut some triangles from cardstock and glue to the top of the base part. Maybe next time.

So this is certainly an open ended project. You can go so many directions with the basic idea and you could create an entire marina of boats.

Here are a couple more photos of the boats I have made so far.

Remember to share a picture with me if you do make some. I love to see what you are making too.

Also if you have something in particular you want to learn to make let me know maybe I can figure out a tutorial for it.

Drying Rack for Miniatures

Watch the video here.

For the last couple of weeks I have been doing a cleaning/organizing project in my craftroom/office. Things had gotten a bit messy (okay, let's be truthful here, a lot messy) and I had to do something to gain back some floor space.

As part of this project I have been re-organizing my huge collection of mini magazines and books that I have on hand. One problem with this is that from time to time I start browsing in the pages of those books and magazines instead of putting them where they belong. Anyway, while doing just this the other day I happened to come across a picture of a drying rack that someone had shared in one of those magazines many years ago. The design stuck in my head and I decided to come up with something very similar for my craft table. I think this is going to be a very useful tool so I had to bring you all along as I assembled it.

I didn't think to write down where I had seen the original, sorry, I know I should have but didn't even think of it at the time.

So for my version we need:

a piece of wood for the base. I was hoping for something a bit larger than what I ended up using but this is what I had on hand

a short piece of square wood strip around a ½” in size by 3” to 4” long, 1 end needs to be cut straight

4 wooden clothes pins with one side cut short

wood glue

super glue

I am once again using my two glue method of super glue to hole immediately and then wood glue to the work of holding my project together long term. I decided on wood glue this time because it gives a much superior bond with wood. In fact if properly cured the wood glue bond will be stronger than the wood itself.

Fist glue the piece of square strip wood to the base. The just glue the clothes pins as I showed on the video to the top.

Allow the project to dry at least overnight before using to allow the glue to cure.

My son pointed out that in his opinion the clothes pin clamps were backwards. He is left handed, so if you if you are like him, a lefty, simply face the clothes pins the other way. Then you have a tool that is customize to you.

I think this little tool is going to be very useful on my work table and I love that it was made with stuff I had on hand so it was free.

Andhere is a link to my other drying rack video in case you want to check that one out too.

Wood Coloring- Follow Up

Watch the video here.

This week we are finally getting back to our wood coloring experiment. I filmed the original video over a year ago. I had planned to do this follow up after 6 months but I totally forgot to. I even had it in my planner to do, it just got pushed out until it was forgotten. If you haven't seen that video (or don't remember it) you can find it here.

Someone had asked me a couple of months ago and I had intended to get to it but again I just never did. So I totally dropped the ball on this one. Someone asked me again on my Facebook page so I decided that rather than just plan to do this I would make myself do this first thing today.

Over all I really think this is a fun experiment. Would I use any of these products on projects? Sure, not all of them but some did turn out really well. I have already done tutorials using nail polish on wood, that has been a favorite of mine for years. I think I am going to have to plan out some project using some of these other things too. Now that being said, I would not use any of these to finish an expensive mini piece. These are for fun projects. I am not sure what the long term results would be.

So here are the photos original and follow up. Side by side so you can judge for yourself what worked and what didn't.

Coffee and Tea

now

then

Food color

now

then

Hair dye

now

then

Ketchup & mustard

now

then

Kool aid

now

then

Lip products

now

then

Markers

now

then

Nail polish

now

then

Red wine

now

then

Rit dye

now

then

Soy sauce

now

then

Wrapping tissue

now

then

I Need Some Ideas for Tutorials

Okay guys, you read my blog and you watch my videos and I am so thankful for that. I need some help from all of you now. I am having a horrid time coming up with tutorial ideas, or should I say new tutorial ideas. At least 4 times in the last week I have had on idea for this week's tutorial, (I even rounded up materials for a couple of them) only to check on my channel and find that I had already made that project. I have over 300 videos on my channel now, most of them are tutorials and I am running out of new ideas! I need you to all help me.

So I am asking for two things, first off if you have a project you are stuck on and would like a tutorial for it let me know either here or over on the Facebook page. Large or small I just need ideas!

Secondly, what are you working on? Tell me about it, I might get some ideas from your projects.

So everyone put on those thinking caps and give me some ideas so I can film more tutorials for you. I do love making the videos for you. (more about that in a couple of days)

Dollhouse Miniature Tomato Slices

Watch the video here.

I do want to preface this blog post by telling you that if you also follow my 18” doll channel/blog I am doing the same project over there this week. In fact some of the video will be the exact same footage, but then will cut to scale specific to finish the project.

This week I decided to tackle a cane that I have wanted to do for a couple of years. I have just been to chicken to try it. I have looked at several of my resource books at directions and the tomato cane just looked so complicated that I was a bit scared to try it. But I really wanted to make this so I made the decision that this was a good time to just jump in and do it already! So here you are, tomato canes.

I am really happy to tell you that it really wasn't as hard as I feared it would be. Just go step by step and take it slow, it really isn't any harder than some of the other canes I have demonstrated on this channel in the past.

I did manage to make this entirely out of Sculpey III and Premo clays this time too. I know that some of you have a lot of trouble both getting Fimo and using it once you do find it.

Here are the colors I used today:

Sculpey III Lemonade (a light yellow)

Premo Spanish Olive (a dark green)

Premo Translucent

Sculpey III Beige (a pinky flesh color)

Premo Pomegranate (an orange red)

I have put a description of sorts after the colors to help you find other colors in your collection that might work. The only ones I didn't do this for is the translucent because other than Cernit I don't think any of the other translucent clays will be translucent enough for this project.

When you reduce your cane you want to go down to around ¼” in diameter. I say around because tomatoes come in a lot of different sizes in real life so you can make yours the size you are comfortable with.

After making your cane and reducing it to size be sure to freeze it for about 10 minutes so it will be firm enough to cut.

Slice the cane as thinly as you can without distorting the cane shape. I like to use a pointy tool to give some texture to the area around the seeds but that is optional. I do like how it turned out though.

Since I am using Sculpey and Premo clays I am baking at 250 degrees Fahrenheit. For this scale they only need about 10 minutes.

Then after cooling you make the area around those seeds look more like liquid by adding some kind of a gloss coat to just that part.

There you now have tomato slices that your dolls can enjoy! I hope you enjoyed the process and be sure to share photos with me if you make these or any of my projects.  

Dollhouse Miniature Tool Box

Watch the video here.

I realized two things last night. One that Father's Day is coming next weekend. And second that I very seldom do project that are for the guys that live in our dollhouses. So I decided in honor of Father's Day and all the dads in our lives that I would come with special project.

One of the first ideas I had was to make a tool box, I thought it would be a fun and easy project. I was careful to keep this one simple and only used things that are easy to find.

We start out by making holes in each end of a regular size craft stick for the handle to eventually go through. I just used a drill bit to make the hole. On the little tiny ones like this I find I don't really need any tools other than the drill bit. I will warn you though it is a bit hard on the fingers.

The tool box on the video was actually the second attempt, on the first one I discovered that making the bottom two layers thick makes it much easier to construct the box.

I cut the base 1 ½” long (make 2) and glued/clamped them together. This gives us an edge that we can glue the next pieces to.

The ends are cut 1” and glued to each end of our base.

Sides are make of the jumbo (wide) craft sticks and cut at about 1 7/8”, I find it is easier to sand them to size than to cut them exactly to fit and then get them lined up. With regular wood it is much easier but the craft sticks tend to warp.

The handle is just a toothpick, wait until the glue dries to cut the excess off the ends.

This tool box is super simple to make and goes together fairly quickly. Really most of the time is spent waiting for the glue to dry.

Painting is optional, I like the blue color I picked out for mine.

Dollhouse Miniature Breads

Watch the video here.

First I am so sorry about the noises my fan caused throughout the video. We are under a heat advisory this weekend and I needed the fan in order to function. Hopefully in the future I can position it so it causes less noise.

So this week I had planned to attempt to make a tomato cane. I had all of the clay I needed except for translucent. So I went to Jo-Ann's yesterday to pick up the clay and some things I needed for a sewing project. I know I had the clay in my basket. I am really sure I put it on the counter with my other purchases. However, it was no where to be found when I got home. At least a quick check of my receipt showed that I wasn't charged for the clay. I am not sure if it got lost between the time I picked it up or if the cashier put it to the side and missed it. Whatever the case I don't have enough translucent clay to make the tomatoes so they will have to wait.

That of course meant I had to find something else to show you today. I did a quick look through my collection of mini resource books and came to an article on bread. I decided that it might be fun to give you all a basic tutorial on bread. This is more about the basic clay mix, how to texture it and how to change the color to make other breads than it is an in-depth tutorial on bread.

For the basic white bread I like to use mix of 2 parts white and 1 part tan/beige clays. This time it was Fimo white and Sculpey III Tan. The mixture is a bit darker than I normally go with but it is still in the ballpark for our project.

Next we need to talk about texturing our bread. I am going “old school” for this. Way back when I first started making clay foods I saw a lot more people using things like cornmeal to texture the clay to give the bread like texture. Now almost everyone uses a pointy tool to dig the crumb texture into the surface. Personally I like to use a combination of the two techniques.

You have several choices of materials to add to the clay and you should be able to find at least one of them in almost any kitchen. I used cornmeal today but you can also use: ground rice, semolina, or ground nutmeg to name a few. Now this does come with the risk of inviting critters into our miniature scenes to snack on our creations. I can say that I have been using these materials for over 20 years and haven't had a problem. I do know a few people that say they have had problems. I tell you this so you can decide for yourself if you want to take a chance on it.

One of the cool things about using the cornmeal is that it does expand just a bit in the clay during the baking off process. This creates a nice texture (more visible if you cut the bread after baking) I am not sure if you can see it in my project today.

What I want from today's project is for you to take this information and get creative. Find some pictures of some cool breads from bakeries and make something really cool for your dolls.