How to Make Doll House Miniatures

Furnish your dollhouse with fun accessories you make yourself!

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• The cap off of a toothpaste tube
• A tiny sprig of a plastic or silk flower
• Old magazines with pictures in color
• Scissors
• White household or craft glue that dries clear
• Small pieces of cardboard
• Remnants of sewing material
• Thread to match material and needle
• A small wooden skewer
• Cotton balls
• Acrylic paints
• Some small paintbrushes
• Scraps and leftovers from any of your other crafts or hobbies

Decorate your dollhouse living room with easy-to-make accessories!

1. Wash any leftover toothpaste out of the cap. Cut a piece of cardboard to fit it and cut a tiny slit in the middle of the cardboard. Push the end of the sprig of plastic or silk flower through the slit, and pull it through just enough so the flower stands upright. Glue the cardboard into the toothpaste cap. Let the glue dry overnight.You've just made a potted plant for your dollhouse living room.
2. Look through old magazines for scenic views, old-fashioned portraits of people, or photos of dogs, horses or whatever you like most. Cut out these pictures carefully. Glue them to small pieces of cardboard. Paint another piece of cardboard brown. Let the paint dry. Cut small strips of cardboard from the brown cardboard and glue them around the outside of one of the pictures you already glued to cardboard. You've just framed your first picture for your miniature living room, bedroom or study.
3. Choose a remnant of material that would look good as a curtain for the window in your dollhouse living room. Cut two panels of material, each longer than the window itself so the curtain will hang below the windowsill. Hem the top and the bottom of each panel. Now gently push the wooden skewer through the top hem of both panels. Push the panels together slightly at the top so they look like a normal-sized house curtain that's gathered onto a curtain rod. If you want, you can sew the panels together at the top with a stitch or two, then tie each panel in the middle with a bit of thread for the "drawn drape" look. Now your dollhouse has curtains or drapes on its living-room window.
4. You can also make tiny pillows of sewing remnants for the sofa in your dollhouse living room. Cut two squares and place one on top of the other, right sides of the material together. Using a running stitch, sew around three sides of the square with matching thread. Turn right-side out. Use a cotton ball or two to stuff the pillow, and sew the last side closed with tiny stitches. Doesn't the sofa look nice with some pillows as accents?
5. Cut out other pictures from magazines to use too, like a rug that would look nice on the kitchen floor. If you have some scraps of velour, they can make nice towels for the bath, hung carefully over a towel bar next to the tub. You can glue buttons to large beads to make them look like canisters with tops. Wall sconces can be made from old earring backings, trimmed with beads and glued right to the wall of the dollhouse.

Tips & Warnings

• Look at any tiny items before you throw them away--a lipstick case can be a very fancy vase, and an old mascara brush makes a great scrub brush for a dollhouse kitchen.
• Think small!