Tips

Tips for Making Miniatures from Allyson's Miniatures

Making Your Own Foods

Polymer clay (Fimo, Sculpey, Cernit, Promat) can be found at general craft stores, bakes hard in your home oven and has great versatility for making dollhouse foods. Cookbook pictures can provide inspiration and guidance. Here are some quick and easy foods that can be made without fimo.

Bologna: Slice a red pencil eraser.

Bread: Shape a white fabric eraser (check the quilting supplies) into a loaf shape using a craft knife and emery board. Rub the outside with golden brown chalk (or eyeshadow or powdered make-up). Slice with a single-edge razor blade or craft knife.

Lettuce: Tear green tissue paper. To add a variegated look, touch the tissue with a tiny amount of water (not enough to completely soak the piece). This lettuce can be used on a sandwich, or make a salad by adding onions sliced from a straw-shaped coffee stirrer and cherry tomatoes made from beads or fimo.

Tomato slices: These can add a lot of color to a sandwich. Just punch red circles from some of your junk-mail using a standard hole punch.

Potato chips: Let the seeds of a bell pepper dry. It's that easy! The seeds from a chile pepper look like barbecue potato chips. If you don't have a pepper, cut ovals from offwhite paper and curl them slightly around a toothpick.

Pickles: Cut the end off a toothpick and paint it, or paint grains of rice. A little brown added to the green paint gives it more of a pickle color.

Brownies: Find craft foam ("Foamies") in the craft dept. It resembles sheets of felt. The brown color is perfect for brownies. Cut a 2-inch square. Mix brown paint with white glue like Elmer's or Sobo and paint on top as icing. When dry, cut with scissors into 1/4" squares.

Making Plates

Plates made from your own paper plates look great in the dollhouse. Choose cheap paper plates that have a slight coating. Using an architect's stencil (the one with all those sizes of circles) trace a 13/16" circle onto the plate. Cut this out carefully. Place over the 9/16" circle on the stencil and press into the circle with a thick marker cap. This will cause the edges of the plate to cup upward. Remove from the stencil and flatten slightly. This is a great plate!

Decorating Plates

You can give your plates a colored edge by drawing the original circle (13/16") with a thin-line marker and cutting just outside the line to retain the colored edge.

Nail boutiques carry tiny decals which can be used on dollhouse plates.

Paint your own design and coat with spray enamel. You can also spray the plates a dark color and splatter with white. (Use the 98-cents-a-can latex spray paint--nothing special!)

Books and Boxes

Watch your junk mail for small pictures from book and video clubs. These usually need to be trimmed slightly around the edges to be in scale, but they make great book covers. (Most hardback books are about 8"x6", which would be 3/4"x1/2" in miniature.)

Make books by cutting cardboard or balsa wood to size. Paint the edges white or gold and cover with thin suede, cloth, or paper. Then carefully glue the picture to the front. You can also buy inexpensive books ready-made (about $2 a dozen) and glue pictures to the front. If you are filling a bookshelf, you can paint gold lines across the spines.

Boxes made from balsa or cardboard can be painted and decorated with labels cut from coupons and advertisements. Watch the seasonal sales circulars for candy labels at Halloween, school supplies in the fall, toy boxes at Christmas, etc.

Miscellaneous

Watch for refrigerator magnets and keychains with half-inch scale items.

"Dollar" and discount stores currently carry a line of inexpensive 1" scale wooden furniture that often has some 1/2" scale mixed in. This furniture can be quite acceptable--sand lightly with fine sandpaper to remove some of the shine, cut off globs of glue at seams with an exacto knife, replace handles with tiny beads. You can also paint it with acrylic paints after a light sanding. (Use Apple Barrel, Ceramcoat, whatever! Nothing special required--although it might take two coats to cover.)

Use beads and jewelry findings to become small bottles and jars. Many items from 1" scale can be used, also. A small 1" scale book, could be a large 1/2" scale book. Same book--different application!

Remember that color should be slightly softer as you shrink scales. This helps further the illusion of reality. Textures should also be in scale.

Landscaping materials are adaptable to any scale. Check model railroad suppliers as well as dollhouse stores and catalogs. Buy a small 1" scale tree and use it as a large 1/2" scale tree. Shape styrofoam or fine steel wool into the bush you want and cover it with white glue (Elmer's or Sobo), then roll in dried parsley flakes (check Kroger). I like to put the parsley flakes in the food processor for a minute to make them smaller. A vine is made by covering a thread with glue and sprinkling on parsley.

Add dried flowers and use coffee grounds as mulch.

School in an Apple

Quarter-Inch Scale Settings

This small scale is lots of fun and lends itself naturally to a variety of settings and containers. The scene above is an old-fashioned school-room created in an apple. The floor can be easily leveled with Model Magic and then covered with balsa for a wooden floor.

The tiny pot-belllied stove is made from a bead with snaps for top and bottom and insulated wire as a stove-pipe. The pipe goes through the roof of the school room and becomes the apple stem.

The globe is a blue bead placed upon a pierced earring post. The flag is a sticker with a needle for a pole and a snap for a holder. Desks are pieces of thin wood, books are fimo, steps are plaster of paris poured into wrinkled aluminum foil and broken apart when dry.

Container Ideas:

Store inside a shopping bag.

House inside an empty clock.

Paper mache fruit for mouse homes or fairy dwellings.

Santa's workshop in the center of a wreath.

Rooms in decorator tins.

The list is endless! Quarter inch is a fun and versatile scale and becoming more and more poplular and available.

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Foods and Treats from Allyson's Miniatures:

Candy

Cookies

Seasonal Items Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter.