Miniature Yarn Shop Room Box

I really enjoy making miniature room boxes. They allow so much creativity, and present a fun challenge at times. My friend opened a new yarn shop in Neenah, and I wanted to give her something to celebrate the occasion, so I created a miniature yarn shop scene.

This is what the final result looks like.

I used her actual shop as the inspiration for my room box.

I spent about 25 hours total on this, I would guess, over the period of several weekends. The box itself is made from basswood and foam core, so it is very lightweight, but also a little fragile. In the future I would still work with basswood, but I think a thicker piece could provide more stability. Still, a thicker piece may not be able to be cut with an Exacto knife, and I found it really easy to work with for cutting out the windows and doors. For the brickwork on the front, I used a hot wire foam cutting tool. I hung the door with tiny hinges, and made the window able to be opened. Both the door and window are made from scratch with basswood, and each part of the frame was cut twice, so I could glue a plexiglass pane in the center. I kind of wish I had added an awning. I think that would have been a nice touch.

I also added a battery powered LED light string along the ceiling. The battery pack hangs out the back, where it can’t be seen. I love these little wire strings of LED lights. You can used them for so many things.

I used a piece of dollhouse trim I had leftover to frame the box. The wood flooring is made from coffee stir sticks, cut and glued in a staggered pattern and then stained with Minwax.

The yarn hanks are quite easy and fun to make. I separated the strands of many colors of embroidery thread. I even had some variegated tatting thread colors that I picked up at a yard sale, which were already single strand. I’m sorry I don’t have any pictures, but I will try to explain the process. It is really just a modification on twisting a full-sized skein of yarn into a hank. Check out some of these YouTube videos for an example.

• If you grab one strand of the embroidery thread, and pull the others away from it, you can extract one strand quite easily.
• Keep pulling until you have the length you want, and then cut.
• Now take the strand and wrap it around four fingers, about 10 – 20 times, depending on how thick you want the skein to be.
• Pull the loops off your fingers, keeping them in an oval, and pinch one end with your thumb and forefinger.
• Put a toothpick inside the other endloop, and twist the whole thing about 7 times until it feels tight, but not too tight.
• Fold the twisted skein in half – it will start to twist back on itself – and put the endloop you had pinched over the toothpick, on top of the other endloop.
• The trickiest part is pulling the bottom endloop up and over the top endloop, which is why you don’t want to twist it too tight.
• Now remove the toothpick, and as you do, pull the bottom endloop completely through the top one. This is what holds the hank together.
• Voila! An adorable yarn hank. Then I just made about 50 more of them:-)

UPDATE: I’ve created my very first YouTube video of my process for making miniature yarn hanks. Check it out here: Miniature 1:12 Scale Yarn Hank Tutorial.

The only items that aren’t handmade, are the miniature spinning wheel, the clock (which is the face of a really cool wristwatch, and I fashioned a wire stand on the back), and the tiny coffee mug, donuts and croissant on the coffee table, which I bought from another artisan.

I do have some pictures of making the chair, but I think I will save that for a separate post. If you like what you see or have any questions on how I made something, please leave a comment, and I will try to review it in a timely manner – but make no promises;-) I would however, love to see some actual legitimate comments on my posts, as opposed to the endless stream of spam nonsense comments that I continually have to delete. Really, what is that about anyway? Is there some big money to be made by posting gobbledy-gook comments on blog posts?? But, I digress… I hope you enjoyed seeing my minature yarn shop roombox.

If you are interested in seeing my handmade miniatures that I have for sale, please visit my Thumbwick Miniatures Etsy shop.

Thanks for reading!

Margie