Mini Furniture Projects – Thumbwick Mini Blog

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.

Tiny 1:12 scale yarn shop filled with goodies

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.

Brick and stone are made with a hot foam cutting tool

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.

Knitting on tiny needles made from toothpicks is quite a challenge.

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

1/12 Scale Dollhouse Wood Plank Flooring

I’ve been installing wood flooring in my Bellingham farmhouse kitchen. I’ve been using 3/8 ” wide craft sticks, a.k.a. popsicle sticks, which are equivalent to 4.5″ wide planks in real life. That seems about right, although I really don’t know. Our own house, which was built around 1930 has wood flooring with 2.25″ wide planks, but that seems more modern to me than this dollhouse, which is an architectural style that is at least 40 years prior to that.

I started by sawing the ends of all the craft sticks off with a small Exacto miter box saw. This takes longer than you’d think. Then I made a paper template of the kitchen floor. Some of the sticks I kept at whole length and some I sawed in half. This caused the planks to be staggered. Then I laid them on the paper with double-sided tape. At the end of each row, I cut the last stick to the proper length. After I got a bunch of the pattern laid out, I stained the whole thing with Minwax stain and polyeurethane in oak color. It’s what I had, but if I did it again, I’d go darker. Maybe I will in the living room later.

When it was dry, I removed each stick from the paper, and glued it to the floor in the same layout. I used wood glue, but I think maybe rubber cement or hobetac would have been better, because then there would have been some flexibility as everything dried completely. You can see in the picture that a few boards warped a little when they dried. I guess it gives it a very rustic, realistic look.

Here is part of the finished floor:

I think it’s turning out pretty well. Can’t wait to get it finished, so I can move all my kitchen cupboards back in. I spent way too much on this set, but I just had to have it. It is very realistic with doors that open. I just love that. I spray painted the fridge to look like stainless steel. It was wood when it came, and I thought: “Who has a wooden refrigerator?” That had to be fixed. I don’t really like the stovetop either, so I’ll probably change that up to make it look like a gas stovetop. My mini people have to cook with gas!

Before I can move everything back in, I have to finish the tin tile ceiling (post to come on that later), and get all the trim up.

Miniature BBQ grill in 1/12 scale

Hello fellow miniature enthusiasts:

This is my first official blog post.

*Disclaimer: If you happen to comment, please know that I am notoriously bad at checking email or voicemail, so don’t take it personally if I take many weeks to respond. Know that I do appreciate your participation though.

For several years now I’ve been planning in my mind to make a realistic Weber-style charcoal grill for my dollhouse. I can just see it sitting on the front porch with a tiny bag of charcoal briquettes next to it. It started when I got a 2″ plastic toy capsule from a vending machine. In my mind’s eye, I saw a mini BBQ grill right away. When I measured it, and then our own human-sized grill in the backyard, I was delighted to find that the scale was nearly perfect. Then the capsules sat in my closet for about 14 years. Fast forward to the summer of 2016.

The first challenge was removing the ridge from the bottom of the toy capsule. Otherwise the top and bottom of the grill would be snapped together, which I didn’t want. I wanted the top to be easily removed from the base. Since the capsule is rigid plastic, most attempts to cut it would result in cracking it. I ended up having a friend use a hot wire to cut through it. Possibly a very fine saw may work, but I didn’t try it. I may have to if I want to make another one, as I don’t want to invest in a hot wire. I also wonder if there aren’t other types of plastic capsules that would be a bit more flexible, and thereby easier to cut. This is another thing I want to research.

I know that you would like to see pictures of all the steps of my process, but unfortunately, I didn’t take pictures until the end. This is the best I can do with pictures, so I apologize, because am not great at taking pictures, although I am getting better.

As you can see from the picture of the grates, my soldering skills could use some improvement. Hey, did you know that not all metals can be soldered together? I do now. Bending the wire into the correct shape also proved tricky. I spray painted the toy capsule black, which took a few coats, but looked great when done. The top had some embossed letters in the plastic, which I removed with an emory board prior to painting. I couldn’t find a suitable wooden disk for the wheels, so I made them out of polymer clay. I also made the charcoal out of clay. Then I glued the teeney briquettes together into a pile and used an artists brush to paint the edges white, and red in the center, to make them appear to be hot and glowing.

If I make another mini grill in the future, I will remember to take pictures of the process – promise!