Mini Interior Deco Projects – Thumbwick Mini Blog

Dollhouse upcycle project: Making 1:12 scale fancy bowls from discarded plastic spout rings

With a little effort and a few items, you can make these lovely porcelain-look bowls for your dollhouse. They will add such a realistic designer touch to a miniature China hutch, plate rail or dining room table.

What you will need:

Images of China plate patterns shrunk down to 1″ in diameter and printed on regular printer paper. The kind that has an outer boarder and center circle design with a band of white between them, not a pattern all-over
White or cream colored acrylic paint and a small paintbrush
Plastic ring tabs that are removed from a cardboard carton of coffee creamer or similar container
Sharp scissors for small detail work
Craft blade (optional)
White or tacky glue
Sandpaper or emery board
1″ & 3/4″ circle hole punches (optional, but nice to have)
Gloss mod podge or clear glaze

First you need to prep the plastic rings by cutting the “bowl” part away from the ring. Carefully use a craft blade if you don’t want to dull your good scissors. Cut as close to the rim of the bowl as you can and then sand smooth any remaining bump left. If your plastic doo-hickey is like mine, there may be raised numbers on the bottom but these won’t show when you are done. You can try to sand them down too if they bother you. Then set the bowl level on your sandpaper or emery board and sand a flat spot on the base, so you bowl will sit level.

Next paint your bowl white or cream (whichever looks best with the plate pattern you have chosen). Give it 2 – 3 coats on the bottom and top, letting dry on each side before turning to paint the other.

Now use your 3/4″ circle punch or scissors to carefully cut between the outer China plate pattern boarder and the center round pattern. Trim the center round pieces up to the pattern and set them aside for now. Use a 1″ circle punch to cut out the outer boarder patterns, or cut freehand with scissors, and trim the inner edge of the border up to the pattern. If you understood my explanation you should be left with outer circle shapes of the pattern with empty centers and inner circle shapes of the pattern. These will be glued to the painted plastic bowls. If you try to glue them without cutting the center and outer patterns apart and removing the white space between, you will end up with wrinkles, which you don’t want.

Spread a thin layer of glue on the back side of the center plate pattern and press it in the center of the bottom of the bowl. You will have a little time to move it slightly until it looks centered. Press it evenly into the curved shape in the bottom being careful to not make any wrinkles. Spread a thin layer of glue onto the back of the outer plate pattern ring and press it onto the rim of the bowl. The rim may not be exactly round, so eyeball the pattern ring up until it looks evenly spaced around the center pattern. This means it may hang slightly over the side of the plastic bowl in some spots. You can fill this underneath ridge in with gloss mod podge or clear glaze at the end so don’t worry about it. It’s much better to get it all centered correctly than to match the edges of the bowl, because you will mostly be looking at the front of the bowl, not the underside.

When you pattern is dry you can seal the whole dish with gloss mod podge or glaze using several coats on the bottom and top, leaving it just a little thicker on the underneath edges that are hanging over the bowl to even it up. Paint 2 – 3 coats on the bottom and top, letting dry on each side before turning to paint the other.

Make a whole set of matching bowls or make different coordinating patterns to go on a shelf together. You might want to make matching plates to go with the bowls. When making plates you won’t need to worry about wrinkles, so you don’t have to cut the centers out, just use something that is 1″/25mm across as a base. I haven’t tried it, but I have heard that you can make miniature plates out of the base of egg carton cups, so do a search on that technique if your goal is to upcycle (aka turn trash into treasure). And I think that is a very worthy goal, which is why I wrote this tutorial to begin with.

Have fun with it, improve on it and keep nurturing your tiny obsession, my friends!

Dollhouse 1:12 scale miniature crystal chandelier made from a battery powered LED 15 light string.

Pictures and a description of how I made this elaborate chandelier for my Gothic Victorian room box.

Gothic Victorian parlor by Thumbwick Miniatures

This is the Gothic Victorian room box that I made recently. The huge crystal chandelier was a project that I started about 2 years ago, set to the side, and finally finished. This is how I made it.

I started with a simple LED 15 light string with a lithium coin cell battery switch. Since I had 15 lights, I knew I needed a 2 tier chandelier with 8 lights on the lower tier and 7 on the upper. I created a metal armature with wire from the Dollar Tree. It comes in a 3 pack, with silver, red and black coated wire. I used the silver. I bent wires into hook shapes – 7 with two hooks, and one with one hook (for the 8th arm on the lower tier). Then glued them all to a piece of aluminum tubing. Since the tubing was aluminum, soldering wouldn’t work – plus I’m not that great at soldering, so I used E6000 glue to attach the wire to the base of the tube. Holding everything together with masking tape until fully cured. Don’t try to work with it until then. When dry, carefully bend the hooks so that each of the 7 “arms” are spaced above and between each of the 8 “arms”.

Now take your light string and feed the end through the metal tube and pull to the end of the wire, where the plastic sleeve starts before the battery pack. Start from the first LED light closest to the battery pack and position it at the end of one of the upper metal arms. Then wind the wire around the armature, positioning each LED light at the end of a metal hook, until you have them all in place, with the last light at the end of the last lower metal arm. Wind the wire as much as you need to make the distance between lights correct. Bend the wire in half just past each led light and work your way to the next light position. When finished it should look like the photos below.

Using thin white thread (which I think works better than fishing line), and a beading needle (a sewing needle eye is too big for the seed beads), start stringing small clear glass seed beads and 3mm crystal rondelle beads on your chandelier, draping between the arms. I used the clear glass seed beads as spacers between the crystal faceted rondelle beads to reduce the cost, so I could add lots beads for a totally decadent look. From the bottom I also hung champagne colored tear drop crystal beads. As I went, I wrapped and tied the thread around the wire armature in inconspicuous places and adhered with a drop of tacky glue.

For my room box, I cut a slot in the ceiling and fed the battery pack through to the top. I created a medallion out of a toy capsule top with lace and jewelry findings glued on it, and painted it white to put around the place where the wire goes through the ceiling. You could also buy a medallion to use. The extra lead wire can be wrapped up with a twist-tie. You could possibly hide the battery pack inside the medallion, but you need access to the on/off switch somehow.

And there you have it – a gorgeous 15 light crystal chandelier for your dollhouse, that costs around $20 in supplies, and many hours of your time. One other thing I’ll mention, is that I glued metal jewelry bead cap findings around each metal armature at the base of each light as decoration, but I don’t recommend it. When the metal from the bead cap touches the wire in the light string, which is not insulated, it causes a short that causes the whole thing to flicker. I’d leave that out in the future.

Good luck with your own dollhouse light chandelier project! If you try this, please share your pictures and experience.

Beach Cottage Room Box Build

I recently invested in a better lighting setup in a vain attempt to make myself a better photographer (similar to the expectation that buying new athletic shoes would somehow make one a better athlete). Nonetheless I bought it, and that created the desire to build a better room box for taking photographs of my miniatures.

With summer drawing to a close, I find myself wanting to capture the essence of a summer beach vacation, so I can hold on to my favorite season a little longer. To that end, I created a beach cottage room box to use for displaying new items that I make. The box has light grey walls and white wainscotting, with a white chair rail and baseboard. The wood plank flooring is made from large craft sticks (I call them tongue depressers) weathered to a lovely grey shade with a vinegar and steel wool solution. The trick to getting that shade is to use the finest grade steel wool and allow the solution to mingle just one day, and not much longer. If you are going to faux age wood, you might as well do a lot of it, so I spent the good part of a day soaking wooden sticks in the solution and spreading them in the sun to dry, then flipping each one to get a uniform color. I aged a bunch of the aforementioned tongue depressors, regular craft sticks (a.k.a. popsicle sticks), as well as 5.5″ and 7″ long coffee stir sticks. The finished floor used a total of 22 tongue depressors, their rounded ends being removed with my small mitre box saw. Slender coffee stir sticks are great for making small wooden crates and picture frames. Craft sticks are good for making other more sturdy furniture, or narrow plank flooring.

The completion of the beach cottage room box inspired me to create original artwork for the wall. I pulled out an old picture that I had sketched over 25 years ago. I was going through a bohemian phase one summer, where I hung out at the UW Union pretending to be a young starving artist (emphasis on pretending), sketching the sail boats and such. The endeavor yielded just one picture that didn’t end up in the trash can: a pencil drawing of sand dunes by the ocean with seagulls flying overhead. And speaking of phases, my cat went through a chewing phase several years later, so the original work has been majorly taped back together. I wondered if I could replicate that picture in 1:12 scale miniature (minus the chew marks). For this I used a very fine leaded mechanical pencil, and a 2″ x 3″ piece of sketch paper. I was quite pleased with the result, so tried a second one – another success that was similar, yet unique. Then I crafted frames from coffee stir sticks weathered grey to match the plank flooring. When I mounted the artwork in my room box, I was very happy to see my vision had come to life. I can’t wait to make some shabby chic/cottage style furnishings worthy of this room box.

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

Dollhouse Tin Ceiling Tutorial – Made from Items Found at Dollar Tree

This tutorial will detail how to create a tin ceiling in your dollhouse from materials you can find at your local Dollar Tree store. I love shopping there, because everything is just $1, so it makes me feel rich😊 If you don’t have a local Dollar Tree (this store used to be called Everything’s a Dollar, but the name changed a while back), you may have a similar type dollar store, and chances are they have similar items, so check it out.

One thing you may need for this project, which you can’t find at your local dollar store is E6000 glue or 527 multi-purpose cement, which I recommend for certain steps. However, you will still have to tape things in place while they dry, so regular white glue or craft tacky glue will work too. I also used 15 mm silver three flower leaf bead cap jewelry findings for the ceiling light medallion which are not from the Dollar Tree. I found these on an Etsy site (https://www.etsy.com/listing/565810655/15mm-antiqued-bronzegolddull-silverwhite) for even less than a dollar – wohoo!

I decided a long time ago that the kitchen of my Bellingham Farmhouse was going to have wood plank flooring and a tin ceiling. I originally tried to design my own tin ceiling tiles, and emboss the pattern into aluminum sheeting with a stylus. I didn’t end up liking how this looked in the end, so I tore it out. Then I found aluminum cookie sheets at the Dollar Tree, which had a cool pattern, and thought I should try making the ceiling out of those. On a recent vacation from work, I put together a tutorial of the process. Following, are the steps I took to achieve the result in the photo above.

Tools needed:

Old scissors for cutting the aluminum (NOT your good sewing shears)
Work gloves
Ruler/straight edge
Wooden craft stick, stir stick or any stick of desired width for the trim
Size 3/8” and 3/4” circle punches, or size needed to fit (optional for ceiling light medallion)
Pencil

Materials needed:

Dollar Tree aluminum cookie sheets (pack of 2)
Dollar Tree craft glue, regular or tacky or white glue
E6000 glue or 527 multi-purpose cement (optional)
15 mm silver three leaf bead caps (optional)
Scratch paper
Cellophane tape and masking tape (you can also get these at the Dollar Tree)

Steps:

First you need to assess the ceiling area that you want to cover. Does it already have a light, or will a ceiling light be added?

In my case, I already had a light wired, and that wiring was underneath the glass bathroom floor tiles above, which had already been glued down. Bad planning on my part. I decided to work around the light, rather than tear up the bathroom flooring. I measured the ceiling, and made a paper template of it, including marking out where the light fixture was. Because of the light fixture situation, I chose a layout of 4” square ceiling tiles – so I could cut out a little slot to slide one tile around the light fixture wire.

Then I started cutting out 4” by 4” squares from the cookie sheets. This aluminum sheet gets very sharp when it is cut, so it is best to wear a pair of work gloves while cutting and handling it. Unless you prefer to bleed on your project and have bandages on all your fingers… It is very important to keep the pattern in mind. One side is a little shinier that the other. I chose to put that side out, and the duller side towards the ceiling. Cut carefully between the smooth and patterned sections of the aluminum sheet. You can use these smooth sections of the aluminum to make trim pieces. You will also use the pattern around the perimeter to make your coving pieces, so try not to damage that either.

Your pieces will need to fit together, so that the pattern lines up. Start to arrange them on your template. Pay very close attention to the bumps and ridges in your pattern so that one piece doesn’t get turned sideways. It may not be very apparent now, but it will be after you install it, so double check everything. You should have enough metal to cut new pieces if you make a mistake. Remember that you will need to lay your pieces face down on the template, so that they will be correct when you glue them to the ceiling. If you lay the pieces face up, they will be backwards, and if you cut around walls, or light fixtures, those holes will be in the wrong position when you try to install the ceiling. Notice the small notch cut out in the top left side of the center tile, in the photo below. That is for the light fixture wire.

I used cellophane tape to lightly tape the pieces together. I taped the front row together, but not the back rows to the front. This is so I could install the back part of the ceiling first, and then slide the front row around the light, as I installed it. If I made the whole ceiling as one sheet, I would not be able to do this. I used the template as a guide to determine where to cut around the walls.

I laid the back portion inside the room, facing down. This is how it will be when installed, with the “right” side facing down. I applied craft glue to the whole surface, and allowed it to become tacky (about 10 minutes). Then I installed the whole sheet on the ceiling, pressing it in place, and holding it with pieces of masking tape.

Then I tried to patiently wait for that panel to dry before installing the front panel. I am not very good at patiently waiting. I took a trip to the Dollar Tree to avoid the temptation of trying to glue the next panel too soon. I found some Reindeer Moss, which I love to use in miniature dried floral arrangements. It has such a nice earthy aroma, and interesting branching. They don’t usually have that in stock, so I got three bags. I also picked up some floral moss that looked like it might be good for making HO scale model railroad trees and shrubs. My husband has a very large layout that he works on all the time. When I showed him the floral moss, he loved it.

I installed the front panel the same as the back one, sliding the notch around the light fixture wire. Then I taped that into place to dry. While that dried, I prepared the coving and trim pieces.

I measured out each run of wall to see how long of trim pieces I needed, and wrote them on a piece of scratch paper. In the photo, you can see that I did not make the coving pieces a little longer than I needed them, and ended up having to make a couple more. When you measure the length you will need for each piece of coving, add a full extra inch. You will need this so you can cut the ends at an angle to meet nicely at the corners. Originally I prepared enough trim pieces needed to cover each seam between each 4” square of ceiling tile, but once I had the ceiling in place, I didn’t think that trim was needed, and thought it would detract from the overall look. I ended up just using the coving pieces and trim for the perimeter.

To make the trim pieces, I wrapped strips of flat aluminum around a piece of 12” long wood trim that was 1/8” wide by 1/16” thick. Again, it’s best to wear gloves for this. Then I slid the wood piece out, and with the rounded back of a spoon, I flattened out the edges. Now the trim pieces don’t have sharp edges. It’s a little tricky to keep these a uniform width, but using the wood piece as a guide is very helpful. I only needed one long trim piece for the front edge of my room, and a shorter one for the back archway between the kitchen and dining room, where the kitchen ceiling ends and dining room ceiling begins, to give it a finished look.

To make the coving that will angle between the wall and ceiling, I cut around the edge pattern of the cookie sheet, trying to leave about ¼” of smooth aluminum to the side of each long edge. Then I folded about 1/8” of the edges in, so they wouldn’t be sharp. I made as long of strips as I could, so I could cut the lengths I needed later. I chose the pattern bumps to face out, but you could do it the other way, depending on how you want it to look. Either way you choose, remember to be consistent. If the bumps will face out, then fold the edges away from the bumps. Run the edge of the back of your spoon along the edges to flatten them. Be careful not to flatten out your pattern bumps in the process. Now slightly bend the long edges in a curve, so your coving will have a slight ‘C’ shape against the point where wall meets ceiling. This is hard to explain, so I hope the pictures will help.

I glued the trim pieces and taped them in place with E6000 Glue. Then I held each piece of coving in place to determine the angle to cut the ends, so they would meet cleanly against the other pieces at the corners. I eyeballed this up, but I suppose there is an exact mathematical angle degree you can cut them at, I just don’t know what that would be. Notice how outside corner have to be cut at angles the opposite way that inside corners do. Again, I hope the pictures will help to explain this. I glued and taped the coving in place and let it all dry.

Then I punched out a circular form for the medallion to cover the ceiling light. I first punched out a 3/8” circle from a piece of smooth metal. I used another piece of aluminum sheet that I had on hand, but you can cut it from the corner of the cookie sheet. This is where you will find a big enough piece to work with. Then I eyed up the punched hole in the center of the 3/4” punch, to punch a larger circle around it.

I flattened three 15 mm silver three leaf bead caps with my fingers, which is easy to do, as they are very pliable. Then I broke off each leaf from them, by bending them until they snapped off, and glued seven of them in a circle pattern to the metal circle that I just punched out. You could probably improve on this design, by making your metal circle larger and adding more leaves to make it more intricate.

When all that was dry, I bent the whole thing into a slight bowl shape, and cut a slit in the medallion, so I could slip it around the light base. I glued it in place with E6000 glue and held it with masking tape overnight until dry.

When everything is finally dry, you can remove all the masking tape, and your ceiling is done.

I am thinking about using some of the leftover cookie sheet metal to make a tin backsplash to go above my counters in the kitchen. If I do, I will try to add pictures of it and my completed kitchen to my blog later.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Please visit my Etsy shop, if you want to see more of my handmade dollhouse miniatures. I also sell some craft and miniature making supplies, and am adding new things all the time.

Happy miniature making!

-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.