Use a knitting loom to make doll house blankets or bed spreads...

Using a knitting loom (this one was done with the Knifty Knitter brand) you can knit a small swatch and very quickly have a dollhouse bedspread or blanket.  If you've never used a Knifty Knitter before, I highly recommend them!  They're good for all kinds of projects.  You don't have to know anything about knitting or crocheting to use them... you just wind yarn over and over, always taking the bottom loop off the peg!  

Don't throw out those holiday cards, candy wrappers, or old calendars - yet!

You can make some quick, cheap gilt (gold) doll house picture frames by saving foil candy wrappers!  Cut out a picture (a small rectangle from a holiday card works well, or else one of the small pictures from the back of an calendar or calendar envelope).  Glue the picture in the middle of the wrapper, and fold the edges up until the picture is framed!  That's it!  Here are step by step pictures:

eat the chocolate :)

  smooth out the foil

 glue the picture to the center of the foil and start folding in the edges... you can cut a little from the long side like you see in the picture so that you don't end up with so much "bulk" at the corners.

Keep folding in the sides...

Use a tiny bit of glue to secure each corner. 

You're done and ready to hang the pictures in your dollhouse!

Painting dollhouse tables and chairs

Any of you who can actually paint will look at these pictures and know that I cannot :)  But there's something unstressful about painting patterns... if any of you have a habit of doodling while you're on the phone or waiting on hold, you can definitely paint on doll house furniture!  Here are pictures of some of my doll house table and chair doodlings... maybe it will inspire you to try too!  One thing nice about paint, if you don't like it, just wait until it's dry, paint over it, and try again!  Use a tiny brush.

Craft Fair Donation Item...

The craft fair we were at today asked for donation items, so this was ours... for any of you who are handy with cutting 4 pieces of wood you can make up these really fast and they would make a nice quick gift for someone.  We used a small string of battery powered lights to light it up.

Adding dried flowers to your dollhouse!

Flowers here and there make your doll house seem more real. Put them in a window box, in a "vase", or just lay a bouquet on a table somewhere. Silk / plastic / fake flowers are the most durable, but drying flowers is fun too - plus it doesn't cost anything and is easy! If you have a small child playing with your dollhouse, you probably do not want to put dried flowers in it! Here is a beautiful plant we were given... I clipped off the buds, set them on a paper towel in an out of the way spot and a week or two later (depending on the temperature) they dried. Flowers close up and shrink a bit as they dry, so keep that in mind. A surprising source for good dollhouse dried flowers is weeds - you have to be choosy though, some obviously won't work but small ones do.

Ideas for hanging pictures in your dollhouse

Ideas for WHAT pictures to hang in your doll house:

* Small pictures from magazines

* Sometimes junk advertising mail has small pictures that work well.

* The thumbnail print sheet that come with your photo print order is a great spot to get tiny pictures that are personally yours. Plus they're picture quality and dollhouse sized!

* Calendar covers or backs often have thumbnail pictures that are excellent.

* For personal use you can print pictures from the web (make sure copyrights aren't an issue).

* Sites like Jim's Dollhouse Pages have doll house scale posters and pictures you can print.

Ideas for HOW to hang pictures in your dollhouse:

* Pasting a picture onto craft foam paper works well... choose a color of craft foam that matches the room. If the picture has a frame already printed around it, cut the craft foam even with the edge of the frame. If the picture has no frame around it, you can give any picture a framed / matted look by pasting the picture in the center of a piece of craft foam that is slightly larger than the picture.

* Give your picture a cardboard or thin wood backing

* Paste the picture straight on the wall, depending on the type of glue you use, this can be permanent. Rubber cement can be used, but it damages some surfaces.

* Small pieces of self-adhesive Velcro work well if you think the dollhouse recipient might like to switch pictures around for fun! Make sure you stick the Velcro at the same height throughout your house, then make sure the Velcro on the picture backs is stuck in the center. Then they can be switched around easily.

* There is some gum-like tacky stuff you can buy at the store for hanging posters etc. This can be used in dollhouses, but use it carefully. I have a dollhouse that has had it in it for over 10 years now, and it does leave a bit of a "grease" mark and peels off the paint or paper some. Personally, I don't plan on using it again, but it's an option.

Ideas for WHERE to hang pictures in your dolls house:

* According to an interior designer we know, the general rule of thumb is to hang pictures at eye level. For dollhouse scale, this would mean making sure the center of a picture is approximately 5 inches to 5.5 inches from the floor. Of course you have to take the room into consideration and adjust accordingly - if you have less than an 8 inch ceiling height, you'll want to hang the pictures a bit lower so it looks right.

Here is a living room showing some picture placements. The picture above the sofa is from the back of a calendar, the picture above the inn table is from a magazine's Wells Fargo advertisement, and the picture above the hutch is from Jim's Dollhouse Pages. The pictures are hung using the Velcro method mentioned above.

Super cheap craft project for your dollhouse

I don't recommend this as a permanent way of decorating your doll house, but for a quick change of look or a fun project for a kid it's great. Take a nice quality paper towel (one that can stand being wet without disintegrating), color on it with water based markers, and spritz with water from a fine-misting spray bottle. Let dry... the colors will bleed together as it dries. I misted these pretty heavily... I think the blue and red rug should have been misted less and the red would have shown up more. Here is a before and after picture of a couple samples. When they're dry, scrunch up the paper towel a few times to soften it. You can cut a little fringe in it for a rug or bedspread edge.