Repost: Making an Advent Calendar Tutorial

This is a post I wrote last year. It was such a fun, easy project that I should dig it out of the blog archives!

My workspace is in the dining room. That means that whenever there's a holiday, I have to do some major tidying, so that my supplies are much out of sight as possible. While I was cleaning up today, I came across this great Christmas card which I'd stashed away last year. I thought it would make great advent calendars. You just need an exacto knife, card stock, glue, and an old Christmas card with a small scene.

I cut my calendar out of the bottom left corner of the card. I made it about an inch across, trying not to cut any of the people in half.

I cut the windows next. I cut the windows from the front, so that the windows could follow the shapes of images in the calendar. I also made the windows open from all different sides. I then scored the fold of the window from the back of the card. The back of the exacto blade worked well for this.

 

Then I used the tip of the knife to gently open all the windows, and smeared the back of the card with glue. I used Tacky since it was nearby, but a glue stick would probably be better.

Gently press the calendar on to a piece of plain white paper, keeping all the windows open so that they aren't accidentally glued shut. I think it's easier to trim the backing to size after the glue dries. Finally, I ran a gold paint pen around the edge. You could add tiny paintings behind each window now if you want, or just leave it plain the way I did. White glitter on the snow, or gold on the lamps looks nice too.

Here's another photo of the finished project:

Sturbridge, Continued

Before every miniature show, Mom and I like to guess which item on our table will sell first. We've never been right. In fact, the piece(s) that sell first are consistently a complete surprise! Things we've guessed will sit on the table because they're specialized enough to need a specific buyer are often the first to go!

The first sale of the evening were two tiny paper toys, to Molly Cromwell (the organizer of the Sturbridge show) herself!

I might have made the first sale, but two of Mom's dolls sold just minutes later. The French maid, who I posted just before we left, was the first to sell.

The same customer also bought this cook. Her basket of vegetables was a last minute addition from Mom's stash of props just before we left. I loved how the bright, fresh colors of the vegetables popped against the plain grey of her dress. Mom has made several cooks in similar outfits over the last few years, but I'm always amazed at the distinct personality of each doll. This jolly cook in red and cook plucking a chicken are wearing similar dresses and aprons, but they look like completely different characters to me! 

 

P.S. I've been noticing a lot of spam comments lately, so I'm putting word verification back up for a few days to see if it helps. Hopefully this will cut down on the problem!

Tutorial: Quick and Easy Miniature Shopping Bags

 

 

I made this jewelry and perfume counter a while ago, but (true to form) didn't quite finish it. I knew I wanted to add a bunch of glossy black shopping bags to this display, but that idea seemed like more work than I wanted to tackle at the time, so I put it aside. That time away turned out to be a good thing, since this process is much more streamlined than my initial ideas!

 

I love this method of making shopping bags, because it doesn't require any paper patterns or measuring, but it's very easy to make identical bags. The secret is to fold them around a block of wood.

You will need:
paper for your shopping bag
scissors
balsa wood
a ruler/straight edge
pencil
white, cloth covered wire
glue (I used tacky)

The thickness and width of your wood will determine the size of your bag. I glued two pieces together to get the right width for the my bag. Decide the height that you want the bag to be, and mark that on the wood, all the way around.

Cut a strip of paper for your bag. I used a very thin, glossy black paper. The exact measurements of the paper strip don't matter, so long as it is long enough to go around the block of wood, and taller than height you marked on your wooden block.

Wrap the strip of paper around the wood, using your fingers to crease the paper at the corners.

Take the paper off the wood. Crease the paper again so that the folds are sharp.

Wrap the paper around the wood again. Use a little glue to glue the paper into a tube.

Slide the paper down the wood until one edge of the paper tube is lined up with the pencil line, and the other edge hangs off.

Wrap and glue the paper around the end of the wood, like you are wrapping a package.

Slide the paper bag off the wood.

 

Pinch the sides of the bag inwards, starting at the top of the bag and going as far down as you can. It is easier to do both sides at once, but I had to take the photograph!
The basic bag is finished.

 To make the handles, simply cut two pieces of cloth covered wire, and wrap them around the handle of a paintbrush to shape them.

Glue the handles in place.

Finally, fill the bag with tissue paper. The black and white bag I made for this tutorial is about as basic as you can get, but it's easy to change up the look of these bags by using patterned paper, adding labels, or using different sizes of wood to create a variety of sizes. The sky is the limit!

Tutorial: How To Make a Venetian Mirror in Miniature

 

In my last post, I shared my struggles with making realistic looking etched miniature mirrors. After more experimenting, this is the best I can come up with. They won't fool anyone up who looks too closely, but they turn surprisingly realistic if you move them a few inches into the room.

 

 You will need:

small mirror (I used a 1/2" mirror tile)

silver/mirrored paper (the shinier the better)

paper pattern*

x-acto knife and cutting mat

tacky glue

grey marker or paint

white craft paint

small paint brush

cotton swabs

 

 * My scanner wasn't working, so I couldn't scan in the pattern I made, but you can easily draw your own. The only important thing is to remember that the mirror will need to be glued to the back of  the frame, so you need to keep the opening for the mirror slightly smaller than the size of your mirror.

 1.Glue the frame pattern to the back of the mirrored paper.

2. Use a knife and straight edge to cut out the frame.Begin with the inner portion of the frame.

3.Color the inner edge of the frame grey to hide the white edge of the paper.

4.Continue cutting out the frame.

5.When frame has been cut out, glue to a scrap of thin grey paper.

6.Continue cutting out the decorations, and arrange them around the frame. It is often easier to cut the curves with short straight cuts rather than long curved cuts.

7.When you have cut all the decorations out, glue them around the frame. Leave a tiny space between each piece.

8.Use a thin, sturdy tool to draw designs in the paper. I used the point of my tweezers. These designs will eventually look like they have been "etched" into the mirror. For the most realistic look, lengthen any dots into short dashes.  You can see in the photo above that the border around the inner and outer edges of the frame is made of dashes, rather than dots.

9.Once you have covered the frame with embossed designs, you will need to fill them in with white paint. Mix white craft paint with water to thin it out until it looks like milk.

10.Use the thinned white paint to coat the embossed designs. Make sure the paint gets down in the impressed lines of the design, but keep it away from the edges of the individual mirror pieces.Let the paint dry completely before moving to the next step.

11.Use a cotton swab to gently buff the paint off the mirrored surface, leaving impressed design highlighted in white paint. You may find that a slightly damp cotton swab gets the paint off more easily, but be careful! A damp cotton swab is more likely to strip the paint out of the design.

12.Here, the design has been filled with white paint, and the mirror is buffed clean.  It may be necessary to apply two or three coats of paint in order to fill the entire design..

13.Use your x-acto knife to cut away the grey paper wherever it shows around the frame.

14.Once the grey paper has been trimmed away, glue your mirror to the back of the frame.

15. I forgot to photograph this step, but you should also run a grey marker around the outside of the frame to get rid of the white paper edge.

 

Making a Venetian Mirror in Miniature

This project was not at all what I expected to be working on yesterday. But once the idea was in my head, it just wouldn't leave me alone until I gave it a try. 

The only mirror I had to play with was a package of 1/2" mirrored tiles, so my mirror experiments had to stay quire small. I bought them for a project, but never used them because they weren't as precisely cut as I'd hoped. They've been sitting in a drawer ever since, waiting for inspiration. The silver/mirrored paper on the right I found the last time I was at the craft store. It isn't a true mirror, since the paper's texture distorts and blurs the images, but it was close enough for this project.

 It just took me a while to figure out the best way...

 

 

(1st attempt on left, final attempt on right)

The first mirror I tried, I used masking tape and a few tiny punches to create stencils, which I then stenciled using white paint. The result didn't look quite right, but it was close enough to be encouraging.

For the second mirror, I remembered some brass stencils I'd bought years ago. I used the smallest parts of the designs to stencil leaves and flowers on the mirrored paper. The look was better, but the white paint still felt a bit heavy.  I also hated the shape of this frame.

 

For the third frame, I tried something new.  Rather than stenciling the design, I etched a freehand design into the paper with the pointed tips of my tweezers. This gave the lighter look that the first two were missing. But without the white paint, the mirrored paper started to look like metal, rather than mirror. I used a tiny bit of watered down white paint to fill in the designs, which helped a lot.

I still want to do a bit more experimenting, so I'll hold off posting step by step instructions for a little while.