Miniature Hydrangeas

 Hi!!!  Have you ever heard of using beet seeds for making miniature hydrangeas??  I actually saw this method a couple of years ago and although I had beet seeds on hand I didn't want to use them quite yet.  I am a garden girl and tried to grow beets once in my garden two years ago... didn't work for me that year.  But I kept the seeds just for the day when I wanted to try making miniature flowers from them!  And today was that day!!!  YAY!!  Because it totally worked and they're gorgeous!  And about the closest replica that I will possibly get because I AM NOT a good mini flower maker at all.  Maybe one day I'll take a class or something but for now I will stick with floral substitutes.  If you're with me.. please see how I made them below :)  and I love you... I really, really do.

This picture is mainly to show some dried garden items that I collected.  The stems that I used are actually from my orchid.  You can use any tiny stem you'd like.  

You can buy beet seeds pretty cheap on Etsy but can also find them other places as well.

Aren't they crazy looking???

I mainly use Elmer's Wood Glue for just about everything.  Just glue one seed on the top and let it dry a few minutes.  Then add more underneath the first one.  Each one of my flowers has about six seeds.

You can leave them their natural color and they look like beautifully dried hydrangeas.

Or you can paint them!  I used a combination or light blues, purple and white for my purple looking ones, and pink combination of paints for the pink and so on.

Aren't they just gorgeous??!!

I didn't worry about adding leaves because you don't see them anyway.  

But don't forget to paint the stems!

Hope you enjoyed this Hydrangea tutorial!!!  

Please feel free to share... especially on Pinterest!

And if you enjoyed this lovely tutorial please check out some of my others HERE

XOXO Laurie

Miniature Dollhouse Curtains

 Hello All!!  Today I am sharing the method I use to make curtains.  You know, to get the real life (as I can!) look of flowy, pulled back drapes.  I've been combing my fabric stash all summer looking for just the right fabric for the dining room of White Pine Cottage.  The room itself is long and narrow so I felt it needed a larger scale set of drapes to sort of pull the wall to you.  

I follow a gal on YouTube named Angieaug and she is the one who taught me to make my own curtain pleater very easily and I have used it many times since.  You will see it in the pictures below.  

Today I saw an instagram post, which I can't find now ugh, that had a set of velvet curtains and thought... where do I have some velvet???  Then I remembered that I recently bought a set of hair scrunchies from the dollar store that are velvet!  I thought the pink one would work but decided that the champagne one would be better for this room.  So I cut the fabric and the elastic inside, ironed the fabric and cut it in half.  Turns out it was the perfect length for my curtains.

I placed the fabric onto my pleater and gave it a good dousing of hair spray.  Then I used other skinny stick pieces to push the fabric (not-so-neatly) into the pleater and dried it for about five minutes with my hair dryer.  Next I stood the pleater up and pinned it to a block of foam, sprayed with hair spray and pinned the heck out of the billowy bottom of the curtains.  Then used my hair dryer to dry.  This method works so well and is so easy.  The whole project took about thirty minutes.

I don't have a completed picture yet but here shows my window curtain box.  I guess it would be a Cornice Board??  I made it to resemble a mantle and it is wide enough to place items on top.

Hope you enjoyed this mini curtain tutorial!  

Please feel free to browse my other miniature tutorials HERE!