Miniature Bread Board Tutorial

 Happy Day Friends!  This tutorial for my bread boards could not be easier!  Simply made of card stock, wood glue and paint.  I love making something that doesn't require dragging out supply after supply.  Honestly, sometimes my crafting area gets to be a huge mess!  Not this time :)  Hope you enjoy!!

Here is what we are making.

And here's how it goes. 

Draw out any shape of bread board that you need.  Some vintage ones are larger than a normal cutting board.  Also, it depends on what you will display on the board.  So here, please use your own judgement on size to fit your own miniature needs.

Draw one and cut it out for your pattern.

Next, trace four more and cut them out.

Glue them together.  I enjoy using wood glue.  I feel that it makes a more solid end result.  Plus, you can sand wood glue which happens to be the next step.  Sand the edges of your bread board.

At this point, you can mark up your board using a pin or tip of a knife.  Just to make indentions to imitate boards or cut marks in the "wood".  

If you wish to make a hole in the handle for hanging, place your board onto a real cutting board and press a sewing pin through the handle to make a hole.

Lastly, on to the painting.  I find it hard to get a good real wood look with paint sometimes.  If you put out different shades of tans and browns and sort of pick up multiple colors with your brush and just thickly paint your board in the same direction you are likely to get the wood look result.

I like to sort of age the edges with either dry brushing dark brown paint or using a brown ink pad.  Just for depth.

Hope you make lots of these!  Please share your creation on Instagram and use the hashtag #peppysis

Also, let's be friends!!  Find me on Instagram at HulseysHideout or click HERE.

I hope you have a wonderful day!

Miniature Book Tutorial

Good morning all!! Today I am sharing how I make books for my dollhouse projects.  A lot of people make really realistic looking books with specific jackets that seriously look like miniature versions of life-sized books.  And while these are great and awesome, it's not really my style.  I've tried to make them like that and have never been truly happy with the results of what I made.  So... I came up with my own simple book making version.  Although I am sure I am not the only one who does it this way.

I plagued myself some years ago by acquiring a packet of legal sized paper for my printer.  I say "plagued myself" because how often do you truly need legal sized paper.  Since then I won't allow myself to buy regular sized copy paper until this batch is gone.  Yet somehow each time I get out a little bit of paper to use the pack seems to have grown.  So it forces me to print regular sized documents on legal sized paper.  When I'm done I always snip off the three-ish inches left at the bottom of the page... and you know I just can't seem to throw this slack away.  So I use it for various projects when I need it, such as making tiny books!  :)  Here's how I do it...

I simply water down some paint.  Usually browns, tans and I sometimes add a bit of yellow.  I brush it onto both sides of the paper and place them on cooling racks in my kitchen to let them dry.  They naturally tend to curl up a bit.  Once they dry I get out my paper slicer and slice them into strips.  Then I stack them together and cut the strips into lengths of about an inch or whatever size I feel like making the books.  I then stack a wad of the cut pieces, straighten them up and trim if necessary.  I will take a skinnier strip of paper for binding and use my handy wood glue on the straight end and glue the binding strip to the stack.  I let that dry by clamping with a clothespin and leaving it alone.  Then I trim the binding.  And there are your book pages.  

You can cover them however you wish.  My favorite way to cover my books is with fabric.  Especially vintage fabric with tiny prints!  I recently acquired a new (to me) batch of old fabric at a local quilting store.  Quilting stores always have cheap scraps and for miniatures scraps is all you need.  I cut a piece and glue it on to the outside of my book pages then trim the edges.  And then I am left with the prettiest little books!  You can also add binding labels or labels to stick on the front or whatever you wish!  Here are one thousand pictures of how I do it :)

Ahhhhh... a picture of my messy work station with a handy bowl of paint water left over.

Seriously, the equivalent here is about six to eight books from two 4 x 8 pieces of leftover paper. 

This fabric stash is seriously dreamy.  

Miniature Lantern Tutorial

Happy pre-Thanksgiving Y'all!  I promise I will eventually report on something other than miniatures... buuut it's just what I feel like sharing mmmk?

I recently posted pictures on my Instagram page of a cabin scene I made.  And in this precious scene were two lanterns that I made in a sort of jiffy.  The next day or two I thought... maybe this mini cabin person has a collection of lanterns... so I started digging for more beads and more buttons and along the way thought I'd show you!

I started by going through my old button stashes for bases, middles and tops of the lanterns.  For the bottoms I wanted more decorative and flat bottom buttons.  For the middle, ones that could support the round globe beads.  For the tops, something either domed or that had a hook resembling a handle.  Here are the ones that I found.

For more of my miniature tutorials click HERE.

Decorative bottom buttons.

Tops.

These are the beads I used for the globes or the lanterns.... I guess there are not pictures of the middles.  They are pretty plain.

Next I glued the middle buttons to the bottom base buttons, then the globe, then more middle buttons, and then the tops.  I used Elmer's Wood Glue.  It's my favorite go-to glue.  I didn't take pictures of the process of gluing.  I simply dip my favorite paint brush into the glue and dab it on a button the stack.  The important thing is to give the glue time to dry.  I'm bad about the patience part of this.  :)

After the glue has dried and set it's time to paint.  I just use normal craft paint.

Some of them need handles.  So I cut a piece of wire about one inch in length, bend it around a paint brush handle and bend the ends.  I then put glue on each bend and place where it belongs on the tops of the lantern.

Here are my results!  They aren't perfect and some of them aren't straight but that's how I like them.

This one sort of looks more like a hummingbird feeder to me.  So I guess that can happen too.

When I look through old buttons like this I always pick out the shell buttons and put them in a special jar.  I can always spot them.  They have a different kind of opal-ness to them in color and shine. Most of the time the backs of them are darker like sea shells, a lot of times they aren't level in their cut and they most always have a cooler temperature.  I like to touch them to my chin to make sure of the temp.  They are so pretty and I for sure don't want to use them in this project and paint over their natural beauty!  Check these pictures out of them.

This picture show the back sides.

They aren't always white in color.  I love these darker ones.  

The back of these is the picture above.

It looks like I've never gone through this tin of buttons and pulled out the sea shells.  

I'm certain there's more!

My morning sorting.

For more of my miniature tutorials click HERE.