Miniature Vintage "Iron" Bed

 Most miniatures take a lot of patience.  This particular miniature, while it seems easy now that it's finished, took a lot of patience.  The beginning of it has been in the works in my head for months.  I wanted a vintage metal bed for my cottage.  The bedroom is an attic room and a normal sized bed is just too big and takes up the whole room.  I needed to make it.  I've tried on a few occasions to use glue, or fancy metal glue, and even once tried to get my husband to help fuse pieces together.  I felt like I was thinking too much about it.  So I let the project sit.  Until yesterday when a picture popped up on my Instagram feed and gave me the courage and the patience I needed to begin,,, again.  

For the metal head board and foot boards I used some wires left over from Chinese food take out boxes that my sister saved for me.   I used two wires for each end.  One of them the complete wire and the other I cut up into a second bar on the frame and three pieces as rungs.  

I am an avid Elmer's Wood Glue user so I got out my old faithful glue.  I don't know if it helped, but an IG mini-maker said once to sprinkle with baking soda also so I did that too.  Please see below.  Also, I didn't take a ton of pictures along the way because I truly didn't think it would work.  As Julia Child would say "I didn't have the courage of my convictions."

This picture also shows a piece of balsa wood that I wound up not using.  I instead used good old cardboard.  

Here is my piece.  Taped down, glued and powdered with baking soda.  I gave them plenty of time to dry (maybe an hour lol).  One of them wound up totally falling apart.  I knew I needed to use reinforcements... literally.

As you can see in the pic above, the wire has little feet.  I used a couple of layers of cardboard and stuck and glued the feet into the layers but not all the way through. 

I then used cross stitch floss where the metal was glued together.  I placed a dollop of glue then the end of a piece of floss and let it dry.  I then put more glue and carefully wound the string around and crisscross finally gluing the end of the string.  I let these dry and then began to paint.  So far they have held together well.

It's not perfect but that's the whole point.  I want this to look like a very old bed.  

I used brown and orange paint to make the frame look rusted and aged.  

  

I have one layer of lace trim for the dust ruffle here.

And here I have added another ruffle layer for depth and color.  And I also made a mattress this morning that I LOVE!

It's not totally complete yet.  But isn't it lovely???  The pink velvet throw needs work.  It might not stay unless I can tame it.  

If you like this bed semi-tutorial, please share to Pinterest below. 

Thanks so stopping by!!  XOXO

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!

Miniature Haunted House

 Hello all!  One of the most satisfying things about the way I make my miniatures is turning everyday trash into something that you would never guess is made from trash.  Today I made a miniature haunted house from a printer cartridge box.  Luckily it already had the roof slant which is what inspired me.  The house isn't an exact scale.  It could possibly be used as a large dollhouse inside a 1:12 scale dollhouse.  What I envisioned was a Halloween playroom inside a carveable pumpkin with the tiny haunted dollhouse being the focal point on the center of the playroom floor... with possibly a light-up ghost next to it.  It's a thought in progress at this point.  It's been a while since I have made a Halloween pumpkin.  Maybe it's about time!  I hope you enjoy this demonstration in pictures :)

Here is the small box I used.  It was slanted on both sides so I just cut one slant off and glued it to another piece of cardboard from the same box.

I drew my windows and door and cut out the windows with an exacto knife and cuticle scissors.  They aren't perfectly cut out and I'm Ok with that.  I think it adds to the look.

I used almost the entire box in this project.  I glued pieces together for the steps and used toothpicks for the porch columns.

I added another piece of cardboard for the roof and thin string for the details.

When the glue dried... enough... I am so impatient, I painted the whole outside black.

Actually, I fibbed, I used a piece of cardboard from something else for the floor divider.

I decided to furnish the inside a little bit and give it an abandoned look.  For the bed I used a piece of an earring and two small nails for the headboard, stacked and glued pieces of the box and beads for the bed feet.  I also dug out a tiny piece of black crushed velvet for the bedspread.

I made a fireplace and broken chair for the downstairs and glued bits of paper on the floor to create a mess.  I also used tinted sawdust for the moss.  I wound up putting some on the outside of the house too.

That's it!  I hope you enjoyed my teeny haunted house!  If you did please share to Pinterest for me!!