Mini gift for a new baby

 I love making mini gifts for new babies. After all a baby is a sort of mini human so a mini gift is the right size. Plus  I like to think that it is fun to give something that the parents can keep as a memory for when the baby is no longer a mini.

Here is a simple idea to inspire you. It does not have to be expensive or complex  at all and you can personalise this by using different colors, name of the baby and whatever you like.

What you will need is a dollar shop frame . I was lucky mine came with the  decorative backing with the heart  cut out. But of course you can do that yourself and use some thick card. 

I  used a rubber baby but you can use any baby doll you happen have . Clothes are also optional. A little nappy is very easy : just fold a piece of no fray fabric round the baby. 

My blanket is knitted but you can use a piece of fabric or lace or knit or crochet a simple blanket. Fabric stiffener is used to prepare the blanket. 

Lace or braid is nice to put around the cut out shape but is optional.

Dip your blanket in fabric stiffener. And squeeze out excess.

Wrap your  the board with the heart shape in plastic and  place the blanket on top of the plastic and shape it. Leave to dry.

Remove plastic and glue blanket where you want it to go inside the heart shape. Glue baby and decorations in place. Add the lace bow.

American Miniaturist will publish an article about this project as well. In the article there will be more details about this project, patterns for the hat , blanket and tiny bunnie . So look out for the article as well. Not sure which issue it will be in yet. 

The ins and outs of mini decoupage.

 Decoupage is a very old craft or should I say, art ? It was used by people who could not afford wallpaper to decorate their walls with cut out pictures. In full scale you see decoupage on tons of things from greetingscards to plates and from tins via boxes to eggs.

Trying decoupage in miniature started with greetings cards for me. If you look at my blog about the Cardmakers Room, you will find a tutorial about making those.

But I went a bit further and started using plates , cups and saucers as well.

If you are new to this , it may look pretty hard but the good news is there are many sizes of plates and cups etc so you can start with the bigger ones  and then scale down so to  say.

What you will need :
Things to decoupage : plates etc
Lots of tiny pictures
Very good pair of small scissors
Mod Podge and a tiny brush
Optional : Mod Podge dimensional.

Plates can be any size you like and it does not matter if they are porcelain or plastic.  I like the Chrysnbon sets of plates, bowls and cups but they are really tiny. So for your first try perhaps a bit too small.

Pictures are very important. The size of the pictures you will need depends on the size of the item you want to work on.  I am showing different sizes here and different sizes of pictures.

A good source of nice pictures are mini printables. They are usually a good size and you can use the whole printie or just a part of it if they are a too big. Pinterest is a great source.  Cut outs from magazines work well too.
I used a printie on the big plate , to show how easy it can be and how good it will look.

The Flower Fairies and  Beatrix Potter pictures  are a bit harder. I looked for pictures of full scale decoupage sheets. Sites that sell them often have small pictures of the sheets  or you can scan a sheet you have at home. All you have to do then is a bit of experimenting on how small you need to print them. No there is no waste for you can use the pics that are too big for something else I am sure. You could also try scanning pictures from the original books but I am not the kind of computer marvel who can resize pictures .

Three sizes of pictures : For really big plates, medium and  the really tiny ones for the Chrysnbon items 

Chrysnbon  dinner plate, breakfast plate and bowl shown next to the tiniest pictures 

The big porcelain plate shown with flower fairy picture and  ruler.

Trying the cut out picture for size.

You can apply the pics with Mod Podge .  Leave to dry.  If you are not happy, soak off the picture in some water and try again. If you are pleased apply a top coat of Mod Podge. I like using Mod  Podge dimensional especially on shining porcelain plates.

 Chrysnbon dinner plate with medium sized Peter Rabbit picture.

Chrysnbon breakfast plate with tiny birdhouse picture

Did you notice I cheated ? The flying bird looked like nothing after I had cut it out, so I added a different bird.

Cutting out the pictures can be frustrating. Forget about cutting things like birds legs or flowerstems. Won't work unless you are a total genius at this. I often look at pics and  try to imagine  what parts I can do without LOL . Take your time and work over a tray or something for the pictures tend to jump away for some reason. I must say that I have had more trouble with them getting lost than with the actual cutting . 




Showing the Peter Rabbit Chrysnbon cup.

Cup shown with tiny pictures.

I am sure you will have fun making your own plates  cups and other decoupaged items.

Knitting with beads

I love those old fashioned beaded purses. You make them by threading a zillion beads on a thread and then you work the actual purse in knitting or crochet.


For a very long time I  had wanted to make a 12 th scale version. But even the smallest seed beads made the purse look really big. More like a shopping bag than a dainty purse for a lady.
The blue purse on the right was knitted in seed beads  I had in my collection.

For the black purse I used beads that were half as big. I found them at www.minikitz.com.  Debbie has an interesting collection of beads and if you are looking for the really small ones , get in touch with her. She will know what you need and she will be able to tell you all about size and colors.

The black purse shown with a 12 th scale hand mirror for size.

Knitting with beads can be a bit confusing especially if you want to have a pattern in the beading. You have to thread all the beads in the pattern in reverse order twice. It is  a challenge I have not tackled yet partly because  I have not found a suitable pattern.

But if you use the technique  I used for these bags, you get a pretty result without too much fiddly stuff. The beads are added between the knitted stitches and by adding more beads in every row you create the shape of the purse.

First your have to thread all your beads. You will need a lot of beads because there will be beads both on the inside and the outsie of your purse. Normally you would use thread in the same color as your beads but for the photos I used a contrasting color.

The idea is : knit one stitch, move a bead  up to the knitted stitch and knit the nex one.

 The  beads  will be between your knitting.

 This is how the first row should look .

After two rows the beads will be on both sides of your knitting.

After a few rows of knitting it will start to look like this.
If you keep kniting like this you can make  a strip of knitting that you can easily fold in three and turn into a simple clutch purse.

To shape the knitting like I did you will have to add more beads between the knittied stitches to make the finished piece wider and less beads to make it smaller again.

This is just to give you some idea of how to knit with beads .  I will try to add the pattern for the purse  soon.

Pattern problem leads to long lasting friendship.

 My Version  of the hammock

Miniatures can bring you many things that enrich your life, even a very dear friend. In August 2006  American Miniaturist published an article about my pattern for a crochet hammock.

A little while later I recieved an email from Canada from a lady called Phyllis who had some problems with the pattern. I sent her an email trying to help her as well as I could and guess what ?

Phyllis and I have become  great friends , ever since that first email we keep in touch most days. We talk about minis , our daily life and whatever else comes up. She has been a big help and a big inspiriation , her parcels of wonderful things for me to play with are always a delight. She even sends me home made christmas cake !

And all that because of a 12 th scale crochet hammock ! Thanks Phyllis you are a rare gem !

Hamock by Phillis.

My pincushion doll .

Once upon a  time I saw photos of  antique and vinatage  pincushion dolls and  I just fell in love with them and  knew I had to have one.  Sadly they were way beyond my budget so I started looking for a pattern to make one myself.. I was not very succesful but I did realise that I could perhaps do one in crochet .  And when I think crochet it is usually mini crochet.

I am still pretty pleased with the pattern I designed and the way it turned out. She really looks well standing on the table next to the sewing basket., does not she ?

American Miniaturist did publish my pattern for this little darling in issue 81. So if you want to make one yourself  try contacting them for a back issue.  She is done in tatting thread and I used a 0,60 cm crochet hook.

In this photo she is standing next to my crochet hook and the  ball of thread I used.

Yes I did make the tiny pins with the colored heads too.

 And here she is at work !

More about mini cards

 There are a lot more ways of making mini greetings cards so today I am sharing a few more tips with you.

Cupcake cards are very popular now and they are such fun to make.  Look for some nice paper with a cupcake design on it. The best kind is paper with lots of different cakes that are small enough to fit on your cards. That way you can make tons of different cards  using the same ingredients.

There are lots of ways to make these cards.

  The easiest version is just cutting the whole card out of the printed paper. I did that for the second one from the bottom.


If you feel a bit more like fiddling cut out one of the cakes and glue them to the front of a card.  If you use colors that go will together this will look awesome.  The third card from the bottom was done this way.

But you can take it one step further and cut out your cake motive two times. So you have two cakes that are the same. If you use a tiny piece of double sided foam tape you can actually make a 3D cake on your card. If you happen to have some Mod Podge  Dimensional or some clear nail polish you can paint some parts of your cake like the fruit and make it stand out even more.


The cake at the bottom of the card holder and the chocolate heart card were done this way.

How I made the mini cards

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For the cardmakers room I needed lots of cards. Because  I love  card making I did not want to use the cut out printies you often find in magazines  or on line.  You can use them for they are really nice but I wanted   real handmade  cards.

It is actually easier to do than you might think. I made the square cards 1 cm by 1 cm because that was esay to cut. But size it does not really matter much  for cards come in all shapes and sizes. 

The paper you use is important. I found printer paper was too thin and the paper I use for full scale cards was too thick. The solution ?

The envelopes that come with the card blanks you buy are perfect.  If you are not a card maker , recycle old envelopes.  An added bonus is that the envelopes often have a different color on the inside. So you can add more interest to the cards by using that effect and you have two kinds of paper for the price of one . Love a bargain like that !

In the top  photo you will see different techniques I used : Decoupage, nail art stickers, 3 d decoupage, and fabric decoupage.

Nail art is a geat way to begin making mini greetings cards. You can find all kinds of tiny stickers at dollar stores and drug stores.  I really like the tiny white flowers. They look like embossed paper on the cards. Handle them carefully because they tend to break when you lift them off the sticker paper but other than that it is really easy.

There are also flat stickers, little jewels and many other things that will work for your cards.

The next thing I tried was paper decoupage. You will need to find tiny pictures for this. I ended up scanning a sheet of  3 D decoupage pictures  I had and printing them  in the smallest size my printer would do.  All I had to do  then was  cut out the pictures.  At first I used the whole image on the cards. Then   I started adding the little bows and things.  The next step was cutting out parts of the pictures and decoupaging them to the cards. I used Mod Podge and it really worked well.

Different decoupage  cards ready for sale.