I paint doll furniture about as well as I do full sized furniture. Not well at all. I always miss a spot.
I follow a very creative woman on YouTube who has a channel and accompanying blog called Thicketworks where she features mixed media art projects. She has been on a miniature kick lately and just featured a tutorial on making miniature books. Her blog has downloads so you can easily recreate them yourself.
The books are very detailed and realistic. She has a great trick of using embossing powder on the book covers to mimic leather which really adds to the realism. And the pages really turn and if you had super power eyesight you could actually read them. I can’t tell if I even got them the right side up or not.
I won’t detail how to make them because her tutorial and blog post have all the steps. I will say it was a relatively quick project. I printed everything up and cut them to size and got the covers embellished the way I wanted. Then the next morning I assembled the pages into book blocks, applied the end papers and put it all together. I would say the entire project took about three or four hours total.
One slight modification I made was rather than printing the PDF files as is I copied the image of the page from her blog and plopped it into a Word document. That way I could size it down slightly to be closer to 1:12 scale.
I printed the covers on Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Matte rather than the recommended card stock because the colors are more vibrant with my inkjet printer. It’s pricey but the results are so much better. It’s the same paper I use when making cards.
I have made zero progress on the dollhouse restoration but at least now the inhabitant is well read!
carolyn says
They are amazing, they look so old! Great project!
Andrea says
Thank you. I am pleased with how they turned out. Now I just need to make about 50 more. Haha!
Nicole says
Incredible!
LMK says
I need that display case in a full sized version!! I prefer it to the IKEA ones I have my eye on. Lovely project!
Andrea says
I think the reason I like little projects (teeny books, doll quilts…) is because my attention span is little. Haha!
Andrea says
Me too! Of course I dont have space for a full sized one so I guess Ill stick to the miniature version.
Heather K Tracy | Thicketworks says
So awesome! You totally rocked these tiny volumes, my friend. Way to go! xoxo
Andrea says
Thank you for the tutorial and the steady stream of inspiration Heather! I always look forward to whatever genius idea you are going to come up with next.