DIY Durable Boxed Doll Foods for Play

Our American Girl Doll, Molly, unpacks groceries made
with our vintage food labels.

       In order to make play foods durable, I often will craft them so that boxes can not be opened and emptied of contents, especially if I am going to gift these to a child younger than six or seven.

 Supply List:

• flimsy cardboard
• corrugated cardboard
• white school glue
• Mod Podge
• printable labels
• food labels cut from ads and/or food product

Step-by-Step Directions:

1. Print and cut out labels found under the 30 vintage labels post.
2.  Stick these to a smooth faced, light weight cardboard first. Cut them out.
3. Stick the same labels to corrugated cardboard four times over. Layering the thicknesses on top of each other. 
4. Stick light weight cardboard to the final outside layers on both the edges and the back of each small cardboard food.
5. Mod Podge the entire surface of each box shaped food.

The labels for these particular food items may be downloaded from here and printed out on your
home computer for personal crafts only. I restored them for this purpose from the public domain.
They are, however, my own interpretations, so do not resale the content or redistribute it
 from your own web pages.

Frozen strawberry boxes and the Five Roses
Flour cake box for a doll's pantry.

10 Quick Tips for Working With Cardboard:

1. Because cardboard is processed with acid, this chemical will leach out and be absorbed into paper materials glued to it's surface over time. Therefore, turning surfaces yellow and corroding them completely.. If you wish to slow this process, seal the cardboard with liquid Gesso before applying acid free paper prints of labels.
2. Apply a thin cardboard to the face of corrugated cardboard surfaces in order to avoid a rippled texture in your paper mache crafts. 
3. Many layers of cardboard compressed together, lend greater strength to your paper mache toys. 
4. Toys made entirely with cardboard and paper are biodegradable. This means you can toss them into landfills and the bacteria there will break them down naturally.
5. Paper mache toys that survive well, are also collectable.
6. Cardboard is a forgiving craft material. It can be easily manipulated, cut, molded and transformed into practically anything if you develop the skills to use it.
7. Cardboard is cheap and in many cases, free!
8. If your cardboard warps, layer heavy books on top of it overnight, or until it's surfaces are restored to rigidity. 
9. Do not store too much cardboard at any given time in one area of your home. Collect and work with it as you need it. Cardboard can attract insects and spiders who love to make their homes inside it's cracks and corrugated medium.
10. If you work with cardboard frequently, you will find that you need sharp tools to cut it. Remember to carefully store razor blades, craft knifes, box cutters and sharp scissors away from places where small children can access these tools!

Left, you can see that there are four layers of corrugated cardboard glued together to create the
illusion of a 'box' for the doll's Five Roses Flour cake box. The outside layer is made with
cardboard from a cereal box. This layer is smoother and yellow as is my printed logo. I didn't
 need to paint my samples for this reason; I only needed to seal all four sides with Mod Podge
 in order to give the finished craft a professional look. Right, here you see that I'm trimming off
the edges so that the boxed food items can stand on their own.

Left, a Fashionista models for the camera. She demonstrates size/scale of boxed granola.
I found these tiny photos on the side panel of product I purchased for breakfast.
They are the perfect scale for our Barbie dolls to play with and they are made with
the same method of layering cardboard described in our simple craft above.

• Remaking Play Food Boxes to Last
• DIY Miniature Cereal Box made from recycled cereal boxes