DIY Miniature Vegetable Salads

Above you can see our doll's chopped salads: 1. coleslaw, 2. creamy potato salad topped with
hard-boiled eggs, 3. succotash and 4. peas with carrots.

       Delectable, classic and good for you too, these hand-crafted, miniature chopped salads require the following supplies to make: three colors of green craft foam, plus white, orange, red and yellow craft foam sheets, tiny sharp scissors, white school glue, Mod Podge, Sculpey clay and green acrylic paint for your 18 inch dolls. You will also need toothpicks for stirring and small doll sized containers. I purchased these from the local supermarket; normally these would be used to distribute condiments such as: mustard, ketchup, mayo etc... I also made good use of a whole punch in order to cut a few carrots and the centers of my hard boiled eggs.

Above you can see the cut craft foam is sorted into sandwich bags and the
plastic condiment container with a lid used for storage of the mini doll
salads until these are ready to be played with.

10 Tips For Making Miniature Doll Food:

1. Use tiny sandwich bags to sort the colors and shapes of your foam as you work. Whenever you cut foam down to this size, it has a tendency to float away and stick to nearly every surface.
2. Use larger scissors to cut long narrow strips of foam at first and then switch to very sharp, smaller scissors to cut the foam into tinnier shapes second. 
3. Initially glue together the tiny shapes using white school glue inside of a container. This will keep the salads in tact as you work. Later, you will need to cover as much of the surface as you can with Mod Podge. Mod Podge is a stronger variation of the same sort of glue as white school glue and it will indeed keep your creations together longer.
4. Stir the miniature parts using a toothpick. You want to do this movement using as narrow a surface as possible so that the craft foam and tiny sculpted pieces will not stick and spread onto other surfaces while you work. When you are working with tools and supplies this tiny, to loose ten or more cuts makes a huge difference in creating more work for yourself!
5. Go slow. Crafting miniatures is a meticulous process and requires much time to work with the materials in order to make something visually convincing. Choose a lazy Sunday afternoon or a rainy day when there is nothing else to accomplish, to make this sort of craft. 
6. Sometimes hole punches get dull fast when using them with craft foam, so I recommend that you only use a very old tool for this.
7. When working with Sculpey (oven bake clay) in such tiny proportions, it is best to bake them in a pie container so nothing rolls away into your oven during the process. 
8. Do not bake these tiny pieces for too long in your 275 degree oven! It only takes three to five minutes to harden them when the clay is thin. If you burn them just a little, however, the clay may still be painted and used.
9. When painting tiny sculpted foods like peas, simply fill a small container with a bit of your paint and dip/roll the shapes into it. Set them out on wax paper to dry. Use a toothpick to separate the peas from each other while they dry. Then add them to your salads with glue afterwards.
10. Remember salads are the kinds of miniature foods that may become easily lost if not presented in one lump, glued together. Choose tiny porcelain dishes or dishes that you make to give your dolls this treat and glue together the small parts.

Take a container of coleslaw along on a picnic with your American Girl Doll.

       Cut the cabbage and carrot coleslaw using larger, long narrow cuts first. Then cut the slices of green, white and orange craft foam down into tinnier snippets to get the chopped slaw effect.

Carrots and peas are a food staple for our families dolls.

       Use a hold punch to make 'chopped' looking carrot slices from orange craft foam. Roll out Sculpey into long narrow snake shapes, then clip tiny pieces into small chunks before rolling these between your finger tips to make tiny pea shapes. Bake these in the oven and remove to dip them into a tiny cup of green acrylic paint. Pick them out of the cup with a toothpick and set them onto wax paper to dry. Mix the peas and carrots together dry or with glue.

Succotash is full of complex flavors and may be served up hot for long wintry days or
 chilled with lettuce for a summer picnic. It's one of our doll's favorite side dishes!

       I combined both a few green Sculpey peas and a variety of chopped foam in the following colors: yellow, red and three shades of green to make succotash. Go heavy on the yellow foam for the corn in this dish. I stirred this combination together in glue.

Potato salad with hard-boiled eggs, some dolls love it, others could live without.

       To make my creamy potato salad, I rolled out tiny balls of Sculpey clay and cut these with a knife into random odd shapes, just as I would do when making a real potato salad. Then I baked these shapes and left them unpainted. Next I punched out a few round, dark green pickles and yellow yolks for the hard-boiled eggs, using the hole punching tool. I also cut a few, lighter green stalks of celery and egg whites using my craft foam.

       Some young children have never tried the foods I've included here for their dolls. However, all of these dishes are simply delicious! Why not try serving them up today? Below are some recipes our family enjoys frequently.

• Pass the peas and carrots, please!
• Best potato salad recipes ever
• Kid friendly coleslaws
• Sweet corn succotash the satisfy your child's corn craze!