Veggies, chips and cheese trays for doll parties!

       Who are we kidding? It's difficult to find any kind of variety when it comes to purchasing dishes for 18 inch dolls without paying a premium for them. So it comes as no surprise to us that we have had requests for this type of craft from quite a few of our readers. 

       Today I will be showing you how to craft a basic chip and dip tray. These large platters generally come with a central smaller compartment for dip, surrounded by larger compartments to hold the snacks used to scoop up the dip.   If you are too young to use an Exacto knife you may ask a older adult to help you cut the initial shapes of these platters for you, before you begin to assemble the other parts.

This is a two part craft, first you must make the serving trays and then the doll sized food that
 goes into each compartment. Ours are glued in so that the tiny appetizers don't get lost.

Supply List:

• Sculpey Oven Bake Clay
• Styrofoam Sheets
• cardboard
• toilet paper tubes (cut down to smaller size)
  
• recycled oatmeal cans
• white school glue
• acrylic paints: red, green, yellow and flesh tint
• toilet tissue or face tissue 
• decorative scrap paper
  
• Exacto knife (optional)

Close up photos of the trays. Left: chips, tomatoes, broccoli, carrot sticks and a Thousand
Island dip. Right, Cheddar cheese and Swiss cheese squares, cucumber and
celery sticks, chips and a spinach dip.

       Although the serving platters are frequently used for chips and dip, many times the chips are replaced with veggies or fruit alternatively. I made a variety of vegetables, cheeses and chips for the example appetizers to fill our own sample trays seen in this post: carrot sticks, cauliflower, broccoli, both cheddar and Swiss cubed cheeses, celery, zucchini, tomatoes, chips are made from Sculpey. Our dips are avocado and a thousand island, made using  paint, glue and tissue. 

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. To make the dip and veggie trays you will need to cut a large cardboard tube down to a shallow height of 1/2".
2. Cut a bottom by tracing around the circumference of the larger tube on top of your scrap cardboard. Glue this onto the tube using white school glue.
3. Reinforce the tray after gluing in shorter 'walls' and a dipping circular section for the center, using tape and glue. Let the entire tray dry hard.
4. Cover the tray with additional decorative papers so that it looks finished. You could use paint for this step if you prefer.
5. Now you are ready to make the veggie appetizers for the inside of the trays. I cut small squares of orange and yellow foam sheets for pretend cheese.
6. I also cut pretend carrot slices from orange foam and cucumber slices from green foam.
7. Next I shaped tiny tomatoes and broccoli from the Sculpey clay, baked these and painted them using acrylic red and green paints.
8. I also sculpted tiny chips for the dip from oven bake clay and painted these pale yellow and a cheddar cheese looking yellow.
9. The 'dips' are made by shredding face tissue paper or toilet paper, mixing it with school glue and paint. Stick this mush immediately into the round center compartments of your veggie tray to dry. This looks just like dip! I made a spinach dip and a salmon colored Thousand Island dip for each of my trays.
10. Last, but optional, I glued the ingredients into the serving trays so that these would not be lost over time.