Learn how to craft doll sized pots, pans and skillets!

        Every little miss who owns a doll kitchen wishes to supply it with small pots and pans. Unfortunately, kitchen essentials are not always easy to find for small change. Rest assured, items like these are simple enough to craft. Just follow the project directions below and soon your dolls of all sizes will have the cookware they need to create food magic in their kitchens.

Lavender pots and pans for
Our Generation kitchen stove.

Supply List:

• cardboard tubes
• scrap flat cardboard
• Sculpey clay
• colorful acrylic paints
• nail
• masking tape
• white school glue
• Mod Podge
• fine thin wire
• toothpicks
• Exacto knife (Use only with permission from an adult.)

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Cut your paper tubes down to the exact size (height and width) that you would like these to be for any doll's stovetop. Use an Exacto knife for this step and get an adult to help!
2. Stand these tubes on top of cardboard and trace around each one to measure bottoms for your pots and pans.
3. Use masking tape to attach the bottoms temporarily on the outside of the pots. 
4. Squeeze white school glue into the inside of each tube so that the bottom edges will be adhered to the tubes after drying. Then remove the masking tape.
5. To attach a handle, measure the length of a toothpick that will become the support for the skillet or pot you are crafting.
6. Wrap this toothpick with a fine. thin wire, leaving an excess of wire approximately one inch off one end of the toothpick.
7. Now using a nail, carefully twist it to bore a hole on the side of your skillet and smaller pots where the toothpick can be threaded through the cardboard wall. Make this whole closer to the top of the open end of the pots. Glue the toothpick in place while also threading the excess wire inside of the pot/skillet.
8. Tape the wire down firmly inside the pot using masking tape. This will be covered with paper later when you decoupage the pot's surfaces.
9. Now let these long handles dry overnight if necessary. Do not worry about how bad the handle looks it will be covered with clay. Just concern yourself with it's strength.
10. Now sculpt the oven-bake clay around the handle and smooth this out. (see photos). Bake the entire cardboard construction with the clay handle at 275 degrees in the oven. If you use Sculpey, this clay does not shrink, so it makes excellent handles for construction in the oven using paper, cardboard, wood and wire.
11. To make shorter handles on the stock pot, I wrapped a handle for each side made using masking tape twisted around fine wire. 
12. Then I threaded it through two holes on either side of the stock pot, bent the wire down the sides of the interior and masked these to the surfaces. (see photos).
13. I shaped the handles gently into arches with my fingers before proceeding to the next steps.
14. Our 2 pots and skillet are two-toned. I painted both lavender and grey to the walls and bottoms of the cardboard tubes. You may paint your toy cookware instead of covering it with layers of paper and glue; I chose to decoupage these because any color your choose of course.
15. Don't forget to finish the interior of these pots and pans as well. After you have mastered this craft, your dolls should have plenty of kitchenware to cook up a pretend feast!

 

Left, the toy pots and pans seen from above. Center, notice the longer handles are
 sculpted using oven-bake clay. Then these were painted grey. I used metallic tape 
to add details on the handles and pots too. Right, These pots were cut to fit the stove
top of the "Our Generation Kitchen" exactly. All three can be in use at once without
over-crowding the stove surface. Now all I need to do it make food to go inside!