DIY A Shabby Chic Bakery Display for Dolls

See the left, front and side views of our doll's Shabby Chic, bakery display cupboard.
A framed menu would look nice on the upper shelf.

       I refinished an ordinary doll cupboard into a Shabby Chic dream for our American Girl doll bakery. 

       In the future, I will display handmade chocolates, cakes and doll sweets on it's pink patina shelves. 

       Perhaps even more mouth, watering, sensations wrapped up in holiday ribbons and tissue could tumble from it's open drawer or be stacked inside charming baskets surrounding the perimeter of the turned wooden legs of our fashionably French, pink pâtisserie display!

Left is the cupboard before it was painted, decoupaged and sanded down to create a weathered,
 antique, looking patina.

       I first painted the surface of the cabinet using three coats of paint in three colors: white, red and then pink.       

       After the paint dried thoroughly, I scrapped down the surface with a sharp tool and also sanded areas to give the surface of the doll cupboard a "weathered" or "antiqued" look.

       Then I decoupaged a few random areas with some clippings of printed wood grain, and the inside wall with a decorative napkin. After that, I sealed all of the altered surfaces with an acrylic varnish.

Because the original cupboard was intended to hand on a wall, I had to add a pair of turned
wooden legs to help the cupboard stand upright on a flat surface. I also glued on an additional
back wall to give the structure balance.

More close up photos of the cupboard's surface paint and decoupage.

The drawer will come in handy for both storage and display of attractively wrapped cookies and
candies for the dolls. Left is what the drawer looked like prior to it's shabby chic transformation.
Right, I decoupaged the interior of the drawer with a decorative red and pink plaid paper.

Left, the original cabinet had two very charming glass-paneled wood-framed doors. I removed these for
our purposes and saved them for a future project. Right, then I decoupaged the back wall of our bakery
hutch with the perfect pink tissue napkins featuring the Eiffel tower using Mod Podge. The graphic fits
in perfectly with the bakery's theme.

More Altered Bakery Cases and Shabby Chic Furniture Ideas for Your Dolls:

• DIY Lighted Bakery Case for Dolls
• DIY Miniature Dollhouse Shabby Chic Bistro Chairs Table Set
• Shabby chic miniature living room
• Altered shabby chic goodies box + fabric French dolls

Collecting Furniture for Grace's French Bakery: Faux Wrought Iron

Tour Grace's Bakery with a Senior Product Designer

at American Girl, Mattel.

Left, a set of wooden shelves set into a faux cast iron display unit, perfect for stacking fresh baked, artisan
loaves of French bread and buns. Center, a faux wrought iron, hanging shelf made originally for displaying
keys will now be used to hang cooking utensils, pots and pans, aprons etc... Right, this pencil caddy
 will be painted black and filled up with plated sweets inside of our French bakery.

One of our 18inch dolls stands next to a jewelry display modeled
reminiscent of the Eiffel tower. Pieces similar to this one are often sold in 
resale shops in my area. Here you can see how tall the tower is compared 
with the doll standing next to it. I will use this piece to display shopping
 bags and more merchandise inside of my version of Grace's Bakery.

       Some of my favorite design features inside of the original French bakery are: the faux cast iron bracket, shop sign and the painted Eiffel tower with shelf. 

       It was easy to find items that reminded me of these features at resale and they will certainly be fun to fill with all kinds of baked goods and baking accessories inside of our version of Grace's French bakery.

       I've photographed these faux items along side one of our 18inch dolls so that you can imagine how the bent wire furnishings will look once we incorporate them into our doll bakery.

       If you would like to collect and craft along with me to make your own eighteen inch doll sized bakery, I will be posting all of my craft ideas and fun bakery finds, prior to the upcoming holidays. 

       You may also wish to acquire a large plastic storage bin to collect all of the items included in your doll bakery. This will help keep things neat and tidy around the house when little ones are not playing with their dolls. Storage bins also insure minimal damage to furniture and minimal loss of tiny accessories. Pack a similar version to ours, wrap it with a large bow and give it to a very happy grandchild this Christmas; you will be the most popular grandparent/parent in the universe for certain!

I think this display unit was originally made to display jewelry on top of a dresser, however, I will use it to display
 merchandise inside of a doll shop of some kind, not necessarily Grace's bakery. I've included here so that
readers can get more ideas about the sorts of things that they might collect for doll displays.

More About the Eiffel Tower:

• History of the Eiffel Tower and Tour the Eiffel Tower
• How to clean the Eiffel Tower
• The Eiffel Tower by Night

DIY Patriotic Pinwheel Cookies for American Girl Dolls

You can cover a small box with white typing paper, and tie the lid shut with white twine,
 to make your cookies look like they were purchased fresh from Grace's French bakery.
Because red, white and blue are also the colors of Great Britian's and France's flags,
our pinwheel cookie crafts would also be fun to include in a doll bakery overseas! 

        Above is a fresh baked box of patriotic pinwheel cookies for our American Girl dolls to share at their 4th of July picnic. These are easy to craft with just a small amount of oven bake clay. To make the process even faster, purchase colored clays in advance. If you are frugal like me, suffer through the process of mixing the red and blue to avoid holiday traffic!

Don't forget to throw away the sticky, clay mess left on the wax paper as soon as you have 
rolled it out with a glass! I doubt that this stained clay can be washed from any kind of fabric.

        You can color white Sculpey by kneeding in acrylic paints. It's a very messy business so I don't exactly recommend the process if you can purchase factory colors. Above you can see that I was able to combine the acrylics with the oven bake clay to create some relatively bold colors. Make sure that if you choose to do this, work on top of wax paper and when you roll it out with a glass, sandwich the clay between wax papers.

       Roll out the colored clays: red, white and blue and stack these on top of each other. You can stretch out the clay a bit to ensure that there is equal coverage for all three before rolling these up together.

It isn't necessary to compress the clay much as you roll it out. Just tap it down slightly 
to remove air bubbles.

        On the left you can see that I am rolling all three colors into a log. On the right my log is ready for cutting.

I gently pressed out the edges of each doll cookie to make them look more life-like,
 before baking them.

       Above and left, I cut consistent sized cookies with a knife, layed these out on top of a cookie sheet and baked them at 275 Fahrenheit or 135 Celsius for 5 - 8 minutes. Sculpey is best baked when it is allowed to heat up with your oven and cool down slowly without the oven door ajar.

       After my pretend doll cookies cooled, I brushed them with white glue and rolled them in transparent glitter to mimic sugar.

       These pretend sweet treats will be much appreciated by little mothers in their play doll bakery.

DIY Doll Cupcakes for Valentine's Day

Above you can see the finished cupcakes and the liners that I cut apart to trim and finish the 18 inch doll deserts.

       Each one of these doll cupcakes will serve two 18 inch appetites if your dolls are not too hungry! Shape their tops to look like your favorite treats. I decorated some of these cake sweets with cherubim, hearts, strawberries, cherries, doves and even a little rose! I also added a little red or white glitter glue to make them extra tempting!

Top, paper tubes. Bottom, sculpted clay cupcakes
before they have been painted.

Supply List:

• narrow cardboard tube
• cardboard
• tacky white glue
• Sculpey
• acrylic paints: red, pink, brown, white etc...
• Valentine cupcake liners
• mini cookie cutters
• mini candy molds
• glitter glue
• Mod Podge
• hot glue gun and hot glue
• Xacto knife

 Step-by-Step Directions:

1.  Cut the narrow cardboard tube into 1inch sections.
2. Glue these down to a piece of scrap cardboard with white tacky glue. Let them dry.
3. Cut the tubes apart from the cardboard and trim them so that each segment has a closed end.
4. I hand-shaped my cupcake tops on top of the closed end of the tub in order to give the clay support. 
5. Use long snake shapes from the clay to wrap around the top of the cupcake making the icing.
6. Roll out tiny spheres for the cherries and poke a hole into the top of each to insert their stems.
7. I molded the tiny doves and cherubim from candy molds and baked these ahead of time to stick into the cupcake icing. (see pictures of the clay shapes here.)
8. Again, I did the same with the hearts only I used tiny mini cookie cutters to cut out the tiny Valentines. These may be baked ahead of time. They will adhere to the icing once baked together in the oven at 275 degrees. You should not need to remove the sculpted clay tops from the cardboard tubes once these have been baked together in the oven. The oven temperature is too low for the paper tubes to burn.
9. Paint your cupcakes however you would like! I used traditional Valentine colors: red, pink, white. 
10. I also painted on the glitter glue to add some sparkle.
11. After the painting dries, cut the ribbed edges of the cupcake liners apart from the bottoms of the cupcake liner.
12. Carefully reattach the ribbed liners around the lower half of the paper tubes.
13. Now you can re-cut the bottoms of the liners to the size of the miniature cupcake bottoms and glue them in place.
14. Coat the clay parts of the cupcakes with Mod Podge when you have finished to help keep the Valentine party treats looking new.

Left and Right, close up photos of the doll sized cupcakes for Valentine's Day.
See how I displayed them on a crafted cupcake stand here.

See more clay cupcake projects and ideas:

• A clay cupcake lesson plan from my ArtEducationDaily blog
• DIY American Girl Cupcakes using Model Magic clay
• DIY Barbie doll food! How to make easy miniature cakes, Starbucks, Cupcakes etc...
  

Craft a Cupcake Stand Using Wooden Spools

Left, Here is the finished two tiered cake stand craft that I made for our 18 inch dolls to display
these sugary sweet treats for Valentines Day. Right, I used a series of wooden spools, beads
 and a decorative metal hook to construct the small stand.

        This craft is very easy to make if you can find the right materials. I used wooden spools for my own cupcake stand but this idea could be just as easily made using recycled jar lids or cardboard if you prefer.

Left, wooden spools, old-fashioned decorative, wall mount hook
and glue gun. Center, the 18 inch doll sized cupcake stand glued
 together. Right, I used small wooden beads for feet at the bottom
 of the cake stand.

Supply List:

• large wooden spool 
• one smaller wooden spool
• a finial or old decorative hook 
• Valentine scrapbook paper
• white enamel paint
• four wooden beads
• hot glue and hot glue gun
• white typing paper

       Above you can see the supplies collected on my old kitchen table. First you will need to glue the items together. If you use a hot glue gun and are a child, you should have an adult present to make sure that you don't burn yourself. Wooden parts can be glued together using many other types of glue if you have them on hand. It just takes longer for your cupcake stand to dry using them. 

Left, the cupcake stand painted white and you can see that I have cut my white typing paper
 to make a template for the liners. Center, the Valentine themed paper liners now fit the
bottom of each cake stand tier. I can remove these after Valentines Day is over and replace
 them with something else for our dolls to celebrate. Right, our hand-crafted, Valentine cup
 cakes are stacked and ready for our American Girl Dolls to play with. 
If you would like to make some like mine read this post!

       After my cupcake stand had time to dry, I then painted it with white enamel paint. I gave it three good coats of paint and let the paint dry between applications for approximately 20 minutes. Then I used a pencil to draw around the outside edge of the stand on white typing paper. Cut out the template and then cut a hole in the center of the pattern. I fit this to my cake stand before cutting out the decorative paper liners. You could Mod Podge these to your own Valentines Day Cup Cake stand in the end. However, I chose not to do this so that I could change the liners out with other holiday themed papers in the future.

More Valentine Cupcake Crafts from Our Family Blogs:

• "You Take The Cake!" Valentine Pattern Included
• See how to craft a Valentine mailbox cupcake here

Color Sweet Treats from The "Le Petite Pâtisserie Coloring Index"