Antique honey jar labels for your doll crafting...

        These antique honey labels have been cleaned and resized for students to make their own grocery crafts with by kathy grimm. Go here to see how to DIY vintage foods for your doll kitchen or grocery store.

The printable above is not intended for redistribution from other web pages or blogs.
It is the property of The Doll Coloring Book and should
only be used for personal crafts.

Doll Groceries for Craft and Play

Just a few of the crafts included in our grocery index for doll play.

       A grocery store in North America, or a grocer or grocery shop in the United Kingdom, is a store primarily engaged in retailing a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, and is not used to refer to other types of stores that sell groceries. In the UK, shops that sell food are distinguished as grocers or grocery shops, though in everyday use, people usually use either the term "supermarket" or, for a smaller type of store that sells groceries, a "corner shop" or "convenience shop". 

       Under this index we will list both grocery items and playsets for your dolls. Some of these posts are of things we have collected and some are of things we have made. Grocery storage such as kitchen refrigerators and pantries, plus fruit/veggie stands are also included among our artifacts.

• Cooked Pretend Food Crafts are Located Here.
• Food, Plants and You! - articles about food for kids

Groceries for You To Craft or Collect For Your Dolls:

1. Sculpt Luncheon Meats and Cheese - These 18" doll trays are 3 dimensional and so fun to make they remind me of of the Lunchables our kids used to take to school...
2. Newsprint Cinnamon Buns - These delicious looking sweet buns made to fit our doll's oven; these also come with a recycled tin container.
3. Chenille Stem Lollipops - Kids love to bend these furry craft wires into all kinds of shapes. Here is an easy lollipop craft they can give to their American Girl dolls.
4. Make faux rock candy for your dolls...  - These doll treats are made using tribeads.
5. Soft Braided Pretzels - This salty treat looks to real! 
6. DIY Doll Sized Jiffy Pop! - A fun craft made with Dollar Store art supplies and tinfoil. 
7. DIY Durable Boxed Foods for Play - Learn to layer and paste cardboard to make doll food crafts that won't breakdown with rough play.
8. Sculpt Paper Mache Pumpkins - are easy to sculpt and paint for Fall
   
9. Coconut Drinks for 18" Dolls - made from walnut husks look just like real coconuts in miniature!
10. DIY Cotton Batting Carrots With Feather Tops - A very old-fashioned craft; your great grandmother probably made these for her Easter Egg Tree!
11. Craft Candy Bars for Your Dolls - More printable crafts for a doll's sweet tooth...
12. DIY Doll Sized Candy Apples - We made ours using turned wooden parts.
13. Craft Cotton Candy for A Doll - Be on the lookout for pastel shaded cotton for this craft. It is frequently sold at Dollar General during the Easter Holiday Season.
14. Craft contemporary doll groceries using ads and coupons - Hostess cakes, Snowballs, Twinkies, Bird's Eye frozen veggies, Chips Ahoy, Famous Amos Cookies etc...
15. DIY Basmati Rice for American Girl Dolls - recycle, cut and sew smaller versions of burlap rice bags for your doll's kitchen or restaurant.
16. Bread Loaves Sewn from Socks - learn to reverse applique for this project...
17. How to make pasta boxes for a doll pantry - These have tiny windows and sculpted, oven-bake pasta inside each one!
18. DIY Doll's Farmer's Market Stand - Fresh Summer fruits and vegetable for doll play and display. (These varieties are typically found in the Mid-Western U.S.)
19. How to craft white sugar bags for a doll's pantry or store shelves
    
20. DIY Doll Dairy for Play - See how I made milk containers, butter sticks and cheeses.
21. How to make miniature eggs in cartons - for tiny dolls who love to bake!
    
22. Sculpted tropical fruits for the dollhouse and/or market... 
23. Sew net grocery bags for your dolls - recycle unwanted netting from fruit bags at a real market

Doll Sized Grocery Related Playsets: Crafts and Reviews:

• How I Restored An "Our Generation Gourmet Kitchen Set"
• Build a Market Booth for Your 18" Dolls

Food Related Crafts for Child Sized Play Kitchens:

1. Craft Jams & Jellies For A Pretend Kitchen - You will need to collect baby food jars for this craft.
2. Papier-mâché Two Delicious Pretend Pies! - yum, these are so adorable.
3. Crafting burlap coffee bean bags and purchasing a burr mill... - an easy beginner sewing project
4. Crush and Craft Pretend Potatoes - a student's first introduction to paper mache craft...
5. How to sew a gathered canopy for a child's market stall - dressing the nursery furniture to match your child's decor
6. Chalkpaint a Wooden Slat Basket - very nostalgic and sweet chalkpaint project, you will need to acquire a wooden basket from resale or garage sales
7. Refinishing a Table and Chairs for a Child's Kitchen - how I refurbished unwanted childhood table and chairs for our playroom
8. How to Clean a Vintage Copper Coal Scuttle (for dramatic play) Learn something new about something really old...

Printables for DIY Doll Grocery Store Products:

1. Printable Candy Bar Wrappers by kathy grimm - candy wrapper covers duty free, in color for doll play
2. 30 Vintage Labels for Crafting Doll Foods - for making your own vintage doll play groceries in color
3. Soda Fountain Clip Art Pages (3) - DIY a 1950's Americana Retro Diner (or kitchen) for doll play, journal, or scrapbook pages
4. Bakery & Deli Food Clip Art - paste these on a shelf inside your doll's bakery!
5. Fancy Chocolates Clip Art Pages (4) - would be cute for Valentines or Mother's Day cards ect...
   
6. Strawberry, raspberries and bread graphics for games and number books - these are in greyscale and black/white
7. Pumpkin, pumpkin pie, and turkey graphics - for games and number books, all in black and white
8. Antique honey jar labels for your doll grocery collections...
9. Templates for Bakery Boxes - Both Barbie and American Girl sizes
   

Because the crafts here are multiplying, I have decided to move our new holiday/festival related food crafts to their own indices. I will also include literary selections and additional interesting materials from other websites under the following similar topics as well: Halloween, Thanksgiving , Christmas, New Year's Day, Saint Valentine's Day, Saint Patrick's Day, Easter and The U.S. American Federal Holidays (Visitors will need to check for current updates to these categories at each unique Index in the future.)

      I've included the cutest vintage grocers windows here for those of you who would like to design a food mart or grocery store for your dolls. Paste these on to the outside of a shoe box after wrapping it with white butcher paper. Then decorate the interior of the box with shelves of food. We have plenty of printables above for this. Don't forget to cut an opening for the entrance/exit inside of your doll shoebox.

Print these restored, vintage grocery store windows from 1930 for crafts.

 

Dramatic Play in The Grocery Store:

• Grocery Store Dramatic Play by Jamie White 
• How to set up a grocery store dramatic play area at Early Learning Ideas
• Grocery store supplies and ideas from Teachers Pay Teachers

Fun Doll Grocery Store Video at YouTube:

• Froggy makes a doll grocery store
• DIY: Miniature Grocery Store, made with a cereal box
• DIY Kids Play Grocery Store Marquee

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

Read a cartoon with dialogue balloons talking about
the benefits of Kellogg's All-Bran cereal. This vintage
advertisement is about a food product we still eat
today and is quite common to American markets.

Crafting burlap coffee bean bags and purchasing a burr mill...

Pretend burlap bags are stuffed with cotton and used for play
in a children's market stall.

       Our family nursery has so many old-world props for grandchildren to play with while learning about Midwestern history and culture. Below are directions for making very simple burlap bags to contain pretend food stuffs like coffee, flour, potatoes and rice. And I have also purchased a coffee grinder at resale for $3.00 to teach the kids how coffee and flour were processed in small amounts prior to the invention of electric grinders.

       Burlap is processed from jute or hemp. Before the Civil War, my family farmed hemp in Missouri. Hemp is like the industrial version of jute. Hemp was sometimes used to make bags for storing and transferring all kinds of food product to market. It is most often used now to make rope and durable carpets. Jute, which is a similar plant, was used to make fabric for ticking (a utility fabric). Over time, paper bags, tin cans and foil bags replaced burlap in the shipping and storing of coffee to the general public, because these were much cheaper to manufacture.

       Although the early burlap bags were printed in mass manually with the use of a silk screen, our simple process will achieve a similar result with art supplies easily found in every American home.

The coffee grinder in our family nursery is new but it's design
dates back to those burr mills manufactured just after The
Civil War. It is one of many interesting kitchen tools that is
displayed in my old-fashioned, play kitchen.

 Supply List:

• Off-white burlap fabric, 3/8 yard (Use scraps if you have them instead)
• a black permanent Sharpie marker with a wide tip
• dental floss
• embroidery needle
• heavy twine or a red yarn alternative
• a plastic bag or tin foil
• cotton batting
• paper grocery bag with red printing (optional)

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Cut the burlap to whatever size you would prefer for this easy sewing craft. Mine are approximately 12" x 6".
2. Use a sheet of plastic or tin foil to protect whatever drawing surface you wish to work on top of. This is because the weave of burlap is very loose and the permanent ink marker may transfer to the surface beneath the burlap while you are lettering your design.
3. I drew my letters with a soft number 2 pencil before tracing over these with a black, permanent ink marker.
4. It's important to use a wide tip marker so that this tip will stand up to the rough surface of the burlap while you press into it.
5. It is also important to work on top of a off-white colored burlap in order for your ink based lettering to show up well.
6. I also added a few, small coffee bean graphics to my sample, burlap bag shown above. I also stapled a strip of paper trim to the rice bag version, just to add a bit of color to it.
7. Sew around the circumference of of each bag several times with a machine straight stitch, leaving a big enough opening to turn the bag right sides out.
8. Stuff your bags with cotton batting and then use a whip stitch with dental floss to seal them up. This floss is very durable and will keep the loose burlap threads tightly bound together.
9. Now add a bit of red thread trim using an embroidery needle if you'd prefer.

       Burr mills were commonly used in early American kitchens. A burr mill, or burr grinder, is a mill used to grind hard, small food products between two revolving abrasive surfaces separated by a distance usually set by the user. When the two surfaces are set far apart, the resulting ground material is coarser, and when the two surfaces are set closer together, the resulting ground material is finer and smaller. Often, the device includes a revolving screw that pushes the food through. It may be powered electrically or manually.

       Burr mills do not heat the ground product by friction as much as do blade grinders ("choppers"), and produce particles of a uniform size determined by the separation between the grinding surfaces.

       Food burr mills are usually manufactured for a single purpose: coffee beans, dried peppercorns, coarse salt, spices, or poppy seeds, for example. Coffee mills are usually powered by electric motors; domestic pepper, salt, and spice mills, used to sprinkle a little seasoning on food, are usually operated manually, sometimes by a battery-powered motor.

Left, The first coffee-grinder patent in the United States was issued to Thomas Bruff, Sr. in 1798.
 Right, English and French coffee grinders in the nineteenth century.

The photograph above shows coffee grinders or burr mills kept in a Museum in Wisconsin.
The photo itself was taken in 1873. On the far right you can see a burr mill similar to the one
we have on display in the Grimm nursery.

• If you like, you could add stenciled images to your burlap bags. This process from a crafter at YouTube achieves a similar effect to those older designs  using a silk screen, without the equipment needed to develop  that printing process.

Craft Jams & Jellies for A Pretend Kitchen

My pretend preserves are cooling on the window seal. Soon someone small will have a charming,
 new addition to her old-fashioned, play pantry.

       Any older brother or sister can craft these adorable, homemade jelly or jam jars for a child sized market stall or play kitchen! It's a simple craft that looks like just like real preserves! You can choose to draw pictures of fruit fillings, apply stickers or Mod Podge free, fruit clip art from the web onto the labels I have provided below. The age of your crafter will predetermine whichever steps you decide to take when decorating these labels.

Draw a larger circle using a pencil, onto
the wrong side of your fabric selections.
Cut an additional 1/2 inch margin around
the circle for a proper ruffle if making a
template from the jelly jar itself.

Supply List:

• four glass or plastic containers
• four acrylic paint colors: blue, purple, red and orange
• labels for jellies and jams
• stickers of fruit (optional)
• Mod Podge
• soft paint brush
• scissors
• pencils, crayons or paint for coloring fruit
• calico or gingham cotton fabric (scraps)
• rubber bands

Step-by-Step Directions:  

1. Gather your supplies before beginning. You do not need to use glass jars like mine, if you are afraid they might break when handled by little ones roughly. There are many grocery products on the market that come in similar styles and sizes to mine that are made from plastic. I used four glass yogurt jars that look just like old-fashioned jelly jars for this craft. 
2. Clean the jars with warm soap and water; removing any labels from the outside of the jar with a bit of elbow grease, of course.
3. Squeeze a small amount of paint into each jar and cover the entire surface of the inside of the jars with color. Rotate the jars from side to side until there is a nice even coat of paint. Drain the excess of paint back into the paint containers if possible. Let the paint in each jar harden over night before proceeding to the following steps.
4. Using a round template/pattern (from a glass or plate or the jar plus 1/2 inch), draw a larger circle using a pencil, onto the wrong side of your fabric selections. Repeat this four times for each jar of jam. Make sure that the circles are larger than the top openings of your pretend jam/jelly jars by at least one half inch. You will need this much fabric to hang over the outer rims all the way around each jar in order to seal them with a rubber band. Mothers and Grandmothers often decorate their home made preserves with similar fabric rounds after canning themselves.
5. Set these fabric lid covers aside for wrapping the tops of each jar later.
6. Now print out the labels that I have included for the project below.
7. You can choose to draw and then color in four separate fruits for each label: grapes, apricots, strawberries, and blue berries. Alternatively, you could use some colorful, fruity stickers to decorate each label before applying them with Mod Podge instead of drawing and coloring the fruits if you wish.
8. Use the blue berry label for a jar painted with blue acrylic, a strawberry label for a red painted jar, an apricot label for an orange painted jar and finally a purple painted jar for the grape jelly label.
9. After coloring in or decoupaging each label with stickers, apply Mod Podge to the surface areas of each jar of jam and carefully stick the labels onto the painted jars. Let the surface dry and repeat an application of Mod Podge on top of the labels to protect them from play.
10. Now secure a fabric round to the top of each jar with a rubber band. (see photo)

Left, Clean the jars with warm soap and water. Right, Let the paint in each jar harden over night before proceeding.

Here I have drawn some free labels for your jam & jelly jars.

I added yellow, calico, fabric lids to my pretend preserves.

Crafting For An Old-Fashioned Kitchen:

• Vintage Kitchen Ideas from Better Homes & Gardens
• Woman's 1950s Timewarp House