How to craft a mop and bucket for your 18" dolls...

This pet dog above is watching his mistress mop up his muddy paw prints on the
kitchen tile floors!

 

       To make this mop and bucket set you will need the following supplies: cardboard tube, grey and  yellow paints, white school glue, scrap cardboard, natural looking yarn, green embroidery floss, a dowel rod, hot glue gun and glue stick.

• See the utility supplies in Barbie's utility cabinet here

Left, the yarn is wrapped around a 3" length of scrap cardboard until it is very thick. Center,
Use an embroidery needle and floss to sew the lengths together across the top of the card
before you ever remove the mop head from it. (I used a blanket stitch for this.) Right,
sew a second seam using a straight stitch across the yarn top approximately
 1/4 inch below the top seam.

Step-by-Step Instructions for The Mop:

1. Decide in advance how long you will need your doll's mop to be and cut this length from a dowel rod. 
2. The finished mop head will be approximately three additional inches in length. However, that means that these lengths are actually double that length because the mop head is wrapped around a piece of cardboard. (see photo above.)
3. Don't remove the yarn loops from the cardboard until these are sewn together across the top using an embroidery needle and floss. Then remove the card.
4. Sew a second seam in a straight stitch 1/4" below the top stitch if you wish. (optional step)
5. Take your scissors and cut the loops across the bottom.
6. Now you will need to apply hot glue to the end of the dowel and roll the mop head around it's tip. 
7. You may also need to squeeze extra hot glue into the interior of some of the mop head to secure it more to the stick. If your yarn is thick like mine, you won't even see this extra glue.
8. Paint the dowel yellow. (optional)
9. Braid an additional loop as a handle for holding and hot glue this to the top of the mop stick. 
10. Wrap and glue a thinner piece of embroidery floss around the loop's ends to finish the mop neatly.

The finished mop for an 18" doll measures 11 1/4 inches.

I recycled a tube and cap from  Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls with Icing dough pack to make this large
 mop bucket for the dolls to use along with the mop. As you can see, I glued a faux water paper
inside the tube and the bottom as well. I also painted the outside of the bucket grey and twisted
a wire into each side of the bucket so that a doll could carry it.

Paint a cheerful Easter floorcloth for your dollhouse

       Floorcloths served several purposes: they protected floors, decorated a room, and also helped to insulate a space. Floorcloths might be covered with a carpet during cold weather, or might themselves have straw or newspaper put underneath them to help to keep the cold out.
       Historical floorcloths varied in size. They might cover a smaller space as an area rug does today, they might be of a size to reach wall to wall, or they might be of a size to be placed under a dining table to protect a costly carpet. These small protective floorcloths were called "covers" in the 18th century and "druggets" in the 19th.
       Young students here may like to craft a floorcloth for their dollhouse from canvas, paints and the set of Easter/Spring patterns included below. 

Left, floorcloth positioned in front of a dresser. Center, the floorcloth positioned in front of a rocker.
 Right, up-close photo of the finished, primitively painted, Easter floorcloth.

Supply List:

• a small scrap of canvas or muslin
• acrylic paints: in Easter colors
• tiny brushes
• template (below)
• needle and thread 
• Mod Podge or Acrylic Sealer
• permanent ink markers
• #2 lead pencil 

Left, basted edges of the canvas floorcloth. Center, use a pencil to trace the patterns on the
 finished side of the floorcloth. Right, paint bold, simple shapes of rabbits, hearts, eggs,
birds and flowers on top of the canvas wherever you wish!

Step-by-Step Directions:

1. Cut the small piece of canvas or muslin to the size you need for the floor of your dollhouse. Remember to leave a seam allowance of approximately 1/3 of an inch.
2. Turn 1/3" under and press with a hot iron. This will be the backside of your floorcloth. 
3. Thread a needle and straight stitch along the top of the floor cloth down all four sides of the canvas by hand or with a machine. This will leave a finished edge along the boarder of the floorcloth. 
4. Now you will need to prepare to paint. Using the template below, cut out the rabbits, tulips, Easter eggs, and birds to trace around on top of the canvas floorcloth. Design your Spring floor cloth to look however you wish.
5. With tiny brushes, paint the entire surface of the floorcloth. Use your favorite pastel or jewel-like colors. After the paint dries, add more surface details using a permanent ink marker.
6. Seal the surface with Mod Podge or clear acrylic varnish to protect your painting. 
7. Use the floorcloth to decorate your dollhouse for Easter!

The Easter patterns for students to print out on their home computers.

How to braid a doll's rug . . .

Left, a finished, braided rug for a dollhouse. Right close-up look at fuzzy yarn texture.

    

       Braiding a doll's area rug is as easy as braiding your doll's hair! We used very chunky yarn to weave this doll rug and you can make a similar one as large or small as is needed. The chunkier the yarn, the quicker it is to make a large rug for 18" dollhouse floors. Use a thread to sew the sides together that is in the same color family. Whip the needle in and out and through the edges of the braid so that it will not be easy to see from above.

This video teaches how to braid three strands of anything.

Very simple instructions. Visit Mr. Coleman to see his videos at

Youtube and learn more about paper folding crafts.

Turn A Bookcase Into A Dollhouse

Dollhouse made using a bookcase 46" tall.

       I turned a child's small bookcase into a dollhouse using recycled cardboard, wrapping paper and lino tiles. . . plus a whole lot of white school glue! 

       The top two floors of our dollhouse are constructed with heavy cardboard, the two lower floors are the original wooden bookcase. The top may be slipped on and off for storage.

       The windows of the dollhouse were constructed using two very shallow boxes and cardboard cut grids. Both have slits at the top and photos may be slipped in and out of these to change the views seen from the interior of the dollhouse rooms.

       The second floor of the dollhouse has a tiled floor made up of samples of linoleum. These were grouted to the shelf permanently. The other floors were decoupaged using a faux printed paper made to look like actual wooden floors. 

       I layered scalloped-cut cardboard to mimic roof tiles on the sides of the dollhouse only. 

       I will post the rooms as these are decorated with refinished doll furnishings and/or newly made furniture from recycled materials. Meanwhile, why not take a look at a few miniature crafts of furnishings here at our blog?

• 5 Ways to Make Dollhouse Dressers
• How to craft a paper mache toilet for a doll's house
• My Vintage Tudor Doll House
• Doll furnishings and house over 100 years old!
• The spool beds that I made for the bedroom of this dollhouse. 

Bookcase portion of the dollhouse without it's top two floors.

 

The "A" frame part of the dollhouse with two floors beneath the roof in front of the bookcase.

Close up photos of the bookcase dollhouse details showing trim work, floors, windows and walls.

More Bookcase Transformations by Everyday People:

• Turning a Cube Shelf Into A Dream Dollhouse 
• Huge American Girl Dollhouse Made From Bookshelves
• How to turn a bookcase into American Girl Doll House!
• Engineer Mommy builds a wicker dollhouse start to finish

Additional Doll Homes Made by Master Miniaturists:

• The Miniaturist: Real-Life History
• The Private Life of a Doll's House: Part 1 and Part 2
• Famous dollhouse receives $200,00 renovation

Linoleum tiles for your 18" dollhouse floors

        Now you can print and paste linoleum tiles together in your doll's kitchen or recreational room floor using these colorful large tiles. Printables at our blog are not to be redistributed from any other online collection or sold for profit. They are the property of kathy grimm and are for personal home use only. These printable tiles include the following color combinations: tan, brown, white and blue.

 

Printable Lino Check Floor for Your Dollhouse

       This black and ivory linoleum printable may be used for a 1" scale or even a Playscale sized dollhouses. You may shrink it to fit smaller dollhouse floors by shrinking it in a software application or scaling it down using a home printer. I think it would look nice in a front hall, in the dining room, bathroom or kitchen.

       Printables at our blog are not to be redistributed from any other online collection or sold for profit. They are the property of kathy grimm and are for personal home use only.

Cut and Paste A Mosaic Floor

Finished tile floor for our 24"x48" dollhouse kitchen.

       Here you can see that I have just finished the construction of our 18" dollhouse floor, for the kitchen. This floor is very inexpensive to make and easy enough for a ten year old child to craft! Most of you will have easy access to the supplies if you live in the U.S. Save up those used cereal boxes! Because our dollhouse floors are so large, the cardboard tile application is perfect. This floor is not too heavy at all.

Supply List:

• cardboard from Cereal boxes (to cut the tiles from)
  
• cardboard cut to the exact measurements of your dollhouse floor
• white school glue
• spray paint primer (grey)
• patching plaster
• clear acrylic sealer
• additional books and cardboard to weight the floor down between applications
• sharp scissors
  

Tiles made from cardboard clippings cut and pasted in a loose geometric arrangement.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Measure the floor space of your dollhouse kitchen and cut a thick piece of cardboard to fit into it exactly. This will be the piece that you will glue tile shapes to.
2. Cut a variety of square and rectangle shapes from the cardboard cereal boxes you have collected. You may wish to keep all of these cardboard "tiles" in neat stacks according to shape and size. I found that this organization of shapes helped me to work quickly while assembling the floor tile.
3. Use dabs of white school glue to paste your tile designs on top of the cardboard flooring. Do not use too much glue and work in large areas. It took me several days to cover the floor you see above. Between drying times, I weighted the cardboard down with heavy books. This kept the floor from warping while drying.
4. Spray paint the entire floor's surface outside using a primer. This will seal the cardboard so that you can successfully apply patching plaster. Choose a color of primer that you want the majority of your tiles to be. I chose grey. 
5. Use acrylic paints to add random tile colors if your wish. You may need to give these color tiles several coats of paint.
6. Apply the patching plaster as directed on the label. However, wipe down the surfaces with only a slightly moist cloth, barely damp. Let the plaster harden inside the cracks only.
7. Touch up with paints if needed
8. Spray the entire surface again with a clear acrylic sealer.
9. Fit the tile floor into your dollhouse kitchen.

More Dollhouse Tile DIY:

• Miniature dollhouse kitchen floor made using linoleum by Loy Dollhouse
• A vintage pink bathroom for the dollhouse

Print a Miniature Faux Tile Floor

        This grey, white and black faux marble floor may be printed for a 1" scale or even a Playscale sized dollhouse. You may shrink it to fit smaller dollhouse floors by shrinking it in a software application or scaling it down using a home printer. I think it would look nice in a front hall, in the dining room, bathroom or kitchen.

Printables at our blog are not to be redistributed from any other online collection or sold
 for profit. They are the property of kathy grimm and are for personal home use only.

Brick Floor Printables for The Dollhouse

        The "brick, lino floor" printables below are scaled approximately according to doll sized proportions. They may not be exact but are close enough for those of you who are crafting for fun. Images may need to be dragged into Word software and "tweaked" a bit by those of you who are more particular about math! Remember kids, the larger your floor space gets the more printed copies you will need to cut and paste onto your floor space.

        I think these patterns would look nice on a kitchen floor or on a patio or in a greenhouse.

1/4" (1:48) scale for dollhouse brick floors for a patio or kitchen

1/2" (1:24) scale for dollhouse brick floors for a patio or kitchen.

1" (1:12) scale for dollhouse brick floors for a patio or kitchen

Playscale (dolls 10"-12") scale for dollhouse brick floors for a patio or kitchen

1/3" (18" dolls) scale for dollhouse brick floors for a patio or kitchen

Persian Rug Printables for ¼ Inch (1:48) dollhouses

        These 16 Persian rug printables are for ¼ Inch (1:48) dollhouses. I have broken them apart here into pairs and the runners into single images so that crafters will not need to spend more on ink than necessary! They are for personal crafts only, folks. Don't redistribute them from alternative web pages or profit from them monetarily. Enjoy and keep decorating.

Printable Persian Dollhouse Rugs

       These printable Persian Rugs or Carpets may be used for personal dollhouse crafts only. Drag them into a Word Document to make them smaller if you need to. Click directly on the images to download the largest available size. Cut them a bit longer and paste on a fringe if you like.

Caucasian Rug.

Chinese Cushion Rug.

Old Sirab Rug.

Serapi Rug

Shirvan Rug.

Srukru Rug

Persian rug in yellow and gold color palette.

How to neatly trim the fringe of a doll's rug

Left, neatly tape down the fringe before cutting it. Center, repeat for both ends. Right, a perfectly even edge.

       I purchased a small 'rug', 18"x12", from resale. These small covers were fashionable back in the 1930s and 40s for use as protective coverings for chairs and tables. This one was in exceptional condition. However, the fringe was far too long for a dollhouse rug. I trimmed it by combing out the yarn fringe and taping it down with masking tape to a flat pile rug. Then I cut the ends off with sharp scissors. Now it looks as good as new!

Faux Wood Grain Printables

brown wood grain pattern

        Two faux linoleum wood grain printables, one brown and the other grey, for your doll crafts. Use them for Mid-Century modern finishes on furniture or for the floors.

grey wood grain pattern

Cut and Paste Doily Rugs

This rug craft is so simple, even a very young child can produce marvelous results.
However, an adult should do the spray painting.

         Above you can see that I have produced two examples. One of them has brown lace and the other white. You can make so many color combinations depending upon the paint you have on hand. These examples have floral motifs at the center of each but you can use plaids, paisleys, stripes etc... to create an infinite variety of combinations!

Supply List:

• paper doilies
• decorative scrap papers
• spray paint (optional)
• Mod Podge or white school glue

Step-by-Step Directions:

1. If you desire color on the lacy edge of these doily rugs, you can spray paint them in a outdoor work area. Use a cardboard box or newspapers to cover an area large enough to keep the paint from spreading on to other surfaces. Let the doilies dry.
2. Find an object with the same or close to the circumference of your doily's center part. You can leave however much of the lacy cut-away showing as you wish.
3. Trace around this object on the backside of a piece of decorative scrap paper.
4. Cut out the tracing and then glue the scrap circle on to the center of your paper doily.
5. Layer Mod Podge to the top of the rug to protect it from some wear. Let the rug dry. 

More Doily Crafts:

• Paper Doily Baskets for Easter
• Craft Doily Butterflies

Craft a Rainbow Yarn Rug for A Dollhouse

A spiral patterned rug made with rainbow colored variegated yarn, close-ups of color and finished edge.

The clean side of the finished rug that was protected by the
sticky side of the masking tape.

        Here is a simple way to make a rug for a doll house. It requires no weaving or braiding. The design made from this process reminds me of natural patterns found in agate stones.

Supply List:

• masking tape
• cardboard
• variegated yarn
• white school glue
• embroidery floss and needle
• felt for backing

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. First you will need to decide how big you want your doll's rug to be. Then make a cardboard template in the shape of the rug to use as a guide. I traced around a large circular plate on top of my cardboard to make my own template.
2. Next, you will need to cover the top surface of the cardboard with masking tape, sticky side up. This can be a little tricky at first. Lay the tacky part of the masking tape face up and wrap it around the edges of the cardboard using a small bit of tape to secure it on the backside of the cardboard template.
3. Now start laying your yarn down on top of the surface template at it's center point, butting the yarn up next to it's sides as you create a swirl pattern. The masking tape will hold the yarn strands in place while you press the yarn into a simple rug design. It is very important that you leave no gaps between the application of the yarn rows. Every yarn strand needs to have it's sides touching a yarn strand. (see photo)
4. When you have reached the edges of your cardboard template, the rug design is finished! 
5. Smooth a generous amount of white glue on top of your rug design with your finger tips and let the yarn rug dry overnight.
6. Carefully pull the dried yarn rug from the sticky cardboard. Hopefully it can be removed in one piece. However, you may need to apply a bit more glue to the back side of the rug again, in order to get the entire rug to stick together.
7. I backed my rug with additional glue and a piece of felt cut to the same size as my rug. But this step is optional.
8. Then you can finish the edge of your rug with a blanket stitch using a variegated embroidery floss.
9. I also reinforced my finished rug with additional stitching across the design.

Left, cover the top surface of the cardboard with masking tape, sticky side up.
Center, lay your yarn down on top of the surface template at it's center point.
Right,  Smooth a generous amount of white glue on top of your rug design with
your finger tips and let the yarn rug dry overnight.

More Yarn Crafts:

• Create a Butterfly Yarn Picture
• A Yarn Wrapped Vase
• Weave a Ojo De Dios
• Wrap a Rainbow Colored Wreath for Your Tree 

Collecting Rugs for Your Doll's House

       Covering the floors of your doll house may seem a tedious prospect if you believe that these must always be handcrafted by yourself. 

       In truth, the successful decorating of a doll's house may have more to do with your ability to reinterpret the use of items that are already in your actual home, objects such as placemats for example. Placemats come in all kinds of textured surfaces and are produced in a wide range of color combinations. Some of them are woven from grass, others are printed on cotton. If purchased from a department store, placemats come with finished edges too. Find the perfect placemat and you've found a Barbie sized rug that you need not alter in the least, unless you want to. 

       I have even found smaller bath mats in dollar stores that look exactly like sophisticated area rugs when displayed inside a doll's house. 

       Often I use one item in a doll's room to imagine additional furnishings that would normally accompany it, if it were included in an actual adult sized space. If I had this rug on the floor, which couch or bed would go best with it and so on...
       Placemats are best purchased for a doll's house when they are most affordable. These are frequently tossed on clearance tables in stores and sold for pennies on the dollar at the end of a season. You can pick them up at a thrift stores and garage sales as well.
       An unfashionable placemat may make a far more attractive rug for your doll. I have frequently discovered that things considered ugly when designed for one use, become marvelously unique when repurposed for another.
       So take your little ones shopping for these affordable area rugs this weekend. They'll enjoy the novelty of the hunt and you will enjoy less money spent!

      

Make a pom-pom dollhouse rug

A finished pom pom rug for a doll's house.

       What doll wouldn't enjoy such a fun, bumpy rug to decorate her home with? 

       This little miniature doll house rug is a simple and entertaining first sewing project for a nine to ten year old student.

       He or she will need to learn how to thread a needle and control it while stringing together a whole fist full of colorful pom-poms.

Supply List:

• multiple colored, small pom-poms
• needle and thread

Step-by-Step Directions:

1. First you will need to select a colorful thread and needle to work with. 
2. Thread the needle and knot the end of your thread so that thread will get caught up inside your first pom-pom. This requires a bit of trail and error. Sometimes the threads will not catch properly as you string the pom-poms and you will need to repeat the process. 
3. Soon you will have a long string of pom-poms to wind up together. 
4. Work your threaded needle between the chain of pom-poms, from side to side so that these butt up next to each other to form a soft round rug.
5. As you work, you may need to sew in a loose pom-pom here and there to make the rug stiffer.
6. The more pom-poms you add, the bigger the miniature rug becomes! Measure it against a doll's chair, sofa, or even a bed in order to determine just how large you would like the rug to be.
7. Work the threaded needle back and forth into the last pom-pom on the chain before trimming the needle off the thread.

These are miniature pom-poms that you can purchase from most any dollar store or hobby shop.

Older kids may like to try making a life-sized pom-pom 

rug for their room after successfully finishing the 

miniature project above.