More 1/6 scale Miniature Foods,Toys, and Books

  The last couple of days have been all about 'making stuff'. One of the things we made a lot of  'stuff' for was an idea of Emma's called The Doll Mall. After the huge doll fair we did,and the annual Doll Christmas Shop,there was also one Christmas where Emma invited her friends over one at a time for a different doll Christmas shop. It was heavy on Harry Potter items we had made,and the kids ended up fighting over the homemade fake toy boxes. I had to say, 'Hey, guys, they're empty you know. They're not real. We made them. We can make more.'
  That was just a small shop though. Emma got the idea to make a whole Doll Mall. One year she and I spent a lot of the summer at the dining room table making miniatures for the mall. We cut pictures out of catalogs and ads for the fronts of the boxes. 
 

This catalog picture of a box of Christmas crackers worked out really well. This is from Fuzzy's things.

Like this one of Fuzzy's.

We used boxes we had saved from the fourth of July's sparklers,(cut down), and poppers,and also made tiny boxes. By gluing the pictures of toy boxes from the ads to the boxes we made to fit them, we made miniature toy packages for the mall.

 

Some of this stuff of Fuzzy's may not be from the mall. The package top left is Peanuts stickers,next to that a Toy Story CD set,more 'stickers',and on the end is a Rudolph record. I'll explain about that in a day or so. I know the Neopets cereal came later. It was made from a picture on a cereal box. As you can see we also used the boxes from the individual size boxes of Nerds. Below you'll see the backs of the boxes. The sparklers boxes are obvious!

  Some of the best sources for ready made minis you don't have to print out are food packages. A  lot of the time they advertise themselves or their accompanying products on their own package. On example is the Neopets cereal above. The picture of the Neopets cereal came from the cereal box. I cut the picture out with enough cardboard left around  it to make the box out of. The downside of this method is that there are no side or back panels for the packaging. It works all right if you are making them for kids, or if you're using them in a diorama or for photos,as long as all that shows is the front.

Like the Cheerios and Life cereal boxes in the cupboard in the top left of this picture from a photo story I posted. You can see the full story HERE.

This box of Cheerios is Fuzzys,and made from the same picture on the cereal box as the one in the cupboard above. These came out really nice.

The logo on our toothpaste box made a great mini toothpaste box. This was in Ivy's doll stuff. I was amused to find she had put a tube of Crest in the Colgate box.

The Eggo box is cut from an Eggo box,as is the Colgate box. The Whoppers were from an ad paper. The Hershey's are made from Hershey's minis wrappers. The tiny Aero bar was computer printed,but only in black and white. The candy bars themselves are polymer clay. The Aero one was made to look nibbled.These are Ivy's.

A better look at the Eggo box, with the homemade popcorn bag I showed you yesterday.

   We made mini books for the mall bookstore.  In the early days of making our minis we just cut pictures of book covers out of ads and left enough paper attached to fold it and make a back cover.
 

Like these of Fuzzy's.

As time went on,(after the Doll Mall), I started gluing the ad pictures to thin card stock...ok,usually 3X5 cards or cardboard the appropriate thickness saved from candy packaging or anything else that worked. We didn't make spines on the books at first,but I moved up to that for making books for the kids later.

Like these mini versions I made of some of Ivy's favourite books. At this point I am still using pictures of covers cut out of ads, but the books have spines and pages. The pages are cut from stacks of paper and glued in the spine with Fabritac glue. These are a little beaten up from being in Ivy's stuff.

Emma and I filled a book store with homemade books.  I accumulated clearanced miniature flowers for the flower shop. We also accumulated and made grocery store items for the grocery store. The mall ended up with a grocery store, a flower shop,a book store, a toy store, a pet store or vet's or something,and a dress shop. The Dollar Tree had 1/6 scale dress forms with actual removable fancy dresses,so we had a few of those. We also made some sock dresses and things. There was also a sitting area with a trash can,and a gumball machine. The 'mall' was set up under and around our dining room table. I know. Where did we eat? But that was something we worked around.
   My mom would never have allowed my sister and me,(That's grammatically correct. Leave out the 'my sister and'. See?),to have done anything like the 'mall around the dining room table'. As I have said before,my mom never even allowed us to have the Barbie Dreamhouse out more than 'once in a blue moon',as the saying goes. Her catchphrase was,"What if somebody was to come?!" Nobody ever did, but Mom insisted on having a spotless house that looked like no children lived there.  I was the opposite. If someone came to our house they were liable to find a doll mall under the dining room table,or a rug of Legos in the living room floor,or a blanket house. Not only did I allow the kids to do this stuff, I was probably in it with them. I spent a great deal of time as a kid by myself. My mom was an at home mom,but she never stopped working. During the day I occupied myself,while Mom ironed or cooked,or worked in the yard. I remember being bored and lonely a lot of the time. When I had kids,if my dishes waited until the next morning to be washed instead of after dinner,that meant I had more time to read to the kids before bed. (And when they were little that meant reading separate books to Emma and Fuzz.) If the grass grew a little longer,I could make miniatures with Emma, or play Rescue Heroes with Fuzzy,or play Polly Pockets with Ivy. I skipped a lot of things,but we played together outside,we had foam brick fights in Ivy's room,and Ivy and I played with Kelly dolls before bed. The summer before Emma started kindergarten we spent weeks making a 'Wizard of Oz' movie with her dolls as the stars.(Her idea.) The dust and dishes were still there when we finished playing,but my kids didn't stay little.
  Tomorrow we'll see some more 1/6 scale miniatures that the kids and I made.