My l little doll l, all dressed up and ready.

This is my latest doll creation.   She is a Heidi Ott baby doll with a soft cloth body.

These dolls are fun to dress because of the soft body and they are easy to pose in your mini scenes.


As usual I used DMC tatting thread ( fil dentelles) which is my favourite material for making mini clothes. I used 1 mm knitting needles and a 0,60 mm crochet hook.

The crochet dress ( my pattern) is a bit see through so I knitted a pair of painties for dolly to wear under it.

The bonned is crochet too as are the little flowers. Bottees are knitted.

All patterns are my design.

I wanted to show of the back of the dress too. The bow is silk ribbon.

Newest doll Margie.

Margie is my newest doll.

She is a  Heidi Ott doll dressed in a knitted dress with matching bonnet and boottees.

Pattern is my design.
If you are interested in buying a pattern do contact me .

 Would like to know how you like my litte girl !

A bag for every day of the year

I love bags. Not so much the expensive leather ones that cost an arm and leg to buy. But fun bags, bags that are a little bit different or bags that I can alter or even make myself .

 Knitted and crochet bags are fun to make both in  full scale and in miniature.

Here are some that I made .

This article was published in American Miniaturist.

Even if you are a beginner something like the blue purse  in the photo above is very easy to make. You just crochet or knit an oblong piece of material. It has to be wide enough for the purse you want to make and long enough to be  folded into a purse shape. Making one fold to  get the back and front of the purse with a little piece leftover to be the flap to close the purse with. Close the seems and if you like you can add a handle. I crocheted a chain from one side of the purse to the other.

You can make tons of different purses this way. Bigger and smaller of course. With different sizes of flaps. Try using different types of thread , different stitches fro texture  and of course you can add different trims and bits to your purses.  The orange purse in front of the mirror and the  ecru purse on the shelve are made the same way . To the orange one I added a crochet trim in black thread. The ecru one has a silk rose as a little decoration.


If you can crochet a granny square you have a great starting point for a shopping bag. The bag is just two granny squares  sewn together with a handle added. You can make it as big as you like and use one color but a  few different colors also look really good.  The shopping bag  on the floor on the right was made this way.

Hope you will have fun making some bags or purses. I would love to hear your comments and see your photos.

Altered dress forms part 1.

I visited a vintage shop a while ago and they had some lovely altered dress forms on display. I felt very tempted to buy one but I knew I would totally have no room for one at my tiny house. I could not forget about them and kept thinking how nice it would be to own one.

In the end  I decided to make my own in 12 th scale.  It was so much fun to do that I actually ended up making several.

Here is the first one I made.  This one is covered in decoupage.

I used mini printies I found on the net. All of them are labels and adds for soap and perfume. I picked very romantic pictures. But of course you can make  one in every style you like. I think Art Deco pictures would be lovely or even pictures of pretty ladies.

You will need a dress form of some kind. Mine was a Chrysnbon kit. I wanted to put the dress form on a shop counter so  I did not use the stand and the skirt bit.

Other that then you need some Mod Podge and some very tiny scissors. Cut out all the printies and put them in a container.

I added Mod Podge to each printie and glued them  on the dress form. To follow the shape of the dress form you will have  to slightly overlap your pictures here and there. Try to keep them as  flat and smooth as possible.

When you are finished , leave to dry overnight and then check for any lose bits.  Glue them into place. When everything is smooth and secure  paint the whole dress form with 2 coats of Mod Podge.
I decorated mine with a bow around the neck and some silk roses.

A very easy and really fun project !

A most inspring blog : Artfullymusing.

I do not follow a lot of blogs  but  http://artfullymusing.blogspot.nl/ is one of the few  that I read every week.

The blog is not really about miniatures but there are tons of things that will be easily adapted to  smaller scale or will inspire a project of your own.

The theme of the blog is altered art . Anything is fun to use from the humble match book to old dolls and books.

If you love Halloween Laura has tons of inspiration for you . Her instructions are very clear and she also has videos.

I am not connected to this blog in any way but I just wanted to share this source of inspiration with you.

This is a recent project that I really like. This alchemist shop is build into a boo.

The book pages and folded and cut to shape the shelving  and the book has  awesome  decorations .

The cover is also very interesting.

This photo shows how the pages from the book are used to create the shop. 

Enjoy !

Some cats you will love to have around the garden.

These cats will not dig up your plants or leave things that  you do not like around the garden. They will not even want to sleep on top of your cat nip plants. :  The are cat topiaries.

No, you do not have to grow and train any mini plants but you will have to do some cutting and pruning.

They are a lot of fun to make and I am sure once you know how they are being made you will come up with variations and maybe even animals of your own design.

I picked cats because I love cats and for me a mini project has to have a cat in it.

The original article has been published in both American Miniaturist Magazine and Dolls House World magazine some years back.

The small topiary cat.

Making miniature towel cakes

Towel cakes are very popular these days. They are fun to make and they are practical gifts when taken apart later. An other brilliant thing about them is you can make the gift as expensive as you like by using more or less towels and they will always look wonderful. Plus they make great decorations at a wedding- or baby shower.

So I felt it was high time to try making this fun gift in mini. I made mine with a baby theme but you can change the theme by using different colors and different decorations.

You will need to adapt the “ ingredients “ a bit for the smaller cakes but they will look just as stunning as the full size ones.

One sided terry toweling is perfect. This has the little loops on one side of the fabric only. It is used for making baby clothes and also for doll making. You can also recycle baby clothes etc for this.

If you cannot find it there are other fabrics that will work very nicely : Fleece fabrics, micro fiber or terry toweling dish cloths from the dollar store.

Towel sizes :

Big towel 5 cm – 11 cm

Towel 4 cm - 9 cm

Washcloth 3 – 3 cm or 4 -4 cm .

But feel free to experiment with other sizes if you prefer.

Other materials you will need :

Tacky glue

Ribbon for wrapping around cake.

Hair elastics. I mean those really small ones that are very stretchy. I found mine at the dollar store

Some pins .

Scissors and ruler for cutting fabric

Your choice of materials to decorate your cake . I used a mini bow and on the other cake there is a matching set of cup, plate and tin plus a baby product in a bottle.

The size of the cake depends on the size of the towels you use and also on how many of them there are in the cake.

Let's make the blue towel cake

Step 1: Place a 4-9 cm towel flat on your work surface.

Step 2: Fold long sides to the middle .

Step 3: Fold the whole thing in half, length wise.

Tip : A real towel cake will be taken apart later but the mini version won't so to make things easier you can cheat and add a little bit of tacky glue to keep everything in place.

Step 4: Have a hair elastic at the ready and start rolling your towel into a cake shape. Try to keep the roll nice and tight. Place elastic around cake. Once again you may use some glue.

Step 5: Cut a piece of ribbon that fits nicely around your cake. Move the elastic to where the ribbon will not completely cover it, but do not remove it yet. Wrap the ribbon around the cake, hold tight or use a pin and remove elastic. Glue ribbon in place. Without the elastic the cake will have a better shape.

Step 6: Decorate your cake. I used a washcloth folded into a bunny and a cup , plate and tin with a bunny pattern. I added a bottled baby product as a final touch.

The big cake 

For this cake you will need to cut two towels size 4- 9 cm . The cake will look bigger because I have used terry toweling for this cake, which is thicker than the other fabric.

Step 1 : the first layer is created in the same way as the blue cake.

Step 2 : For the second layer you need a smaller towel. You can make this by cutting 4 cm off the second towel.

The cut off bit can be used as the washcloth for the top layer. The towel is folded and rolled in the same way as the blue cake.

Step 3: Use the piece you cut off in step 2. Fold in half and then fold in half once more. Roll into cake as before.

Step 4 : Add ribbon to cakes as for the blue cake.

Step 5 : Now it is time to stack the cakes. You can do this in several ways. If you want to do it like a real towel cake you can push a toothpick upwards through the center of the bottom layer and thread the other two on the toothpick to secure. You can also use a pin , but then you have to start at the top so the sharp point is hidden inside your cake.

But of course you can also just glue the layers on top of each other, no one will notice.

Step 6 : Decorate the top of the cake. I added a silk bow .

You can make endless variations on this cake . The white cake was made using two towels for the bottom layer and one for the second layer. White ribbon makes it look really elegant. Some little roses are all it needs for decorations.

For a real big cake use the big towel size or several of them for the first layer and then 1 big one for the second layer and a smaller towel for the top.

Have fun making these cakes .