Make Miniature Pickets from Stir Sticks

You don't need expensive materials to make most miniatures. Here I'll show you how to use common wooden stir sticks to make miniature pickets for fences or wainscoting. This is a good way to practise using a file to make basic wooden parts for miniatures. I'll be using some of these pickets and these techniques later in this twelve days of Christmas projects series to show you how to make some nursery furniture, designed to work with the children and farm animals theme of the printable wallpapers.

You don't have to use stir sticks as your wood base for these projects, but they are usually a good fine grained wood that works up easily into simple furniture projects. You can buy boxes of them inexpensively from some suppliers if you want to make projects for a club, or with a group of children. I prefer to collect mine by having coffee with friends!

Photo copyright 2008 Lesley Shepherd, Licensed to About.com Inc.