Easy and Fun Miniature Projects from 2010

Animals found their way into a variety of your miniature scenes in 2010. Poseable felted dogs topped the list, as they are used for everything from dolls houses to simple gifts. Other very popular projects were lightweight birds made from Delight air dry clay. A number of miniature scenes must be infested with miniature mice as well.

• Make Miniature Poseable Needlefelt Dogs
• Make Miniature Seagulls
• Make Miniature Doves
• Make Miniature Mice

The list of miniature furniture projects for beginners in 2010 included several basic building techniques. It seems that the miniature armoire and miniature table are the most popular projects, with the quarter scale bakery case coming in a close third.

• Make a Simple Miniature Armoire
• Make a Basic Miniature Table
• Make a Quarter Scale Bakery Case

Some of you successfully used your new skills to expand your repertoire of furniture. The miniature night table (drawers) and the technique for making doors from the miniature armoire, were combined with the finishing technique for granite countertops to make kitchen cabinets with opening doors and drawers, with modern granite countertops.

• Make a Miniature Night Table with Opening Drawers
• Paint a Miniature Faux Granite Finish

Dolls house snack foods and desserts just keep getting better and better as people expand their uses of air dry and polymer clays as well as artist's materials and silicone mould putties. This year's most popular projects include some good techniques that can be used over and over for many projects.

• Make Miniature Snack Foods
• Make Opening Boxes from Polymer Clay - Heart Shaped Chocolate Box
• Make Fluted Paper Cases for Miniature Chocolates and Pastries

Small scale display projects were the most popular in 2010, but one old standard, the break away box, wasn't far behind. The teacup front porch displays and the Halloween cupcake houses used popular printables, while the break away box plans and the miniature stable used wood and card.

• Make a 1:48 Scale Front Porch Display in a Tea Cup
• Make a Printable Cupcake House
• How to Build a Break Away Box
• Make a Miniature Stable

Flowers are always popular for miniature displays and 2010's hands down winning project was the very simple to make hanging moss basket. With the increasing interest in quarter scale, the quarter scale garden plant instructions were widely used, and over the summer, the wicker bird cage joined the standard flower gathering basket as a great way to display miniature plants. For lovers of living plants, pruning herbal thyme into trees for fairy gardens was popular as well.

• Make Miniature Moss Baskets
• Make Plants for Quarter Scale GardensWeave a 'Wicker' Bird Cage
• Choosing a Variety of Thyme to Prune Into a Miniature Tree

With large stockpiles and lots of projects to finish, many people turned to making or adapting existing dolls house kits and stashes in 2010. Saving money on miniatures was a popular request, and these four techniques seemed to give people a lot of options.

• Make Simple Miniature Hinges from Scrap Metal - easy way to create custom hinges
• Carve a Simple Rope Moulding - useful for picture frames, mouldings and adding detail to plain cabinets
• Make Simple Molds to Cast Clear Bottles
• Realistic Faux Granite in Miniature