DIY: Tricks of the trade related to miniature projects for dollhouses, roomboxes and dioramas

See also diy and diy character dolls

Tricks of the trade

General tips to use in many different areas. One of the best blogs ever for instructions on how to use tools, materials, and model making instructions is by David Neat.

Acrylic Sheets

• How to Bend Sheet Acrylic or Plexiglass With Simple Tools  - from About.com
• see roomboxes for treating scratches on Plexiglass 

Clamps

• Dollar stores sell Bungie cords for strapping luggage onto car roofs. They are very handy when you want to hold pieces of a dollhouse while they dry.
• Micro Clips sold at Radio Shack are useful for all sorts.
• use a gluing jig to make a true squared corner. Legos make a good jig and have the added benefit of being easy to clean. .
• Make a couple of pillows containing buckshot. These can be used to hold down awkwardly shaped pieces to be glued together, like roofs. Think sandbag.
• Clamping Small Parts

Curves

• Create a curved wall from Foamcore  by cutting score lines close together and bending it into a curve. Cover the back with  poster board, plastic or paper file folders,or heavy cardstock. 
• Use taskboard

Deodorize old houses or  other mini item

•  If some used furniture, accessories, books, etc., have become musty smelling or reek of cigarette smoke, just wrap fresh coffee grounds in paper towels & secure with a twist tie & put it in a container along with the item that needs to be deodorized.

• Also try baking soda, kitty litter, old newspapers , or BBQ charcoal.

Desk top

• Use a 12' x 1'2' gloss ceramic tile as your multi-purpose work surface. Cutting won't damage it, paint and glue can be wiped or scraped off easily. Glass cutting boards work well too.

Drilling holes

• In Plastic - You can always heat a nail of the same diameter as the hole you want using a flame (candle, gas stove, blow torch(!)) by holding it in a pair of pliers over the flame then using the hot nail to make the hole. You'll get a nice clean hole and the item won't crack as it sometimes does with a drill. Just be careful not to burn yourself and if using a candle, try not to get soot on the nail, as once the soot gets on the plastic it can end up melting into it. Permanently.
• Drilling and Scribing Dowels - from Woodworking Tips

Drips

• Try using some "Triple Thick Brilliant Brush-on Gloss Glaze" made by American. It is with the stains and glazes in the paint sections at Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Joann's. Use the gloss glaze. put a little line on wax paper and use a toothpick to pull it in the direction you need. When dry, pop it off the wax paper and glue to your project. Works well to add drops of 'liquid' to bottles, etc.
• Mix up some rapid set 2 part epoxy resin, stirring well. The sort that usually sets in 5 or 10 minutes. Fill the ladle with it and hold the ladle while the resin gets hot and begins to thicken. Then tilt the ladle and use a coctail stick if necessary to tease down drips of the epoxy. They should be thick enough by now to only 'drip' so far. Hold until it hard enough to lay down without ruining your lovely drips. Then when all is hard you can paint the resin with suitable colour acrylic paint.
• Use puff paint for anything dripping over and edge. Or Tacky glue - just a little bit at a time, letting it dry between drips. 
• The epoxy will give a stronger harder finish. Also, some white tacky glues will begin to shrink back over time whilst the epoxy should stay in place.

Foamcore

• Warping can occur when the surface treatment is applied to only one side of the foamcore. Make sure material applied to each side is similar in kind and thickness, and that both sides dry at the same time.
• The reason foamcore warps is because it is essentially a paper product and paper shrinks when it dries.  The shrinkage "cups" the board as the painted side pulls in.  So if you have an equal tension on both sides, it will stay relatively straight.  Works whether you use PaperClay, Spackle, egg-carton pieces or just plain paint, as long as both sides are equal.  Most importantly, both sides must dry at the same time.ng thickly). You will want to support the board so the paint on the back can dry evenly as the texture dries.  If you are painting a board that is already assembled into a wall, you can make the X after the texture if you wish.  The important step is that both sides dry at the same time.
• add cornstarch to acrylic paint to make a heavy cream mixture, for plaster effect..Apply coats to add thickness, and texture the plaster to make brick or stone.

Glue

• now has its own page

Hinge

• How to make a hinge - this is the January 2010 GSOLFOT newsletter,
• To attach the tiny nails, put them into the end of a pair of needle nose pliers (with little grooves in the tip), so that the nail points out in the same direction as the end of the pliers. Then push it into the wood. For hinges, to put a small dot of quick grab glue on the hinge first and then quickly place it in the correct position on your door/wall. Then you can easily push the nail in after the hinge is in the correct position without worrying about it moving while you push the nail in. Be very careful not to use too much glue, so that your hinge does not work anymore.

Jigs

• Look for the tall, narrow 6" tall wooden boxes shaped like a flat-bottomed grocery bag in Michaels.IFill with buckshot and use as a jig to hold roombox walls together while gluing.
• To cut tubing or other collapsible material like a straw, insert a dowel inside, and cut with a sharp knife, rolling the tubing back and forth, keeping the knife at a 90 degree angle. 

Joints

• Got a broken leg? Drill small holes vertically in each piece and glue in a short length of thin wooden dowel or even a piece cut from a straight pin to strengthen the repair. If the pieces can be cut on a slant, this also reinforces the join.
• TLC's How to Repair Wooden Furniture gives RL examples of furniture repairs. Scroll down about 2/3 of the way down the page to see Broken Arms, Legs, and Other Structural Parts..
• Joining wallpaper or carpet pieces together? One piece zigs while the other zags? Place each piece on top of the other, slightly overlapping where the join is going to be. Make sure the pattern (wallpaper) or nap (carpet) match! Cut carefully with a sharp knife, using a steel ruler. Both edges will now align perfectly!

Floors

• Use Plaster of Paris in the bottom of a hollow egg or a hollow pumpkin as a floor to raise the level of the scene you are building.

Lasercut Kits

• Read through the instructions first and lay out all the pieces to be sure you have everything.
  Dry fitting always works well.Even laser cut kits should be test fitted. This ensures more that you are putting things together in the right order more than the pieces not fitting.
•  Do not sand. You will throw off the fit.
• If there are burnt edges from the laser, wipe the residue off before gluing.
• Always use an x-acto to remove the item from any flashing.
• Stain all the pieces before taking them out of the sheet. Paint will cover glue but most stains won't. Be patient whilst waiting for the glue to dry. Moving something before it has set may break delicate pieces.
• Record the name and number/email of the manufacturer of the ki, in case any parts are missing.
• Use a light golden oak stain on pieces with a design burned into the wood - a dark stain just erases the design! like that.
• Alcohol based ink markers (like Prismacolor) and pen type wood stains do not cause swelling or warping, so use them instead of paint.

Magnets

• How to Use Super Magnets for Dollhouses and Other Miniatures - from About.com

Measuring Tools

• Calipers - How to use them by Karin Corbin
• Squares - How to keep things straight - from About.com
• Measures for Success - how to use rulers from George the Miniguy
• Tools for measuring and marking out - David Neat
• Use a piece of uncooked spaghetti as a spacer when laying floor tiles  or making cinder block walls to keep lines and spacing even.

Molding

• Precision crown molding - by Holly on the Greenleaf Forum
• When cutting moldings: measure, cut and glue it as you go.
• When you cut a miter, use a small scissor on it afterward to cut the tiny extra piece off the back so it fits perfectly.
• When you do ceiling moldings, turn the box upside down to work on it so that it is the floor.
• When you get your mouldings, whatever type they are, draw a dark line with a black marker on the part which will be on the floor or ceiling. That is the part which will ALWAYS be down on the flat part of the miter cutters. If you see the line, you are not cutting it correctly.
• Remove Mold Lines on Plastic, Resin and Metal Miniatures- from About.com

Paper

• Use paper towel/ printed paper to simulate fabric. Print something on paper. Use white glue spread on the back and then apply a 2 ply paper towel to the back. Wad up and then spread out. Remove the 2nd ply (you may have to do first before wadding, so experiment) then shape over whatever you are covering. Add dots of glue if needed.The idea is to "soften" the paper print so it appears to be fabric and can be draped or fitted to furniture (bedspreads, tablecloths, etc), to windows (curtains, drapes), and more. The secret is to do all the wadding
  and shaping while the glue holding the print to the paper towel is still wet. Experiment with tighter and/or looser wads to see how that makes a difference. Also notice how the print "ages" with multiple wadding/unwadding.
• To age manuscripts for wizards etc. -- print on normal computer paper (not card stock) and cut the pieces out. Then put them in an old pie tin and put coffee grounds on top (still in the paper). IThey can also be soaked directly in cold coffee but that stains them too deeply. When dry burn the edges with a candle. 
• Fix a Paper Punch - from About.com

Plastic

• Working with Plastic Miniatures - from About.com

Refinishing

• How to Rework and Refinish Simple Dollhouse Furnishings - from About.com. Several techniques are discussed which can be used for dollhouse construction as well as furniture (see furniture page)

• Stripping a Garden Trellis - from Every Little Thing

• staining something small?  Look for a lidded jar about three inches high with fairly large holes. Put the parts in the jar, pour in the stain, fasten lid, then pour the stain back in the can.

Sanding

• Inexpensive emery boards make great sanding blocks for getting in those tight spaces between spindles and railings.
• Use crumpled up brown lunch bags to "sand" your projects between coats of paint. It leaves a nice smooth finish and leaves very little grit.
• Sand with 2500 grit sandpaper or one of those little pads advertised for removing hair from sensitive places. Take care, removing too much of the edge happens very quickly !
• abrasives - from About.com

Sharpening scissors and paper punches

•  First try cutting aluminum foil, and if that doesn't work, use fine grade sandpaper. This method is used for keeping sewing needles sharp by inserting them into a fabric tomato filled with an abrasive grit. .
• Put some of the coarsest grit rubbing compounds (automotive polishing compound) onto some paper and punch (or cut) through it a few dozen times, then wash everything up with WD40 and then paint thinner.
• Sharpen Xacto knife blades with a pink 99 cent emery board or fine sandpaper.Use iit like a knife sharpener

Sealing wood walls

• Walls should be sealed before you put on electrical tape, and before wallpapering, so  the glue doesn't get absorbed into the wood, leaving 'loose' wallpaper.
• Seal with a half and half mix of white shellac and methyl hydrate, or denatured alcohol instead of the methyl hydrate.

Soldering

• For Beginners

Staining

• To stain baseboards, use a stain pen from the home improvement centre. No drips!

Straw

• For those chicken coops, scarecrows and farm projects, get some raffia and shred it with a needle.

• Buy a pot of wheat grass in the produce section of the grocery store.You can even wash it if you like. Then let it dry out. It will turn into hay in just a few weeks. 

Stencils 

• Try using a stencil and modelling paste to make designs on walls or furniture. Consider our own design using a thick plastic sheet and punches. Gesso might work instead of homemade modelling paste.

Stucco

• Golden Rule for poster board, presentation board, foam core board, paper wood and veneer, that like 30K gold, is easy to bend. " always treat both sides of the material equally lest one side absorb more moisture than the other, dooming it to either disfigurement or a painful death from Warpwallitis. "

  As rigid as this commandment sounds, as long as you do something wet to both sides you should be safe. ie. Gesso one side, paint the other. Glue egg carton stones on one side and glue wallpaper on the other. Gesso makes a great sealer, as does ModPodge, and after that is on you can pretty well do anything with either side without problems.

• OK, stucco time! Here are a few T&T methods:

  a) Polyfilla or other cellulose-based crack filler (available dry or pre-mixed) mixed with paint or tinted with gel food colouring. (DO NOT use "spackle" or drywall sealer as it has a nasty habit of cracking when and where you least expect it.)

  b) Craft paint and fine sand.

  c) Craft paint with commercial texturizing medium added.

  d) Artist's Gel Medium (I used Golden brand 'as is' and painted when dry)

Styrofoam

• If you want to smooth off the edges of your Styrofoam, so they are slightly curved instead of square, sand them with another scrap of Styrofoam.
• Heat up your glue gun WITHOUT glue, and sculpt away!
• When you're cutting Styrofoam, if you wipe the Styrofoam, your blade and your hands with a fabric softener sheet before cutting, it will pretty much eliminate the static cling and all those tiny bits of Styrofoam will be easier to manage.
• Styrofoam is messy. When cutting or grinding it, use a clean white kitchen trash bag of good size. The static in the bag grabs a lot of the mess before it gets too far away. Works best if you open the bag and move it around a bit, then lay it down on your work surface and put some tape on the corners. When done, remove the tape and gently fold the bag up over the mess, take it outside and tip it over the big trash barrel to throw off the bigger chunks and turn it inside out. Eventually all the bits go down further into the bag and the bag can be used to line a kitchen trash can. To get the bits off of surfaces and tools wipe things down with a laundry dryer sheet. It breaks the static charge.

Styrene

Tools

• cool tools  - instructions for specific tools, how to use them and where to buy them

Weights

• Fill a bag with buckshot (from the Sporting Department). The weight will flow over the items to be glued, like a bean-bag.

Wire

• Twisted Metal - This link shows a technique used in maille (chain metal work) which is applicable to creating details on furniture and architecture. Also this is how to create braid for fabric trims - just use embroidery thread instead of wire! A Perfect Twist

• How to straighten wire

• Wire gauge measurements
  

   

Workspaces

See Craft Rooms

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