Ophelia and Nevel

I finally did it! I made mini clothes. It took a while to make the patterns, but it was worth it. The outfits are removable and require very little sewing. The patterns for Nevel and Ophelia's outfits will be in American Miniaturist Magazine August issue! A step by step tutorial with patterns to cut out as well. :)
I still need to make three more dresses for each season, this is her spring dress.
The house is coming along as you can see. The attic is taking the longest. Soooo many wood planks!!

 My art piece, A Very Strange Meeting from my book, Ophelia Under the Day Moon.
Visit www.auraleakrieger.com to see more and discover Ophelia.

Miniature coat hanger

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Making a miniature coat hanger

I am making one coat hanger made out of wood and one using mat board.

Cut wood to 2” x 3/8”. Then cut your molding strips to the correct size using a miter saw to get the beveled edges.

 Cut one piece of mat board to 2” x ¾”. Cut a smaller piece to ½” x 1 3/4”. Sand both front edges round with fine sandpaper.

Glue the smaller piece onto the center of the larger piece using wood glue.

~I want to thank Kris Compas for making me realize how great mat board is to work with for many mini projects. You should check out her blog. She has wonderful tutorials and makes beautiful furniture.

http://1inchminisbykris.blogspot.com/

Once dry, I lined the inside edges of the mat board with a small amount of wood glue and cut my ribbon corners diagonally and then pressed it into the glue and pressed it down. Let dry

Draw a dot where you want your hooks to be and drill holes with a pin vice and a drill bit that is just a bit smaller than your wire. Then lightly sand down the holes on the board.

I had copper wire laying around, so I am using this for my hooks. You can use whatever gauge wire your comfortable with.

Pinch the end with round nose pliers and make a loop, then place the pliers in front of the loop and bend loop end forward.

Next, place the pliers on the wire as shown in the photo and bend around the thickest part of the pliers.

Follow the photo and bend again using the tip of pliers. And snip. This will be trial and error as you decide what shape you want.

Push the end into the hole you drilled and start wiggling it around for a good fit. Do not bend the wire while it is in the hole. If you have to bend it for adjustments, take it out each time then put it back in. You don’t want the hole to grow in size. Don’t worry about trimming the part that sticks out of the back yet we will do that at the end. Once you are happy, be sure each wire is completely flat when it’s lying on your table. If not, they will lean left or right once in the hole.

Put those aside and paint the base the color you want, sanding in between coats.

Don’t sand your ribbon though.

I found some Styrofoam and pushed my hooks into it and painted them black to look like wrought iron. Two coats followed up with an acrylic satin varnish should do it. Let dry completely. You could spray paint them instead of brush painting, it would be eaisier.

Put the hooks into the base one at a time and trim the extra off with wire cutters. Then pull each hook out, dip the end in wood glue or super glue and push back in. Push base flat on table to be sure it will be flat on the wall.

If you have some beads that would look nice at the base of the hooks, add those first on each hook and then glue hook in place. I wiped some wood glue over the back holes as well to be safe. Let everything dry.

There you have it. Stick it to the wall and hang all sorts of fun mini things on your new coat hangers!