Christmas 2018 Papercraft-a-long: Advent Calendars

Welcome to the 2018 Christmas Papercraft-a-long, with this episode hosted by your favorite dolls, Samantha and Nellie!

This year, we're going with a vintag-y theme for decorations and cards.

Our living room has been decorated with card garlands and assorted paper sculptures, including an paper nativity scene from an antique french pattern.

The cards are miniature versions of Tasha Tudor's Christmas card designs.  For a bit of a Scandinavian influence, we have some miniature yule goats (No, we are not setting these on fire.  We are not allowed to set anything on fire.  The human has ruled that right out.) and a pair of Dala horse, all made from paper.

The kitchen is ready for some baking goodness.  We're planning a gingerbread house this year, along with peppermint bark and even more cookies.

And for today's papercraft:  Advent calendars!

The original designs are (as always) from Canon Creative Park.

We've shrunk these down to our size.

House Advent Calendar

House Calendar Instructions

Tree Advent Calendar

Tree Calendar Instructions

Print the calendars out on lightweight cardstock for best effect.  

The house is simpler to make than the tree.

We have 2 calendars, one shaped like a Christmas tree, and one shaped like a house.  Each calendar has 24 little drawers to pull out.  These two designs actually have interchangeable drawers, if anyone wants to mix-and-match.

We're just showing off the contents of the drawers...  The other girls aren't getting sneak peaks of the treats.

The giant stash of candy we have actually fits in the drawers quite well.

...and meet a different furry interloper.  This one wants to play with the candy.
Notice the devil-may-care look as she paws at the candy drawers.

Not that the normal furry interloper isn't around...

Science Fun (part 1)

It's not every day that the human gets a day off from work, and definitely not every day that the science lab is set up for business.  And, if you haven't met me yet (don't worry, the human has been really really slow about introducing me to the world), I'm Vega.  Jaime Luciana Vega.

And we (meaning Shep, myself, and the human), have been planning space adventures.  Hence Shep's new stash of space toys, and my stash of activity books.  Now for the human to get logistics under control.  Maybe start the Space Tourism Bureau?

I'm not the only new inhabitant of (well, I want to call it the SR2 Normandy.  Raise your hand if you get the reference), but I'll go with 'The Presidium' because it sounds better than 'The Madhouse with a giant cat'.  Meet Liz, the lizard, current perching on Nora.  Next thing you know, there'll be an octopus in the neighborhood.

My new activity books are mostly made from official NASA printables, shrunk down to 1/3 scale.  All except the 'My First Outer Space' coloring book.  That one was made from Dover free samples.  We've got a nifty little 'Space Tech' activity pad, and a little 'What we need to colonize Mars' activity book.  And then we've got some color books on the latest and greatest NASA gear:  the Space Launch System and ORION.

Doll Sized:

Outer Space coloring book

NASA activity books and Assembly instructions

Orion and Space Launch System coloring books

Human Sized:

NASA Space Tech Fun Pad

NASA Surviving and Thriving on Mars

and other coloring books from NASA

Yuletide Greetings

Thank you for understanding the small delay in our holiday plans.  But we're back now with some last minute presents and gift boxes.  Because everyone needs fancy boxes to store presents.  And cookies.  The round boxes make wonderful cookie boxes.

Cookie Swap!

 The designs for the boxes are plain, and are meant to be printed out on fancy cardstock.  The human had several packages of winter/holiday themed cardstock left over from last year that were perfect for this.  To get mix-and-match lids and boxes, print the same box on two different coordinating cardstocks and just swap the lids.

Get the box designs here.

The instructions are from http://www.auntannie.com/BoxesBags/OvalBox/.  There's all sorts of cute boxes, most of which don't even need to be resized for miniatures.

And what did we store in the rest of the paper boxes?

Yes, those are Pleasant Company reproductions

Vintage and antique paper dolls.  Lots of them.  

Dating from the 1830s all the way to the 1940s.

Get the Pleasant Co. paper dolls for Samantha, Kirsten, and Molly

But going a bit back in history:  the first paper dolls were elaborately hand painted, not printed.  Paper dolls certainly weren't cheap toys, but rather expensive treasures.  The box on the left is a reproduction of a set of a French paper doll and her wardrobe from the 1830s.  The doll was double sided, as were all of her clothes and hairstyles.  This was so fashion designers and home dressmakers could see both sides of the dress should they choose to make it for themselves. 

Get the 1830s French paper doll and the box.

This was rescaled from a set of paper dolls at ufdc.org.

 'But there aren't any paper tabs to put the clothes on the doll!'  That's right.  Back in the dark ages (not quite, but close), you put clothes on paper dolls with tiny dabs of sealing wax or pins.  Tabs on paper doll outfits didn't happen until McLoughlin Brothers invented them in the 1880s or thereabouts.  You're going to hear a lot about the McLoughlin Brothers, because these were also the people who took advantage of chromolithgraphy (one of the first color printing techniques) to mass produce paper toys for children.  They're the ones who produced the original paper doll on the right.  The original dates to 1865.

Get the Civil War paper doll
This was rescaled from a set of paper dolls at ufdc.org.

The McLoughlin Bros. were known for their children's books, games, and paper dolls in the late 1800s.  We also managed to acquire a small collection of those.  First some 'themed' paper dolls:  Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, Fairy Tales, and Little Women.  Each of these sheets has a doll and 4-5 outfits of characters.  There's also three sheets of more generic dolls, each with 3 outfits (with hats).

Ge the McLoughlin Bros. Victorian paper dolls

We hope you have a happy holiday season and a joyous Yule.

Advent Papercrafting: Gift Boxes

We're back!  Are you excited for more cute Christmas crafts?  We've been crafting for weeks now getting ready for the holidays (and there's still more cute things coming up).

(We also have some sad news.  The human has a very sick cat who's been hospitalized and running up a $2000+ bill.  If you've been wanting to purchase patterns for doll books to make your own library, now's a great time to buy some from the human's etsy store.  Or ask about any of doll book patterns featured here so far.)

This time, we made a bunch of different gift boxes, some simple, some exceptionally elaborate.  The gift box patterns are all from Canon Creative Park, resized for us.  It's one of the human's favorite free papercrafting sites.

Assembling gift boxes

To resize the patterns, when you're printing them, go to the 'layout' options, and select '2 pages per sheet'.

We had a lot of fun with these, but some of the boxes were definitely more difficult to make than others.  We'll let you know ahead of time which ones are really finicky and time consuming.  The results are worth it, though.

A Christmas tree box for Christmas

1.  Floral box 

(difficulty:  easy)

2.  Christmas tree box 

(difficulty: moderate at human scale, difficult at doll scale)

The red box actually comes in three different colors

3.  Hexagonal gift box

(difficulty:  easy, with one tricky fold closing the box)

We just love the fancy paper bow on the star box

4.  Christmas Star box

(difficulty:  moderate in human scale, difficult in doll scale)

5.  Dainty gift box (Perfect for Valentine's Day in our mind)

(difficulty:  easy)

Coming up next:  Vintage/antique paper dolls and some space themed things to welcome Luciana.

If you're just joining us, the previous weeks are here:

1.  Christmas decorations and Christmas cards

2.  Christmas coloring books

Advent Papercrafting: Coloring Books

Are you amazed that the human has actually managed to post on schedule?  We certainly are.

It's time for the next five days of crafting:  some holiday themed coloring books!  You can either print out and fold these as coloring books, or cut the pages apart to make a giant stack of pages.  We, obviously, prefer the books.  These are super fast to make up (think under 5 min) and are great for stocking stuffers or decorations or props for a bookstore.  

Coloring Bonanza.  Guess which crayons/pencils actually work.

We keep asking the human for a bookstore or a library, but she claims we don't have enough books to properly equip one.  She may be lying, but if she's not, it means we'll be getting even more books next year.  (Current book tally, for those of you who are interested, is somewhere over 300, probably closer to 400, which you'd think would be plenty...)

Coloring and activity books

Download the coloring books

Instructions

Interior pages of the coloring books

The originals came from Dover samplers, and the human resized them to doll scale.  Each book has six interior pages to color (and yes, if your pencil/crayon is small enough, you can color it.  The human tried and succeeded.)

If these aren't enough and you need more coloring/activity books (or bonus Christmas themed books):

Christmas books (including a book of carols)

American Girl themed activity books

See you in five days for the next batch of crafts!

Advent Papercrafting: Decorations and Christmas Cards

Nora here.  It has been a while, hasn't it?  We finally made the human sit down and organize her photos of us, and it turns out she's got about two months worth of backlog adventures to go through.  You can expect regular updates through February, at which point we're going to have to hound the human again.

Do you like our living room?  We (that being Cauth and I) have taken it over to our own papercrafting, and we'd like to share our new projects with you this December. 

We're still looking for a theme for the last 5 days of crafts, so please leave a comment with your suggestion.

Christmas cards and decorations

It's December, so that means Advent, and we're going to have 25 (maybe with a few bonus crafts) small projects in all.  Some projects are harder than others, and we'll point those out hopefully before anyone gets frustrated.

Projects 1-5: Decorations and Christmas Cards

Our craft table is only marginally messier than the human's

The decorations (on pages 1 and 2) should be printed on lightweight cardstock for best effect. 

Tiny and cute, and currently on top of the bookcases in the parlor.

The original designs came from this book, which was part of a Dover sampler pack.  The human gets a good number of her designs from Dover samplers, if you were wondering.

Next up, the annual batch of Christmas cards.  The human hasn't started hers yet, so we're ahead of the game.  The Christmas cards are on pages 3 and 4, and should be printed on normal paper.  Fold each card in half, glue, and fold in half again.

We always use calligraphy pens for Christmas cards.

The designs are a mix of American Girl catalog pictures (from 2015, which was when the human designed these and then forgot about them for 2 years), and vintage/antique Christmas cards from the NYPL's digital collection (here).

Christmas cards, modern and vintage

Enjoy, and come back on 12/6 for more crafts.

Summer Sewing 4/5

This collection happened because a friend of mine had some leftover scraps of a snakeskin patterned knit, and wondered if I could do anything with it.  The answer was 'yes, of course I can turn it into doll clothes'.  From the handful of scraps, I managed to cut out a miniskirt, a pair of leggings, and one side of a reversible corset.

The rest of the fabric came from my stash.  I was looking for fabrics that would look good with the black, and decided the color theme was going to be turquoise, white, and black.  I had some floral embroidered fabric that I used for the blouse, and some lace for the sleeves.  The A-line sheath dress and the other side of the corset were made out of a turquoise linen with sequins.