Amish Made Dollhouses and Miniatures 

Below is a selection of Amish-made doll and dollhouse miniatures made of unfinished wood, cotton, and cotton flannel. These wonderful doll furniture pieces and doll clothes items are perfect for bringing imaginative play to life, and will last for years.

The dollhouse and add-on miniature furniture pieces are classic designs, and contain no plastic parts. They are handcrafted by Amish woodworkers and seamstresses in Ohio, and sold through Lehman's Department store.

They are scaled to easily accommodate 18" dolls.

Click through for more information, to buy, and to see current discounts and sale prices. (Please note that your purchase my result in a small commission to us, at no extra cost to you.)

You can find more modern dollhouses in our other Dollhouse Store. For some fun books about dollhouses and miniatures, click through the buttons below to buy on Amazon. (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases - at no extra cost to you.)

Playscapes for Unplugging

Creative time can happen any time.

In that special time when the imagination takes off, cardboard boxes turn into rocket ships, and blankets turn into tents and treehouses. Your kid's special space is an indoor playscape just waiting to be filled with ideas, games, adventures, and stories. Want to entice your youngsters to settle down, curl up, think, make some things, read, learn something new, and get lost in imaginative play in a nook or cozy corner? The Danish lifestyle idea of Hygge is all about coziness - and is perfect for setting your kid's imagination in motion. 

At a time when my boys seemed to be sucked in to the vortex of video games, following the idea of Hygge was a good guide for making simple changes that made a big impact. We created tents out of sheets, and swords, shields, and castle walls out of cardboard boxes. And I made sure there were piles of books and magazines to be leisurely leafed through.

Their small Hygge-inspired area was an indoor screen-free playscape where they could unwind and relax. Away from screens, they had time to make stuff, work on projects, play with Legos, build miniature houses, bring some outdoors inside, set up dinosaur battles, and play board games. They were inspired to read, explore, and daydream.

Hygge-inspired little camping spaces mark different territories from the every-day. We've curated some decor for kid's rooms, with links to buy special items - including sparkling lights, tents, hammocks, blankets, pillows that look like logs, and a felt campfire - all super cozy and comforting additions to any safe space. (Please note that the links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a small commission - at no additional cost to you.)

How to Make an 8 Bit Video Game Cross Stitch

Photo via Pixelkin's Make Your Own Video Game Cross-Stitch!

Making a cross-stitch picture based on an 8-bit video game character or setting is a perfect project for those who are nostalgic for early video games. 

Imagine a picture made up of little x’s, all the same size, with a color palette that’s as simple or as complex as it needs to be to make the image. A cross stitch picture is made up of a series squares formed by one stitch crossing another stitch. The little ‘x’ squares are stitched with a needle and thread on a piece of woven fabric, which has vertical and horizontal threads – a grid. The weave has obvious openings between the threads, with enough room for the needle and thread to pass through.

8-bit images from early video games are made up of pixels, which look like little squares. The word 'pixel' was invented from "picture element," and is defined as the basic unit of programmable color on a computer display or in a computer image. 

In the video below, Courtney Holmes of Pixelkin walks us through the process of creating cross-stitch artwork based on your favorite 8-bit game character.

The Steps

Choose a Character – There are so many great characters to choose from! But, you might want to consider a character with few colors and shading for your first project. Keep it simple when you're starting out. With practice, you'll be able to tackle your favorite characters, no matter how complex their designs are. 

Make the Pattern – Print out a character in color. You’re going to create a grid pattern that will translate into your cross stitch. To do that, use a pen or pencil and a ruler, and draw right on your printout. Draw vertical and horizontal lines which map out the edges of the pixel boxes. Then, number the grid boxes, both at the top and on the left hand side.

Assemble your Supplies and Materials - Below is a list of items to get you started (links below are to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases - at no extra cost to you):

Below is a video from MadeByMarzipan which details everything you need to know about Cross Stitching for Beginners. 

If you prefer beginner instructions in text and illustrations, click over to Stitched Modern's 'A Beginner's Guide to Cross Stitch' for a great tutorial.

Helpful Tips and Links

For a guide of different cross-stitch pattern-making computer programs, check out Lord Libidan's review page​

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Looking for free online cross stitch generators? Check out patternsforyou.com, myphotostitch.com, and craftdesignonline.com​

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Make Magazine has a tutorial for creating cross-stitch patterns from images using myphotostitch.com

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Check out Lord Libidan's 500+ free cross stitch patterns, including Video Game characters, TV and Film characters, and Anime Characters.   

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Use the free-to-use make8bitart to draw your own pixel art, and use to design embroidery or cross stitch patterns. 

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Use step-by-step pictorial tutorials for embroidery and cross stitching from Shanon Downey.

For your library...

Do you collect crafting books? Check out a page of various cross stitching books: how-to's, classic designs, subversive designs, feminist-based patterns, miniature designs, and trendy and traditional designs.

The Sketchbook Project

The Sketchbook Project is an ongoing enterprise that promotes creativity. Anyone can contribute a sketchbook that can be viewed online, in a traveling exhibition, or in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn storefront library.

To be a part of this creative movement, you just need to purchase a sketchbook through the Project’s website, register it, fill up the pages, and mail it back. 

What you do to create your sketchbook can run the gamut - from writing text to making drawings, watercolors, collages, etc.

Since its founding as a non-profit organization in 2006, the Project has grown to include over 50,000 artists’ books, which have been contributed by 30,000+ artists from over 135 countries. Each book is 5" x 7”, with blank pages and a unique six-digit barcode, for cataloging and tracking purposes.

You can send a sketchbook any time of the year to be included in their library. But, if you want to have your sketchbook included in their popups, exhibitions, and installations that take place across North America, make sure to pay attention to their deadlines - in general, you'll need to order your sketchbook by mid-November and return it by the following mid-February to be included in special events.

You can submit a sketchbook after the deadline – it just won’t be included in the traveling exhibitions. It’ll be placed on the shelves of the Brooklyn library, available to be browsed.

​The Project suggests themes to consider each year. In 2019-2020, the suggested themes were: Daydream, Scenes From a Story, A Lasting Impression, An Untitled Sketchbook, Straighter Than Narrow, Pencil Me In, Legacy, Time Trapped, Anthem, Forget What Was Said, Expires in an Hour, I Used To, Drip and Drop, Tactile Qualities, Mixed Use, and A Visual Short Story of the Day We Left.

For their Vol. 17 Project, themes to consider are: Sunset Hues, Marks and Markers, Transparencies, Watercolor Whispers, Erasing Everything, Doodle a Daydream, Promises with Pencil, Great Stories in Graphite, Art Accident, Zig Zag, Cityscape Escape, and Mask and Tape.

When you purchase a sketchbook through their website, you can choose to pay more to have it digitized when you send it back, in which case your book will have its own url, and can be viewed online by anyone.

How to Connect

The Art Library is open for visitors Wednesdays through Sundays. You can follow the Project through their website, on Instagram, and on Facebook. See the Project's home, order, and FAQ pages for more details.

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Jonah Larson's Ethiopian Project Fundraiser

Like a true artist, Jonah says: “I see something in my head before I make it.” His flower afghan, made up of 800 individual flowers, is stunningly gorgeous. Jonah’s speedy skills are impressive. But even more impressive are the patience and care required to take on and complete vastly different-shaped projects at such a young age. Jonah's got the skills of a young artist and mathematician. 

Here’s a video about Jonah from 60 Second Docs: 

Jonah’s crocheting skills have garnered him an income through orders placed through his Instagram account, Jonah’s Hands. Jonah has put his sales income back into yarn for crocheting, into savings, and towards helping families in Ethiopia.

He has sent items he's made to the Ethiopian orphanage where he was adopted from.  And, with the help of his mother, Jenn Larson, he's got a new project that will get off the ground with the help of Roots Ethiopia. Roots Ethiopia helps families by providing much-needed school supplies and by supporting small businesses.

Jonah's project, ‘Help Expand Jonah’s Hands to Ethiopia,’ is looking to raise $15,000 through gofundme.

Free-to-Use Images

When you’re thinking about resources for your arts and crafts projects, the Library of Congress (LOC) might not be at the top of your list for where to go to find images.

But it should be.

You should have a look around the LOC’s online collections for inspiration, and for free-to-use downloadable images that can decorate your home, be incorporated into collages, journals and scrapbooks, or be used to create custom printed fabric and paper items. 

If you have a commercial website or a personal blog,  and use images in the public domain, you know it's sometimes time-consuming and difficult to find image banks which offer a broad range of styles. It's often difficult to find good images which haven't been over-utilized. 

The Library of Congress is a monumental depository of information, and has thousands of images available for re-use. It’s a national treasure that's available to the public, and it's getting larger and more expansive every year - adding approximately 12.000 items to the Collections daily.

 The expansiveness of the Collection is in part due to a special acquisitions program which extends beyond materials sourced and archived in the United States:

The Prints and Photographs Division alone contains "more than 15 million visual images, including the most comprehensive international collection of posters in the world, the most comprehensive visual record of the Civil War, and pioneering documentation of America's historic architecture. More than 1.2 million images are accessible on the Prints and Photographs online catalog..."

You can search through 9,491 Prints and Photographs, with a variety that includes photos of President Abraham Lincoln at Antietam, Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, a photo of Jackie Robinson, and souvenir illustrated cards from the Russian Empire as it existed in 1856.

In their World Digital Library, items are sorted by: Books, Journals, Manuscripts, Maps, Motion Pictures, Newspapers, Prints and Photographs, and Sound Recordings.

To help you navigate the massive amount of information, visit the two Subjects in Digital Collections pages, where items in the Collection are indexed into 132 categories.

To give you some perspective, here's a breakdown of the numbers of items in certain categories:

• 4,019,643 audio materials (discs, tapes, talking books, and other recorded formats)
• 72,512,459 manuscripts
• 5,608,003 maps
• 17,250,956 microforms
• 1,834,690 moving images
• 8,248,463 items of sheet music
• 15,733,020 visual materials, including:
  • 14,942,941 photographs
  • 109,307 posters
  • 680,772 prints and drawings
• 3,449,194 other items (including machine-readable items)

Free-to-use images are sorted into sets on the Free to Use and Reuse Sets page. You can search through sets of WPA posters, World War 1 posters, Japanese Fine Prints, Baseball cards, and more. 

A collection of free-to-use posters from 1890s – 1960s features different illustration styles for promoting health, travel, products, liberty bonds, insurance, government programs, and entertainment. The poster collection is a collaboration with Poster House, a new museum "dedicated to presenting the impact, culture, and design of posters, both as historical documents and methods of contemporary visual communication.."

Among the books in the Classic Childrens’ Books page are: In the Court of King Arthur (illustrated by Neil O’Keeffe), Ballad of the Lost Hare by Margaret Sidney, Jack and the Beanstalk, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (illustrations by John Tenniel), Peter Rabbit (illustrated by Harrison Cady), and The Wonderful Wizard of OZ (illustrated by W.W. Denslow).

Copyright and Use

You always need to be mindful of and careful about verifying free-to-use and public domain items you come across. On the LOC's website, pages with free-to-use items feature content that is "either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use."

We've written about other sources for free-to-use and public domain images and items. You might want to read about:

600+ Free Art Books Online

Museum Collection Images

Vintage Graphics

Gorgeous Knitted Baby Booties Patterns

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Learn How to Make a Stop Motion Animation 

Some of my favorite movies are stop motion animations. The people behind these movies can manipulate the facial and body expressions of their characters so well that we get pulled into the story line and nearly forget we're watching bits of clay.

Of course, there's a lot that goes into making the movie work so that the audience gets lost in the hero's journey* - the characters, sets, editing, music, sound effects, costumes, camera angles, and lighting. Figuring out how to assemble all the pieces you need - and where to start - can be daunting. But, there's a pretty simple way to figure out what you need to know so you can start animating like a pro.

HERE'S A PLAN FOR YOU

A good place to start is by paying close attention to how some of your favorite animated movies have been put together by breaking down what's happening on the screen during a scene. Set yourself up so you can watch the scene several times, and take notes as you're learning what makes the scene work. You're going to pay attention to your reactions to what's going on in the scene, and then figure out what happened in the scene to make you react.

Picking apart scenes is a really good starting point in your own movie-making apprenticeship. It's something you can do with family and friends. Your goal is to deconstruct a scene, name the elements that make up the scene, and figure out what they make you think about and how they make you feel.

Once you've figured this out, you'll understand how to build your own scene, and how to get your audience to think and feel a certain way about your story. And remember, once you understand all the elements and layers that make up an animation, you'll be able to add your own layers, which will make your movie more engaging.

The movie makers have spent months - and sometimes years - to formulate a combination of dialog and action to make you feel a certain way. Are you feeling happy, sad, scared? Can you pinpoint the moment you started to react? Great! Go back to the beginning of the scene and take notes of everything that you notice going on.

SOUND IS PROBABLY MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU REALIZE

Is there a sound in the background that makes you know that something is about to happen? Did you hear a door open, and you're waiting to see who entered? Does the music sound happy, or start out low and get louder, and creepier, and make you scared? Does the lighting tell you anything - like where you should focus your attention?

Watch the scene at least one time through with your eyes closed, and pay close attention to all the sounds that make up the scene - dialog, sound effects, and music. You'll be surprised how much information is conveyed just through the sound tracks. 

FILMING THE RIGHT WAY FOR EDITING

You need to understand a special rule about camera placement:

LEARN BY DECONSTRUCTING ALL THE ELEMENTS

Watch a scene over and over until you can name everything going on, including where the focus of the action is as the conversation is going on. If there are two characters, does the first shot in the scene include both characters, and then focus on only one character at a time as the scene progresses? Does the camera get closer to the characters as the dialog becomes more focused and intense? (And, can you see where the camera was placed, and can you see that they are following the 180 Degree Rule?)

Did the editors cut back and forth between the two characters as an argument got more heated?

Next, pay attention to how the scene ends, and how the next scene begins. Is there a fade-out and fade-in? Are there any music cues or sound effects that carry over from one scene to the next? Can you figure out why the movie-makers made those choices?

Once you understand the different elements that make up a good movie, you can use these elements to make your own animated story come to life. You can make characters from clay, Legos and other toys, puppets, or figures that have a bendable wire interior. (You might like to watch a video about Callum Donovan, who makes his own characters out of found objects.)

* THE HERO'S JOURNEY

Do you need help coming up with a story? Watch the video below for guidance on how to get started. 

When you're ready to start animating, you can try out using a program like HUE Animation Studio. [The Brooklyn Refinery is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more]

For fun and for learning, watch stop motion animator Andy Bailey's behind-the-scenes tour of miniature animation sets and puppets from Laika Live's exhibit at Comic Con 2018. Laika Live animators are the creators of Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link. 

Do you feel ready to tackle stop motion animation? I hope so!

Don't miss: Free Comics Course and  Callum Donovan. 

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How to Make a Special Slime

In the DaveHax video below, we see the making of a gooey concoction that gets pulled towards a magnet. To make the magic sticky clay, he adds together Elmer’s Glue, water, Borax powder (or, you can substitute a laundry detergent or liquid starch that contains Borax), and iron filings.

If you'd like to make a ceramic sculpture using a magnetic clay mixture that will dry out, check out ceramic artist Jólan van der Wiel. He uses a mixture of slip (a combination of clay and water) and iron filings to create a material which he can manipulate using super magnets. His clay mixture is typically 90 percent clay to 10 percent metal.

You might like Magnetic Clay, Mechanized Flip Books, and Dragons.

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A Young Artist

Sometimes he gets an idea and tries to recreate it. Other times, he finds a piece of metal that serves as inspiration for a sculpture and goes from there. Callum always keeps a look out for bits and pieces of metal that might be useful and inspirational for making his sculptures.

A lot of his sculptures look like they were crafted for a movie or opera set. They have theatrical personalities, and an air of compelling mystery surrounds them. 

It’s always exciting to see a young artist with a focused vision for making things, for experimenting with processes, and to see such fully realized objects from someone so young. We look forward to seeing Callum's creations in the years to come.

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DRAGON VIDEOS

Just for fun, and for inspiration...watch 3 videos about dragons. Get a glimpse of a 220 foot long dancing dragon at Hong Kong's Fire Dragon Dance that happens every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival, via National Geographic:

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“The Graphics Fairy is an Angel Company. You are free to use all clip art images in any of your projects created for resale or pleasure. Please do not use more than 6 of the graphic images within any one project, or within a single page of a blog or website. My images may not be used on free graphics sites (in other words if you own a “free graphics site”, do not post my images on your site to give away for free). You may sell my graphics, as collage sheets, or printables, if you desire, providing you follow the 6 image rule. A link to the Graphics Fairy is very much appreciated, when including the images on your blog or website. Thank you! © The Graphics Fairy 2007”

Please also check out her Disclaimer webpage outlining public domain and copyright issues with the reuse of images.

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