Greetings creators of the large and the small! Jenn, here, with a little project that makes for big smiles.
It's a shame, but I haven't had any time, lately, to spend on my doll-sized projects. We recently began a down-to-the-studs renovation of our downstairs bathroom and the slow progress on it made the desire to do something small and quick grow exponentially. So I spent a couple of Friday nights converting a cereal box into a doll room (a la My Froggie Stuff) and decided that a trendy touch was definitely needed.
To make your own pint-sized cardboard creation you only need a few things:
- Lightweight chipboard
- Card stock
- Helmar ZapDots, black, 1/2" and 1/4"
- Helmar Quick-Fix Adhesive Runner
- Scissors or electronic die cutter
Plus a pattern, which you can find with a quick search online. There's an Instructable that is particularly good, of you could make your own if you want to give it a try. To use the pattern with my Cricut, I pulled the image into Photoshop and dropped out the background to make a decent cutting file. I also made a few more tweaks and got rid of the cross pieces–after all, that's what I have Helmar Zap Dots for!
A quick upload to Design Space and it cut through the chipboard and the card stock like a dream. Otherwise transfer your pattern to the chipboard and card stock and fussy cut.
Attach the card stock to the corresponding chipboard pieces with your Helmar Quick-Fix Adhesive Runner, keeping your pieces in assembly order as you go.
Assemble the head pieces, starting with the nose and working back, using black Helmar Zap Dots, using the 1/4" for the smaller pieces and switching to the 1/2" when the segments get big enough to hide them.
You can stack two or more dots between sections to give your paper sculpture the right shape. I found I needed 3 layers to get the right profile for the nose (thankfully it was easy to gently ease the sections apart to add more dots).
Construct the neck with a double layer of the 1/2" Helmar Zap Dots for the first few spaces and then switching to a single layer. Offset each segment slightly higher than the one behind to mimic the natural arch of the animal's neck. Having a reference picture nearby could help get the shaping just right.
There's an optional bit of antlers that you can use or not–the deer head will look fine without them–but I decided to add them since I'd already cut them out (facing both sides with the card stock instead of just one). Dry adhesive just wouldn't do for this fiddly piece, so I grabbed the trusty Helmar 450 Quick Dry and braced the cross pieces against one of the existing antler spikes.
Since I made this for a mini room that is designed to fold up when not in use, I used two strips of self-adhesive Velcro to attach the tiny taxidermy to the wall. It just might be my favorite mini project to date!
Wishing you creative days,
