DIY Doll Bakery Display Shelf and fake food!

Hi friends!

So do you remember when I said I was going to blog less this summer?  Yeah....I don't know what happened.  Somehow our summer has been filled with projects and so I figure that you might like to see them!


Here's one of the projects that I really didn't plan for.  Now to be fair, the hubby and I decided that it was on our summer bucket list to do a wood working project with our kids.  When we asked them what they wanted to make, this is what they came up with!  It's a bakery display shop for their dolls!  I just really didn't plan to do a whole tutorial here for this.  I think it turned out cute though, and I do have several process pictures (and even a video) to share, so I figured I might as well share it!

First though, here are some "after" pictures:

The stand itself came together pretty quickly.  We scavenged the garage to find all the wood, nails, and screws that we needed.  We had leftover white paint too, so we didn't buy a single thing!

  We made lots of sweet treats for the bakery out of clay, and painted them with acrylic paint. My kids literally spent HOURS making food for this bakery.  I helped too, and it was a lot of fun!  The trick to making so many of the same types of food is to make molds, but more on that later.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little walk through of our summer project!

If you'd like more details on how this project came together, keep on reading below!

First let's talk about the woodworking project.

Here's what I used:

• 1/4 inch plywood cut into the sizes below.
• wood glue
• small nails and screws (make sure they aren't too long! You don't want them to go through the wood).

After you have all of your pieces, you need to attach the shelf supports.  We used glue, followed by screws.

Try to make them as straight as possible.

 Then attach the front and back pieces.  We used little nails to nail into the sides of the shelf supports.

 Then we placed in the shelves and attached the top piece.

 Here is a finished front view:

 And a finished back view:

We used wood filler on it, sanded it, and painted it!  That was it!

 Ok!  now let's talk food!  

Here's what we used.

•  modeling clay.  I used polyform model air, and it worked well.  It's very light and pliable. 
• molds--we used doll food we already had and mini erasers to make molds with clay, so we could mass produce more clay food!  I used fimo clay to make my molds, but you could use the air drying kind too...it just takes longer for them to become hard!
•  acrylic paint
• fabric puff paint! (I know, I use this for everything.  But it's really great for adding frosting onto the clay!  For the Eiffel tower cookies Lu used a sharpie right on top of the puff paint to draw the Eiffel towers.
• acrylic gloss varnish--I painted the food with this after the kids were done.  It helped seal the food and made it kind of shiny

 I don't have step by step pictures for how to make these little pieces of food, but I do have a video!

Here they are all finished!

 

Oh, and in case you are wondering, the little silver trays that we used to put the food on are actually little metal containers that we found at the dollar store.  So fun right! 

 I actually have another American Girl project to share in a couple of weeks...but next week I have another post in my summer art series...and I think it's my new favorite!!

Have a wonderful week everyone!

XOXO,

Jill

*Disclaimer: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This post contains affiliate links. 

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