12 Things You Can Make for Your Dollhouse With a Home Printer

You don't need a room full of expensive craft supplies to add wonderful little details to a dollhouse. If you have a home printer, paper, scissors and glue, you already have the beginnings of a miniature-making workshop.

Printable miniatures are especially fun because you can change colors and styles, make seasonal decorations, and create accessories for almost every room in the dollhouse. Here are 12 things you can make with your home printer.

1. Miniature Books and Magazines

Tiny books are one of the easiest ways to make a dollhouse look lived in. Print miniature book covers and wrap them around small pieces of cardstock or folded paper.

Make cookbooks for the kitchen, children's books for a nursery, novels for the bedroom or stacks of old books for a miniature library. Tiny magazines look wonderful left on a coffee table or nightstand.

2. Dollhouse Wall Art

A printer makes it easy to create an entire miniature art collection.

Print paintings, botanical illustrations, family photographs, vintage advertisements or other small pictures and place them in miniature frames. You can also make your own frames from cardstock, thin strips of wood or decorative trim.

Try grouping several tiny pictures together to create a miniature gallery wall.

3. Miniature Rugs

Printed rugs are an inexpensive way to completely change the look of a dollhouse room.

Oriental rugs, floral rugs, braided-rug designs and simple contemporary patterns can all be printed on paper or printable fabric. A matte paper usually looks more realistic than shiny paper.

For an extra touch, add tiny fringe to the ends with thread.

4. Wallpaper

Your printer gives you an almost unlimited supply of dollhouse wallpaper.

Small floral prints work beautifully in bedrooms and cottages, while stripes, damask patterns and geometric designs can create completely different decorating styles.

Before printing an entire sheet, print a small test section and hold it inside the dollhouse. A pattern that looks small on a computer screen can sometimes look enormous when placed in a miniature room.

5. Food Boxes and Packages

Miniature food packaging adds instant personality to a dollhouse kitchen.

You can make cereal boxes, cookie packages, tea boxes, baking-mix boxes and many other pantry items. Print the design, cut it out, fold along the edges and glue it together.

Small packages are also wonderful for filling miniature grocery bags, cupboards and pantry shelves.

6. Shopping Bags and Gift Bags

Tiny shopping bags are surprisingly easy to make from printed paper.

Create bags with pretty patterns, vintage shop designs or holiday graphics. Add thin cord, thread or narrow ribbon for handles.

A few miniature shopping bags placed on a bed or chair can help turn an ordinary dollhouse room into a little scene.

7. Placemats and Paper Table Accessories

A dollhouse dining table can be decorated with printed placemats, menus, napkin designs and other tiny paper accessories.

Seasonal placemats are especially fun because they let you change the table for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, birthdays and other occasions without permanently changing the room.

You can also print tiny menus for a miniature café or restaurant.

8. Calendars, Letters and Photographs

Some of the best dollhouse accessories are the very small things we see in real homes.

Print a tiny calendar for the kitchen wall, photographs for a bedside table, postcards for a desk or miniature letters and envelopes.

Scatter a few pieces of miniature mail on a table and suddenly it looks as though the dollhouse resident has just walked out of the room.

9. Boxes and Storage Containers

Decorative boxes are useful in almost every dollhouse room.

Print tiny hatboxes for a bedroom, storage boxes for a closet, toy boxes for a child's room or decorative boxes for shelves.

Boxes are also a great beginner project because most are simply a small printed shape that is cut, folded and glued.

10. Signs and Posters

Miniature signs can add humor, personality and a sense of place to a dollhouse.

Try kitchen signs, welcome signs, laundry-room signs, vintage advertisements, shop signs or posters for a teenager's bedroom.

You can mount a printed sign on cardstock, thin wood or foam board to give it more dimension.

11. Holiday Decorations

Your printer can help decorate an entire dollhouse for the holidays.

Print miniature Christmas cards, banners, wrapping paper, gift tags, Halloween signs, Valentine decorations, Easter pictures and tiny holiday packages.

One advantage of printable decorations is that they take up very little storage space. When the holiday is over, simply tuck them into a small envelope until next year.

12. Dollhouse Fabric Accessories

With printable fabric sheets, you can take miniature printing beyond paper.

Small repeating patterns can become dollhouse pillows, tablecloths, napkins, bedding, curtains and other fabric accessories.

Scale is especially important here. Look for designs with small motifs rather than large flowers or patterns that would appear oversized in a miniature room.

Getting the Scale Right

Most traditional dollhouses are 1:12 scale, sometimes called one-inch scale. This means that one inch in the dollhouse represents approximately one foot in real life.

When you're making your own printables, think about the size the real object would be and reduce it accordingly.

For example, a real 24-inch-wide picture would be about 2 inches wide in a 1:12-scale dollhouse.

Always make a test print when size is important. Printer settings can sometimes enlarge or reduce an image unexpectedly.

What Kind of Paper Should You Use?

There isn't one perfect paper for every miniature project.

Regular printer paper works well for test prints, letters, wrapping paper and other very thin items. Matte presentation or photo paper can give pictures and detailed graphics a cleaner appearance. Cardstock works well when you need something sturdier, such as a box or sign.

Printable fabric can be used when you want to turn a printed design into a soft miniature accessory.

Experiment with what you already have. Dollhouse miniatures are small, so even scraps of specialty paper can go a long way.

A Few Tips for Better Printable Miniatures

Print at the highest quality setting when the design contains tiny details. Use sharp scissors or a craft knife for clean edges, and score fold lines before assembling small boxes and packages.

Use glue sparingly. On a miniature project, even a small blob of glue can become very noticeable.

Most importantly, look at the finished item in the dollhouse rather than judging it only on your computer screen. Scale, color and pattern can look surprisingly different once an item is placed in a miniature room.

Watch: How to Print Dollhouse Miniatures

If you're new to working with miniature printables, this video from MsMiniLover demonstrates how to print dollhouse printables and is a helpful introduction to the process.

Watch: Make Miniature Books

Miniature books are a perfect first printable project. This video from Itsy Bitsy Build demonstrates making 1:12-scale miniature books from printed designs.

Your Printer Can Be a Miniature-Making Tool

Once you start looking at a home printer as another dollhouse-making tool, you'll probably think of dozens of other possibilities.

Tiny seed packets for a garden shed, sheet music for a piano, maps for a study, newspapers for the breakfast table, school papers for a child's room, labels for jars and bottles—the list can keep growing.

And that's part of the fun of dollhouse miniatures. Sometimes it's the tiniest little detail that makes a miniature room feel like someone really lives there.

 

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