AG Crafts

[OSusannah]

Since I've been reading so many of your great ideas lately, I've come to realize that I'll never remember them all! I've tried to bookmark some of your pages or pictures in a separate "AG Crafts" folder in my Favorites, but some of the ideas don't have pages.

Should we create a new sticky of all your different things you do for your dolls? or can you tell me what crafts you do for AG?

Like the sculpey food, doll scrapbooks, Melissa's homemade AG items, Meg's and others' dollhouses, Josefina's First Communion, etc. All those great ideas that I want to try one day but may forget about before I get the chance! How can we gather them in one place?

[EmilyStrange]

Tracy, I think that's a fantastic idea! I'm down for that [img]smile.gif[/img]

[moderator]

This is a great idea...there are such wonderful crafts being mentioned all the time, and I agree that it is hard to remember all of them! Those of us with craft websites could also network and list one another's sites on our pages...that way people could hop from one site to the next.

[AGTeacher]

I have an album of my Camp kids in the AG Club and what we did for crafts!!!

The AG Club was for two weeks.

WEEK ONE:
Monday, we did Samantha- craft: Victorian crackers and Victorian fans.
Tuesday, Nellie- craft: Samantha/Nellie dollie ornaments.
Wednesday, Kit- craft: Pencil holders.
Thursday, Molly- craft: Flag flyers.

WEEK TWO:
Monday, Kirsten- craft: Yarn dolls
Tuesday, Felicity- craft: Game of Graces
Wednesday, No club,(we had a carnival)
Thursday, Josefina, craft- AGCLUB memory book.

I have the album with pics of the items. Will post it soon.

[Sakurako]

I don't know what a Stickie is but here are more ideas -- I did these when Gina, my AGoT alterego, was earning her American Girl Historian certificate.
For Molly: she interviewed my mother (her grandmother) about her experiences as a young navy wife in WWII. Then she typed up all her notes and made a doll-sized notebook, illustrated with copies of B&W photos of my mother & her family & Dad during the war. (I took photos to my local fast printer & had them reduced to 33% of their original size. I did that with all my paper doll crafts.) This was a great bonding experience with my mother.
For Felicity: Several AG's got together for "an evening in Felicity's parlor", all dressed in Felicity's period costumes. They played checkers and cards by candlelight, then some of them played musical instruments (lute, piano, flute & violin) while others danced the minuet. Then they had tea from a silver tea service and Felicity-style cakes and cookies. At the end, one doll told a story while all the others listened by candlelight.
To return the invitation, Gina had a Christmas party for the same group, during which they made "pomander" ornaments. These were small satin-covered foam balls decorated with ribbons, pins and sequins (instead of an orange stuck with cloves)in colors that matched each doll's outfit. They had punch in Sam's lemonade glasses (cherry juice w/ginger ale) and flaming Christmas trees for dessert. My cat helped to clean the dishes because the Christmas trees were circles of cake with a dab of ice cream, covered by whipped cream, with a birthday candle lit on top. He liked the whipped cream!
For Addy (would also be nice for Kaya): Morgan Snowfeather, my pre-Kaya Native AG, taught a class in making beaded necklaces after the dolls had an outdoor potluck picnic. (That's what you do when you've made lots of FIMO food for a while.) Gina made FIMO alphabet cookies to spell out each of her friend's names. Other dolls each brought their favorite food. Every doll made two necklaces to take home afterwards.
For Samantha: Gina studied about French Impressionist painting by reading and visiting our local art museum. Then she did an impressionistic watercolor painting of a potted flower. Finally she delivered a lecture to her classmates about her favorite Impressionist artists. Her lecture was illustrated by doll-sized reproductions cut from the back of a Monet calendar (the small pictures on the back cover) and matted by mounting them on construction paper.
For Kirsten: We had a spectacular Midsummer Solstice celebration with a dozen dolls dancing around a Maypole, wearing long gowns and flower crowns. My neighbors loved it! Gina also embroidered the corner of a hanky with her initials, mine and my mother's. Then she painted wooden spoons (Dove bars have nice wide wooden sticks for a handle) in red and decorated them with Scandinavian designs.
For Josefina: Several dolls got together to make ramilletes. They cut out pretty shapes from old Christmas cards, then glued photographs of themselves and their friends to the center and hung them with cords of embroidery thread. (Doll sized ornaments are fun to make! If you take a group photo, you can cut it up and get several centers for the "flowers".)
We haven't done activities for Kit or Kaya yet but for Kaya, we'll definitely have a powwow!

[QNPoohBear]

wow Cherry all that sounds fantastic! Can I come to your house? [img]wink.gif[/img]

[Sakurako]

With a callname including bear, definitely you'd fit right in! Along with making stuff for AG's, I also enjoy making teddy bears. When I moved into my house in Nov., 2002, my father built book shelves in the living room for me, on both sides of the fireplace. He thought the shelves were too far apart -- until he saw them filled with 18 inch bears I'd made! The AGs were still packed until I bought a nice mint Molly and Nellie a few weeks ago, which woke everyone up. Now the bears and the AGs are trying to work out seating arrangements, who gets to hold the tv remote, etc!
Back to crafts: how to make a mini-mag for dolls with special interests. For example, my AGoT, Gina, is crazy about horses. So I bought a full-sized equestrian mag and then either reduced the articles on a copy machine or cut out pictures from the ads, which are usually just the right size. Glue down the cutouts/reduced articles so they're in the right place when the minimag is read, fold the pages in half and staple them. You can use the sample mini-mag you get with AG orders as a template but make your own base out of folded paper or cardstock. Gina loved it. Another thing that's fun is to look for very small address books or memo books with a real binding. Then take the book cover from a book your doll would enjoy reading to your local fast color photocopier and have the book cover reduced to the correct size to go around your memo book. Put the new cover on the little book and while the doll is reading it, the words from the original book will magically appear in front of her eyes. All my AGs read the Harry Potter books this way. Sorry -- the magic only works for dolls. If a real person looks over her shoulder, she will only see blank pages.