How to make a doll TV that "works"

Hi again! It's just taken me over a month to write a new post. I've been keeping myself busy: I'm doing an online marketing course, Mr. Monster and I are trying to do some sport, so I can't quite find time in my spare time for blogging. Also, my laptop crashed again and I have to borrow Mr. Monster's.

The other reason why it took me so long is that I wanted to bring you something more creative than another doll review. So, if I can't find the time to sit down and write, I even have less time to craft.

So, as you may have guessed by the title, today I'm going to show you how to do a doll TV in which you can change what's on the screen. I actually came up with this idea a couple of years ago and I was inspired by I toy that I had as a child. However, I never found the time or the patience to work on it until now. So, if you are curious to see how I did it, just keep reading.
The concept behind this TV is quite simple: basically, the TV has a hole in one of its sides in which you can slide a card with an image on it. Then, you change what's on the screen by having several different cards and switching them. I now that, nowadays, many people use their phones as a fake TV for their dolls, but sometimes a phone might look too big on a certain dollhouse. Also, I love how "retro" this craft feels.

This craft is quite simple, however, some parts were time-consuming. I'm not the most crafty person out there, so don't expect my crafts to be super complicated or detailed. I would recommend adult supervision for kids, especially during the cutting parts.

First of all, we need a few craft supplies:

• Cereal or cookie box.
• Glue. I used both white glue and glue stick, but you can use any type of glue of your choice.
• Scissors and a knife.
• Cutting matt.
• Sandpaper or a nail file.
• Popsicle sticks or craft sticks.
• Craft paint.
• Brushes.
• Cardstock paper.
• Clear wide tape (optional)

First, on a piece of paper draw a rectangle. Mine was 10,5 cm by 6,2, but you can make it any size you want. What I did was search online for 32' TV measures and divided them by 7. Doll scale is supposed to be 1:6, but I felt it was too large for my doll furniture.

Once you have your design, cut open and lay flat your cereal box. and draw several rectangles. Cut them out.

On some of the rectangles, I drew an inner rectangle 0.6cm distance from the outer part. This is going to be the outer frame of the TV.  Depending on the thickness of your box, you may need 2 or 3 of this.

On some of the leftover rectangles, draw and cut a "U" shape  0.3mm away from the outer edge. Again, you will need around 3 of this.

So, now we have 3 full rectangles, 3 frames and 3 "U" shapes.

Begin gluing them together. First, glue the full rectangles:

Then the frames:

Then the "U" shapes on top of the full rectangles:

Then glue the frames on top of everything:

You should have something like this:

While the glue dries, on your cereal box draw a few smaller rectangles for the base of the TV. Mines were 4.5cm by 3. If you're making your TV a different size, the width of the base should be at least, one-third of the length of the TV.

Cut the pieces and glue them together. I used 5 rectangles, but you can use as many as you want or make a different design.

Take a popsicle stick and cut two small pieces to connect the base to the screen. I decided to make mine 2.5cm but, again, you can make it a different size or use wooden dowels instead.

Glue both pieces together and let it dry. I like to use a brush when glueing small objects.

Now it's time to sand the raw edges of the TV and the base. I wasn't super precise cutting some of the pieces and it was harder to make the edges smooth, so next time I have to be more careful.

Once everything is nice and smooth, it's time for painting. Now, this can be done while everything is glued together, but I decided to paint them before because the screen had some areas that were hard to reach and I didn't want to unassemble my craft accidentally. I used some black craft paint.

Once the paint has completely dried, it's time to glue everything together. First I glued the screen to the popsicle sticks.

And after I glued the base.

While it dries, print some images of your favorite TV shows, movies or even doll pictures and glue them to black cardstock paper.

Once the glue has completely dried, cut them carefully. I did put all my images on a word document and set the with of the picture to the width of my screen minus half a centimeter, but some of the images needed to be trimmed down to fit in.

Now is time to see if our TV works.

Yay!

If you want your TV screen to be glossier, you can always put some wide tape on top of your images and trim it down. but I didn't do it because my photo skills aren't the best and I'm sure I would end up with an annoying reflection.

Now your dolls can enjoy some TV on your dollhouse!

You can always make a "static" screen by simply gluing an image with a black frame on it on top of the screen, but I think that this way it's just a little bit more complicated and it can give so much life to your doll photography for those of you who do photostories.

I also filmed some footage of the crafting process, and I'm planning to upload it to my Youtube channel, but that will take a while. I currently only have Movie Maker on my computer, so if you know any good free video editing software, let me know.

I hope you guys enjoyed this post and got some inspiration from this craft. It's taken me soo long to do this craft because I've been doing just a little bit every day, but it could have it done in one day if I only focused on doing this. I've also tryied to explain myself as well as I could and try to upload the best photos. Because we were filming, Mr. Monster took the photos with his phone from a certain distance, but I've tryied to edit so you could see all the relevant details.

Of course, my crafting ways aren't necessarily the best and there's always room for improvement, so I'd accept any advice or ideas you may have for me.  I would also appreciate if you told me which type of posts are you more interested in. Do you like craft posts? Are you interested in opinion posts? Doll reviews? Non- dolly posts?


I'll catch you up in my next one. Take care.

M.C.

Follow my crafting adventures: 

Upcycling: transforming a tea box into doll furniture