Missing Willow Farm

Today I am happy to share with you a project for Alpha Stamps that is seriously one of the most fun I’ve ever made. As someone who works a lot with miniatures, I love it when I have a lot of horizontal space to fill in and the 1:12 Market Stall certainly fits the bill. My vision for the piece was to fill the shelves with as many decorated sugar cookie houses as possible while leaving a spot to also offer hot chocolate with all the mix-ins I could think of. The Sweetest Christmas 12×12 Paper Set was the perfect starting point for this sugared holiday design.

Before decorating and gluing the market shelves in place, I cut the paper for the back wall of the stand. I had a lot of great choices for the paper to use for this focal area and settled on featuring a holiday banner at the top and a great retro pink tile for behind the counter.

The market was assembled using tacky glue. The only paper in this project not from the Sweetest Christmas collection is the brown reptile paper I used to cover the front counter. The stand is a blank canvas screaming fill me up! Those adorable hanging mugs are made by gluing reindeers from the Retro Santa & Penguin Tiny Christmas Stickers onto White Coffee Mugs. They were hung from from Mini Brass Coat Hooks.

I made decorated sugar cookie houses from 1:12 Gingerbread Houses. After assembling them, I painted them inside and out with pastel colors of acrylic paint.

The houses come with tiny windows. I very carefully separated them from each other with sharp scissors and gave them all a coat of white paint. All of the houses got a few layers of Tiny Scalloped Shingles in a contrasting color.

The side of each roof got 3 rows of overlapping shingles.

Once the glue dried, I added a row of polymer clay slices at the roof line. There are so many fun ones to choose from!

A few of the poly clay slices I used in this project were sugar coated. They were lightly coated in tacky glue then dropped into a container of extra fine glitter where they hung out until the glue dried.

I seriously felt like Willy Wonka decorating those little treasures, so much fun!

I took the time to make a couple of tiny snowmen for a few of the houses from poly clay. Pretty houses all in a row.

Now for some tips on a few of the other decorations. I love using ceramic beads in my projects. I always take the time to fill in the beading hole with a dot of matching paint as I did here with the Tiny Ceramic Gingerbread House Beads.

White and dark chocolate covered spoons? Yes please! I dipped spoons from a Miniature Silverware Set in acrylic paint and held them with craft clips until they dried.

Here are the pieces I painted for this project. The Santa Head Mug and Xmas Tree Candy Dish are both cast metal, the candy cane dish is from a great little Set of Miscellaneous Flower Pots that got filled with Mini Candy Canes. All three pieces were washed with soap and water then painted with a few coats of acrylic paint.

Some adult mix-ins are needed for grown up hot cocoa. How cute is that Bailey’s bottle? I made the Frangelico from a Tall Amber Resin Syrup Bottle, some printed label images and a bit of embroidery thread. The rum is made by adding a label from the Rum Bottles, Labels & Posters Collage Sheet to a plain wine bottle.

Here are some close ups of the finished shelves. Along with the cookie houses, I filled a few of the Even Tinier Bottles with a combination of cane slices, Multicolored Striped Candy Sticks & Tiny Polymer Clay Candy Canes. The houses sit on Tiny White Doilies. Scattered 5mm White Snowflakes complete the snowy sugary scene.

The hot chocolate shelf features those gingerbread house beads, pink and white candy balls in a Large Glass Apothecary Jar and some tiny resin lollipops in a Tiny Cube Glass Bottle. A White Ceramic Pitcher is filled with hot chocolate made from polymer clay. Those Peppermint Cane slices are sitting on a Scalloped Metal Plate that was painted white.

The front counter features one of the cookie houses, rock candy sticks made from finely chopped polymer clay baked onto flat toothpicks, poly clay marshmallow snowmen mug toppers, the chocolate dipped spoons, microbead candy inside Mini Mason Jars, poly clay cinnamon sticks and a snowman snowglobe made from poly clay and crystal glitter inside a glass dome.

To finish the scene I added a sign that I would personally find hard to pass up using a 1:12 Scale Sandwich Board.

Thanks for stopping by my sweet holiday shop! You’ll find all the supplies I used HERE.