Slumber Party-Saige Style!

Nothing is more fun than being 8 and having a sleep over, especially when two friends both love American Girl Dolls!  Friday night Zoey came over to our house for endless hours of doll play and fun.  My daughter Gracie is desperately hoping to get Saige and her horse this year (and secretly I cannot wait for her birthday to come).  With our love for art, we decided to create a few Saige inspired crafts at the sleep over.  The first, matching feather necklaces came from one of my favorite doll sites dolldiaries.com.  I realized after having the girls create necklaces (we used the earring template to make a necklace for the dolls, and the necklace template to create a matching necklace for the girls) that we should have colored the back side of the feathers too.

I have to say that I love ACE!  For a small town without a craft and hobby store, I have found more things to use for our American Girl dolls than I can remember.  I found the sparkly elastic for the necklaces there as well as these awesome compact art sets!  I found three different sets for just $2.50 each.

You can also find them on Amazon ranging from $2-7.  I think the best one was the mini-sketch set which came with 6 doll sized drawing pencils, a white eraser and a mini sketch pad with a horse drawing on the  cover, perfect for Saige!  I found these little plastic cases for $0.33 each, but a small thumb tac container would be about the same size.

 The mini paint sets came with a real paintbrush which I snipped a little shorter with my dog's nail trimmers so it would fit in the Altoid tin we used for the art case.  Instead of paints I picked up the Royal&Langnickel mini colored pencil set for my daughter Gracie who already has my American Girl Doll Samantha's paint set from when I was a girl.

To create the art case I traced the Altoid tin onto scrapbook paper, and the girls decoupaged the paper to the tin, adding stickers if they wanted.  To create the handle we painted a square craft stick with acrylic paint (this stick is slightly larger around than a toothpick-but a toothpick would work too), slid a small white bead on, and hot glued the handle to the tin.

For a grand total of just 6$ per girl we had some pretty nice art sets for doll play!  This morning I took a few pictures of our dolls modeling their new necklaces while playing with their Our Generation foal and horse set, and a few while the dolls organized their new supplies in the art studio!

Additionally, we created a cute tile framed mirror using tacky glue and a plastic mirror.

And we made a mirrored make-up tray using a plastic mirror, toothpicks and white beads to make the handle. Then, using decorative beads and a small pieces of toothpick painted black we made mini bottles of nail polish for the dolls which we set on the tray!

A few months back, I began creating backdrops out of foam core (pictured above)for added play fun.  These foam boards are light and easy to move as well as store away when not in use.  After seeing Zoey's ballet studio, Gracie and I created an art studio- which will be perfect for Saige someday!