DIY miniatures tutorial – how to make small doors and windows

In this next DIY miniatures tutorial, I will try to explain how to make miniature windows or miniature doors.

Before, I have written a few articles about how to craft miniature walls, miniature floors, miniature roofs, and all kinds of miniature water for dioramas.

The easiest way, of course, would be buying a miniature kit, there are lots of professional miniaturists specialized in this on Etsy. For example, the fairy garden doors from LularoseUSA are pretty awesome;-).

I made an attempt for my own fairy garden and the door and window of my backyard shed are also made by me and I’m not technically skilled at all! So you could give it a go for sure, why not?! Oh yes, my treehouse has windows as well, I almost forgot! ( it is not finished yet ).

Let’s go and try to figure this one out for you, in the DIY miniatures – style 😉

A. An example of how to make a miniature window.

This picture is one of the windows that I made, the one in the tutorial I can’t photograph for now, as it is covered against my cat’s claws 🙂

You could use a real piece of glass that is about 2mm thick, but I used a plastic sheet that was cut out from a plastic box that would otherwise end up in the trash.

I made this window with leftover pinewood with the help of my table saw. It really was the easiest way to do it for me, but I am not afraid of working with this machine.

If you don’t want to do this (I can imagine that you are scared of cutting off your fingers), then you could also use (sturdy) balsa wood, but be careful of what kind to buy though, because most of that wood chips off easily when cutting, especially small pieces. And then you could spend hours and hours doing it over and over to finally get the results you want.

For this window you need :

– a slat of 4 mm thick, 8 mm wide, and a total length of 26 cm to make the frame.

– a slat of 4 mm thick, 1 mm wide, and a total length of 23 cm to make the inner frame.

PS. the thickness of the 4mm slats can be smaller, but be aware that it gets very fragile and it could easily break.

– a table saw or if you use balsa wood, a crafting knife would be fine.

– (wood)glue

– a plastic sheet or a piece of glass for the window, you can choose as you wish.

A little tutorial :

In this tutorial, the dimensions mentioned are always the outer dimensions (the longest sides), where the parts have to be sawn in miter. Since small deviations can occur during sawing, it is important to always check whether everything fits well while you are working.

1. Cut a groove in the middle of the slat of 6 mm x 4 mm on one of the smallest sides. The size of the groove is depending on the fact if you are going to use plastic or real glass. The groove is where the glass or plastic will be clamped later on.

2. Miter the slat of 4 mm x 8 mm with the narrow side upwards into 2 x 7 cm and 2 x 6 cm. Glue the parts together.

3. Miter the slat of 4 mm x 6 mm with the wide side upwards into 2 x 6.1 cm and 2 x 5.1 cm. Place the parts in the frame to see if it fits well.

4. Glue the sides and the bottom of the window together, wait for the top one.

5. First paint the inside of the window (the groove and the edges).

6. Place the piece of glass or a piece of plastic. Its size depends on the depth of the cut. So first measure the inside of the window and allow some space. After that, glue the top together as well.

7. Finish the project by sanding and painting the rest.

There you go, an ‘easy’ window to make. You can then glue on some small extra slats so that it looks like these in the next video.

In this video, the windows are made in a more complicated way than this, have a look!

• You could also make windows (and doors) from paper. I have never tried it, it seems like a LOT of work to do. But then again by using this technique, I think that anyone can make a miniature window, without having to use or buy a table saw.

Give this video a thumbs up, because I have no clue why it doesn’t have many likes!

 

B. How to make miniature doors.

So far, I haven’t made many miniature doors myself, to be honest. Just one for my backyard shed and one for my fairy garden.

Please click on the link to the fairy garden to find out how I made that one.

The door from my backyard shed was made from standard popsicle sticks, cut to the right size with my table saw, and glued together as you can see in the youtube video. If you don’t know how to do that then you can find plenty of patterns for wooden doors online. Check out this website for example.

Then you can paint and varnish it and buy any kind of door handles on Etsy to finish it off.

But of course, I did some more research for you and found a few videos with tutorials, so let’s dive into it:

Door Number 1.

In this video, a miniature double door was made with basswood.

Materials needed:

– sandpaper

– a pin vice

– a primer

– miniature door hinges

– acrylic paint

– a crafting knife and a file

– round wood (when you buy a mini doorknob then you don’t need this)

– enamel paint

– epoxy bond

– tweezers

There you go, you can now make a beautiful door just like this one. (always draw out your own building plans though)

Door number 2.

Like in the windows-tutorial, you can also craft a miniature door by just using paper. It kind of seems very hard to do though, plus it would take lots of time to glue all the layers together, but let me know if you succeeded!

Final Conclusion.

Making DIY miniatures, especially doors and windows, isn’t always that hard to do. I never thought that I could, but with the right crafting materials and a little bit of focus and trying and trying again, even I could make some 😉

And I can assure you, I am not technically trained at all!

Do you have any other ideas on how to make miniature doors or windows or would you like me to cover any other tutorial that I haven’t covered yet? Feel free to ask me in the comments below and don’t forget to share my article on social media!

You can now also join me on my newest Facebook group.

Happy crafting!

Best regards,

Lizzy