Detective Minikins Moved to Their Own Blog

A quick note to let everyone know that we've moved all of our DETECTIVE MINIKINS to their own home -- a new blog that's all about our popular Hercule Poirot & Friends dolls!

While the news about our Detective-themed Minikins will now be found on the Detectives in Retrospect blog, we'll continue to post here about everything else having to do with Peppermint Toes on Etsy.

 

Just click on the banner to see our new blog.

The new Detectives blog is a place for us to talk (and occasionally rant) about our favorite Mystery movies and television shows. As a family, we're passionate about the older films and TV series. Agatha Christie's Poirot & Miss Marple characters are probably our favorites, but we're hoping to introduce readers to a few of the less-remembered Detectives from days gone by. Join us some time. You might just find something you like . . .

Felt Faux Food coming up!

As if we don't have enough going on with our Peppermint Toes store on Etsy, we're planning another line of wool whimsies for release in August/September. Elizabeth is experimenting with some designs for Faux Food made from her favorite National Nonwovens Wool/Rayon-blend felts from Wool Felt Central. Elizabeth's tiny stitching on the Minikins is so fine, that handstitching the Play Food is a natural extension of her talent.

We're designing two special lines, one of which will be Strict Vegetarian (with a few Vegan selections). The other will remain a secret until its release, but we're very excited about its possibilities.

One thing we learned early on is that you get what you pay for. May be stating the obvious, but this Faux Food brings it home sharply. We've seen a wide variety of designs and prices in this ever-growing Waldorf Play Food genre, but it only took a little while to decide where we should go with this. If you're looking to buy Felt Food, then spend a little more and be happier with fewer items for your money. How to choose? Consider the following criteria, before you spend.

FELT. This was a difficult choice for us. (1) 100% Wool Felt with non-toxic dyes was our first choice. Until we got some and realized that the food would look rather fuzzy and feel slightly scratchy. Colors were slightly limiting, but, still, no synthetics and non-toxic . . . that's a hard choice to leave behind. (2) Next came the Wool Rayon Blend Felt that we use on our Minikins. Sleek in appearance and soft to the touch. Lots of fabulous, vibrant colours. The dyes are NOT non-toxic and do bleed when wet, however, so that would limit our Play Food to older children who no longer put everything in their mouths. Worth the trade, after much circumspection. (3) Only briefly did we consider the Bamboo Rayon Felt that Elizabeth loves so much. The reason she loves it for the Minikins is the very same reason that eliminated it for our Felt Food. It's very soft and drapy, which isn't good for the stiff food. (4) I will mention this only for the sake of letting you know that we didn't forget to critique the cheaper synthetic felts. We wouldn't use them for ourselves, so we wouldn't even consider using them for products to sell to someone else. Our choice will raise the cost a little, but we think it's worth it.

FLOSS. DMC is our choice for all felt work, whether Minikin or Felt Food. Can't imagine a better brand which we haven't tried, and we really do prefer DMC. I even have a hundred or more skeins of vintage floss, but Elizabeth doesn't care for those brands, either. Anyway, DMC is what we use. It was a sad day when jewelry designers started making necklaces out of floss. The price of floss has tripled in just a couple of months and no longer goes on sale. Hope they stop making those necklaces soon (smile).

STUFFING. We stuff our projects with merino wool or bamboo fiberfill. Both are naturally anti-bacterial and work well with the felt. Again, no acrylic or polyester synthetics in our house. Just a personal preference, but it makes a difference in the cost of the raw materials, as well as the lasting nature of the Play Food. We've chosen not to use "stiffened felt", because it's chemical-laden, and we do have less-toxic alternatives at hand. The pre-stiffened felt might be cheaper, but it's still one more toxic chemical to deal with. So, we're using needled wool and/or cotton batting. If, at some point in the future, we feel that we really need something a little stiffer than batting (can't imagine why, but who knows), we'll stiffen our own felt with non-toxic Elmer's glue. Since we're not trying to recreate plastic play food, we actually don't need our food  line to be so stiff. Nobody wants it to be floppy, of course, but Sarah & Elizabeth are very picky about their Play Food and won't sell anything they wouldn't have in their own houses. That translates to as natural and non-toxic as possible, without lowering the overall quality and appearance. A little costlier, but definitely worth it.

STITCHING. This is probably the biggest factor which will affect the price of your Felt Food. I can tell you right now that Elizabeth will not make a living wage out of this. Her tiny, exacting stitches make this a very labor-intensive line for Peppermint Toes. We couldn't possibly charge an hourly rate for her work. You couldn't afford it. Allowing her to put the same quality into stitching the Felt Food as she does in the Minikins means that we'll be able to offer a quality line of play food, though. And that's a lot more important to us than just sales stats. If you're looking into Felt Faux Food right now, please bear this in mind when shopping. The difference between machine-stitched and hand-stitched is immediately noticeable. Take that a step further, and you'll soon be able to tell good handstitching from the quickly-done pieces. Go for the better-made food every time. Buy less so that you can buy better.

Bottom line. If you think that your children will destroy this food (or lose interest in it) in a short time, then go for lots of less-expensive food and don't give it a lot of thought. If you have an imaginative child that wants their toys to look like the real thing, or you want something that will last for a long time, then spend a little more and look for quality in materials and workmanship. If you're somewhere in the middle, then you should probably just buy a little of each and see what happens. After all, there's no one way to do Felt Food, is there?

The Hills are Alive . . . Looking at Maria in "The Sound of Music"

"The Sound of Music" has been one of my favorite musicals for many years. Naturally, when we started making Minikins, Maria was on one of the first lists of prospective ideas. She was slightly challenging in the fact that her dress is one piece, and I had to make it without ever trying it on, as it took a bit of work to get it slipped over the doll's head! It looked really nice once it was done and the hem was trimmed, though. The apron was the really fun part. Wool felt doesn't come with stripes printed on it, so I had to decide if I was going to try and do stripes, just edge the whole thing in a different colour thread or eliminate the stripes altogether. 

I decided to try and sew my own stripes. Using a simple back stitch, I used a darker grey thread and created my own striped fabric. Her apron is actually made in three parts and then sewn together when I sewed it to the dress. The only hitch was that I ran out of dark grey thread halfway through, and we had to run to the store.

This is certainly one of the more recognizable of our Minikin outfits. When you think of Maria, it's always standing on the top of the hill with her arms outstretched, getting ready to sing the title song! (When they actually filmed that famous shot, the camera was in a helicopter. Every time they passed over Julie Andrews, the downdraft from the rotors would send her flat on her back in the mud! Not quite as dreamy as it seems in the film! However, it certainly made a very memorable opening to a memorable film!)

If you are interested in seeing more photos of this doll, just click here.

Wool Felt Makes the Difference

Early on, we made a decision to use only wool-blend felts on our Minikins. Since we avoid synthetics everywhere else, it wasn't much of a decision, really. The marked differences between good wool-rayon blend and synthetic crafting felts are obvious immediately. The wool blends look better, feel better, last longer, are easier to work with, offer better colors, and on and on. Difficult to find in our rural area, online shopping brings a rainbow of felt to our front door. Well, actually, the Postal and UPS guys bring it, but you know what I mean. Yes, both kinds of felt do contain synthetic dyes in those vibrant colours, but our customers love the variety offered by them.

We began by using National Nonwovens felt, purchased at PrairiePointJunction.com. We've now worked with both 20/80 and 35/65 blends and can't really tell the difference. The thickness tends to run close to the same for both blends. We've got a stash of nearly all 108 colours available right now (with a few discontinueds in the box), and we still wish there were more choices. Isn't that the way it always is? Mom says that we were three years old and thought that the 64-color Crayola crayon box was too limiting in its choices. Guess you don't outgrow certain things. The only thickness issue, in our opinion, is that most of the light pastels have "thin spots" where you can see through them. It looked like fabric that's been pulled too far. We'll have to cut around these spots, so that does make them a little less desirable. Worth mentioning, also, is the fact that all three "white" choices (i.e., white, linen and antique white) smell terrible. This felt, across the board, has no wool or gamey odor (wish it did); but most of them have no odor at all. The colours seem to be nice and standardized, so re-ordering has not been a problem. We highly recommend the folks at Prairie Point Junction--great variety, quick service, reasonable shipping, and they let us order in 1/8th-yard increments. Thanks, PPJ!

(For those of you who care about these things, we did contact National Nonwovens about the wool content in their blend felts. The reply that we got was a long time coming and not very informative, but here it is: "Australian Fine Tops with a blend of Merino Sheep’s wool". I asked them what "Australian Fine Tops" are and how much Merino was included, but they never answered. So, that's all I know.)

Production was rolling along well, and we thought we were all settled in and knew what we wanted. Then we discovered bamboo-rayon felt at TaDaaStudioFelt on Etsy. Not very many colours, but there are times when Elizabeth wanted a drapier felt for some of the women's garments. A quick order of a 6x9" sample pack, and she was absolutely hooked. If you know Elizabeth, you can hear her now, "I'm never going to use anything else again!" Not as many colours as wool, but its softness and ability to hold together while micro-stitching the edges grabbed her attention immediately.

We did look at a non-toxic, European 100% merino felt. A sample was sent to us, but it was too thick and scratchy for our needs. Nice that everything is non-toxic, though, so we recommend looking into it for other uses.

The rest of the wool-blend felt story is hardly noteworthy. Occasionally, we buy wool from JoAnn's (with our 40% coupon). It's National Nonwovens, too, but is limited by the store in color choices (and the regular price is higher than PPJ). Still, if we need the colors they happen to have in stock, we can't resist the savings. The only other thing worth mentioning is our purchase of Benzie Merino Felt. A little more expensive than PPJ, since you can only order it by the sheet, but the Merino caught our attention (and we always try to support individuals before large companies). We enquired, before purchasing, asking if they were selling the same National Nonwovens felt which we already owned. They just answered that we would "love" their "merino felt", so we excitedly ordered what we thought was a different line of felt. Turns out that it was the same National Nonwovens felt that we already owned, renamed by someone, so that we spend a lot of time trying to match it up. It's in a box by itself, and Elizabeth doesn't use it on anything which might have a repeat order. It's a pain, but live and learn. If you're only going to re-order from Benzie, you'll be fine. Just be sure that you don't order a stash of NN from someone else before doing so (smile)!

At the end of the day, we're all thrilled to have so many choices in colour and texture. Thickness, flexibility, sturdiness . . . lots of fun waiting for us in these more natural choices from the felt world. Once you've worked with one of these felts, you'll never go back to that synthetic stuff from the chain stores. You might consider ordering some variety packs in cut sheets before jumping in the deep end. It's a nice way to try things out!

Philippians 2:3-11

Maria Von Trapp from 'The Sound of Music' MINIKIN Doll

The past couple weeks has seen us busy with custom orders, but we've managed to list another precious little Minikin Doll in our Etsy shop.

Elizabeth and I have always been crazy about musicals, and one of E.'s favorites is The Sound of Music. It didn't take long to think of making a miniature doll of Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp (actually, she's not a "Von Trapp" in the first scene of the film --- what was her maiden name?!).

 Julie Andrews Doll as Maria Von Trapp in The Sound of Music

This little Maria is dressed in her Nun's Novice dress and apron. This outfit is worn by Julie Andrews in what is probably the most well-known scene of the film: the singing of The Sound of Music. Maria's dress is made of wool/rayon felt, and the stripes on her apron are actually hand-sewn! Her hair is made of blond mohair doll hair. Feel free to browse through our Etsy shop (link at the top of this page).