Sunday 2 December 2012

How to Make Snow in Miniature

Making Snow for Miniatures
You would have laughed this afternoon if you could have seen me making my miniature Christmas village look cold and wintery. It involved a lot of glue, a teaspoon, glitter and baking soda, of all things!
  Firstly I sat each mini house and the church in a plastic container. Then I dribbled glue quite thickly in the places I wanted the snow to sit on the roofs. The next step was to spoon baking soda over the gluey patches. I used several teaspoonfuls on each house so the snow looked as if it had piled up around the chimneys and along the roof edges. Because the houses were in the containers it wasn't too messy a job; the excess baking soda just fell into them. And I shook the houses just before the glue dried so the extra 'snow' dropped off too.
  The piece de resistance was squirting white sparkly glitter over the snow. I'm pretty pleased with the result.
A Snowy Miniature Scene

8 comments:

  1. Wendy, thank you for the beautiful tutorial on making snow in miniature. Happy coming Christmas. Natalia

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Merry Christmas to you too, Natalia. When the glue has completely dried I'll set the village out and put little LED candles inside the houses. So by tomorrow night it should all be lit up!

      Delete
  2. Wendy, thank you so much for this beautiful and most helpful tutorial. Your little houses look so bright and merry, just like Christmas!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Lucille. I'll be putting the lights in tonight- I hope I can get a good photo then!

      Delete
  3. I have always been dissatisfied with the clumpy look of "sno-paint". I never thought about the fact that it really doesn't look very "to scale". I would not have thought to try simulating snow with baking soda...I would have guessed that the baking soda would dissolve in glue. How do you put on the glitter? Do you need to apply more glue, or does the glitter just cling to the baking soda? I make a lot of Christmas related vignettes, so this idea is really helpful to me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I used tacky craft glue & the baking soda, applied thickly, clumped onto the glue. It hasn't dissolved.
      The glitter came with the Christmas Village kit set, in a little plastic bottle. I just 'puffed' it onto the snow by squeezing the bottle, straight after I put the baking soda on. I didn't use any extra glue.
      Hope this helps.
      P.S. I tried using Epsom Salts (instead of baking soda) to get that snowy, glittery look but wasn't happy with that result. The Epsom Salts looked too heavy.

      Delete
  4. What a wonderful way to get the effect of snow! I find it difficult to get the artificial snow, and it does often look so clumpy - this is an effective and inexpensive way of getting the look. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Sandra - just be prepared to make a bit of a mess and don't sneeze!

      Delete