Tips for Miniaturing on a Budget

If your miniatures hobby is like ours, it can eat up a lot of your full-size dollars. Here are our top suggestions for saving money in your miniature adventures.

Recycle and repurpose found objects

• Caps from beer bottles make great mini pans.
• Lids from skin care and beverages make good pots and vases.
• Repurpose plastic containers to store paint brushes, xacto knives, and pencils.
• Use plastic container lids for paint palettes.

Shop at discount stores

• Daiso has lots of money-saving opportunities on craft supplies, paper, cardstock, and other materials that can be incorporated in your projects in lieu of more expensive materials.
• The home decor area of your local discount store might have objects that can work in a 1:12 scale, like small tiles.
• Discount magnets sometimes have a cute item in about 1:12 scale to use, like a coffee maker or a cactus.

Buy refurbished

• Purchase a Cricut Maker refurbished from Cricut’s website for a significant discount.
• Sewing machines, power tools, and 3D printers are also great candidates to buy refurbished.
• Amazon has an “renewed” area of its site (link) where you can score substantial discounts by buying something that has been opened and returned or used by another owner.

Thrift a dollhouse

• Many dollhouses or dollhouse kits are available on sites like Facebook Marketplace, Buy Nothing, or Craigslist.

Visit your local hardware store

• The cost difference between buying basic building supplies from craft stores versus a hardware store can be huge.
• Browse paint, stains, glues, wood dowels, and more.
• Pick up a smooth tile to use as your workspace for modeling clay. Ours was $1.04 at Lowe’s.

Check books out at your local library

• We have learned so much from library books in both hard copy and ebooks.
• The Libby and Hoopla apps allow us to virtually check ebooks out from our local library.

Think outside the miniature aisle at the craft store

• The scrapbooking aisle has great paper, stickers, and embellishments. Tim Holtz’s steampunk-vibe accessories are a must-see. (His mirrored pages (link) make great, cost-effective dollhouse mirrors.)
• Beads and cords from the jewelry-making aisle can make cost-effective building components.
• A length of woven ribbon can become kitchen towels, small rugs, or a stair runner.

Be smart about shipping costs and “free” shipping when online shopping

• Bundling items for free shipping makes sense only if you actually need those items and the price is right. Otherwise, don’t spend $40 to save $10.
• Joann’s website often has a coupon code for free shipping or reduced-cost shipping without a minimum spend amount.
• Buying a dollhouse kit in store at Hobby Lobby will save you extra shipping costs.

Take care with your projects

• Lots of material is wasted when we try to speed through a project. Slow down and plan ahead.
• Test a new idea on cheaper materials before building in the nicer materials that you will use for the final item.
• Measure twice, cut once.

Earn cashback when shopping online

• Make online purchases through a cashback website like Rakuten or TopCashBack for a little extra “discount” later paid back to you. If you haven’t tried Rakuten, use our referral link for an additional 10% cashback on your first purchase (link).

And ways to spend “less” that don’t save you money:

• We don’t recommend discount online retailers like Temu, where quality can be very low and the listed scale is often inaccurate.
• Cheap materials don’t always work as well. Try out different options to see what works the best for your projects.
• Bad tools can ruin good projects. For example, a high-quality pair of fabric scissors will save you so much time and effort.
• Buying more than you need or buying items at a marked-up cost in order to get “free” shipping can be a waste of money.

Share your tips for stretching your dollars in the comments.

Please note that we feature Amazon affiliate links, which means Amazon may pay us a small commission if you shop using one of our links. #affiliate