Smile Mercantile Craft Co.

How to Make a Feather Tree

Feather trees were a late-19th century German invention- a creative alternative to wasteful, messy, and exceedingly flammable real Christmas trees from the forest. They were most popular in the ye...

Let's Make a Halloween Village! DIY Putz Houses

The flat-pack putz house kits are not just for Christmas! Today I am using them to craft a spooky gothic village.  If you missed the tutorial for assembling the DIY putz house kits, you can find i...

Putz House Assembly

These chipboard houses are the perfect blank slate for a Christmas village of your own style.  The kits come flat, with the pieces already cut out and scored, and each one comes with a translucent ...

Nostalgic Cotton Batting Santa Ornaments

If you have ever wondered how to make spun cotton figures from scratch, this is a great introductory project to the nostalgic art of spun cotton. For these small-scale antique style spun cotton dol...

Bump Chenille Ornaments

Let's make some vintage bump chenille Santa ornaments!  This is a classic vintage Christmas craft.  Sometimes called Clay Face Santas, you could buy Made-in-Japan chenille ornaments like this at t...

Tips for Drawing Vintage Faces on Spun Cotton Doll Heads

Every now and again I find vintage Made in Japan spun cotton doll heads, and I find them to be so charming.  The faces were clearly done by hand so no two are alike.  It used to be that you could b...