In Josefina’s story, which takes place in 1824, she uses a telescope to view the church in Santa Fe from afar. We were inspired by her story to recreate a telescope that is just right for a doll! This one is sized for our 18 inch friends, but after reading through it, you may be able to resize it for other dolls.
Follow along to see how to make a doll size telescope and be sure to tell us what would your doll look through her telescope to find?
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Supplies Needed:
- 3 dowels, in ¾ inch and ½ inch and 7/16 inch diameters
- Small wooden final, no greater than 1/2 inch width and ¾ inch length
- Hand saw (If you do not have one of these, do not be discouraged! You can get one for under $15 at your local home improvement store or on Amazon!)
- Wood glue
- Craft glue
- Gold paint (We mixed together two shades of gold tempera paint, which did very well, but if you’d rather use an acrylic paint or spray paint, that is fine, too.)
- Scrap of faux leather (vinyl)
- One ½ - 3/4 inch clear cabochon (This can be found in the jewelry making section of your craft store.)
- Masking tape
- Small paint brushes
- Paper plates
- Pen or pencil
- Ruler
- Scissors
- Sandpaper
- Xacto knife
- Black acrylic paint
Step 1: Using your handsaw, cut each of your dowels as follows: the ¾ inch dowel cut a 2 and 7/8 inch piece, the ½ inch dowel cut a 1 and 3/8 inch piece, and the 7/16 inch dowel cut a 1 and 3/8 inch piece. A good tip is to measure and mark the dowel with your pencil all the way around the dowel. Then first saw a small groove all the way around the dowel on your markings, then go around and around, making the groove deeper, until you cut all the way through. This should give you a pretty level cut, but if it doesn’t, remember it doesn’t have to be perfect! Just do your best!
Using your sandpaper, smooth the rough edges on both ends of all three pieces.
Step 2: Using your wood glue, glue the wood pieces together as pictured, length-wise from largest to smallest, with your small wood finial at the end. Make sure your finial isn’t any longer than ¾ inch, or the whole telescope will be too long for your doll to hold up with her hand! Get each piece as centered and as level as possible, but again, don’t stress if it isn’t perfect. Ours certainly wasn’t!
Let the wood glue dry according to the glue’s drying times listed on the bottle. Don’t worry if your glue seeps out a little from between your dowel pieces. We let ours dry all the way, and it did shrink back some. Then we followed up by trimming off the glue with an Xacto knife.
Step 3: Now it is time to paint! We used two shades of tempera paint mixed together, because we liked the metallic sheen this paint has. If you are painting with a brush like we did (instead of spray painting), hold one end of the telescope and paint the other end completely and let it dry before painting the other end. We did four very light coats of paint, and used a hair dryer in between coats to speed up the drying process. Then we turned the telescope and painted the part we had held before. (If you are spray painting, you can take your telescope outside and spray and recoat according to your spray paint’s instructions.)
Step 4: Now take your little plastic cabochon, and paint the flat side of it. We did two coats of acrylic black paint, letting it dry between each coat.
Using your craft glue, adhere the cabochon to the end of the telescope, centering it in the middle.
Step 5: Cut a piece of the faux leather to be 2.25 by 2.5 inches. Wrap this piece around the thickest part of the telescope, with the 2.5 inch length wrapping around the telescope, and the 2.25 inch length going up and down length-wise. You may need to stretch this just a touch to get the ends to meet, but we have found most faux leathers to be stretchy, so we planned for the little bit of stretch. Use your craft glue to glue it in place, having the ends meet and be flush with each other. Use the masking tape to tape it tightly in place while the glue dries.
Once the glue is set, you are done!
Remove the tape and look at what you made! It’s so cute! Now your Josefina can survey the city of Santa Fe even though it is far away!
@forofsuch, for Pixie Faire
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We’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment and tell us, What would your doll look through her telescope to find?
100 Comments
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Brenda Reichers
March 24, 2024
My doll would be looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.