how to make fun things for your 18 inch: lemonade stand

ag lemonade stand

I have seen so many adorable little play sets lately that are lemonade stands or bakeries or some other fun stand for your dolls, and while they are all tempting...I don't really want to spend the money right now on something that we really don't have all that much room for. Making one seemed more feasible and financially responsible, especially when using a box! That's right...we used a box, some foam core board, and two cardboard tubes from wrapping paper.

Here is the box we used, it's the one that the American Girl bathtub came in...you can use any box though that you feel is a good size for your lemonade stand.

I first cut off a portion of the front end of the box...the cut end will end up being the bottom of my lemonade stand.

Here is another view of the cut off end.

Here I flipped it back up on it's side just so I could do some reinforcing of my box. Depending on your box you may or may not need to do this part.

Next I covered (what will be the front of my lemonade stand) with patterned scrapbook paper to make it prettier. The papers that I used for this project are all from the EK Success brand of papers for American Girl Crafts.

After covering your front and the sides of your box with patterned paper cut off the top flap of your box.

Now you will want to cut a piece of foam core board to cover the top of your box. I cut mine so that a bit hung over all the sides.

I added some trim to the front of my counter area.

Next, I cut a circle into the foam core board on either side of the counter top making sure that it was just a bit bigger than my wrapping paper tubes but not much. To cut the circles I used the circle cutter by Martha Stewart.

I placed my counter on the top of the box and traced the circles and cut the circles out of the box too.

Now you can slide your wrapping paper tubes into both sets of holes (through your counter top and your box). you will want to cut the tops of your tubes at an angle.

Now, using that flap that you cut off your box earlier, trim a bit more off the edge that you had already previously cut.

Using hot glue, generously apply glue to the tops of your tubes and glue on your box flap.

I covered my box flap with patterned paper and stickers to make it look cute (you can't really tell in these photos due to the afternoon light that I was dealing with when taking my photos) and added a little banner that I had made previously.

I also added another strip of foam core board to the bottom of my lemonade stand and poked some little flowers that I found at the dollar store into it for decoration.