I'm now on Twitter!!!
I Love Dollhouses!!!
While I was teaching this past weekend at Scrapendipity Retreats', Scrapajama weekend crop, (look for my upcoming post on that) I was talking to the ladies in my class about my love of dollhouses and thought, "I should do a post on that!"
I have been interested in dollhouses since I was a teenager, but never completed my own dollhouse project until my now 15 year old daughter was just a baby. I had to really search, but I was finally able to find some photos to share of my first project which was a small two story room box that I made into a bookstore which I called The Novel Works. And while I wouldn't call this one of my cleaner projects I was still proud of the way it turned out. I even won a Best in Class prize at my local county fair for it.
Unfortunately I didn't have a camera when the room box was initially completed, so I cannot show you what it looked like when it was at it's best. However I hope that even through the disrepair shown in the photos I took a few years back, you can still see some of the "mini" magic created.
The brick work is actually a polystyrene sheet with grooves, so that you can grout the tile for a more authentic look. And while you can get real mini bricks, they generally add a lot of weight to your project. So if you plan on moving your piece a lot, you have to take the weight of it into consideration.
The original project also had trees in it, which were eventually removed because the sponge like material that formed the foliage had started falling off the metal tree frames that they were on. The yellow moulding at the roof, and the black/gold moulding in the middle were actually made of a rubber like material, which again helped keep the weight of the project down. I used Plaster of Paris, and frames to build the sidewalks and the outside stairs are made of wood that has been covered in tile grout to look like cement. The small square towards the bottom left is where one of the trees sat, surrounded by a red wood chip mulch and small terracotta tile edging. Unfortunately what you cannot see in the photo is the glass pane in the door it is a transparency created in my computer with the name of the store and it's hours, that has been adhered to a small plexiglass panel.
I love going to the annual dollhouse show put on by the Lakeland Miniature Guild. I love seeing all the display pieces for inspiration, and all the fun things you can buy to put in your dollhouse. But I am also one of those people who needs to keep challenging myself, so with this project I also tried my hand at building some of the elements in the piece, along with electrifying it.
On the ceiling at the right you can see one of the lights. Just below that on the right side wall are books that I hand made from old book club advertisements. The piece of furniture below the books on the right is a magazine rack. I bought the magazines, but I built the rack from craft wood. I also built the newspaper/display rack at the back of the photo. Once again I purchased the mini newspapers, and books that are displayed on top. Unfortunately it is difficult to make out in this photo, thanks to the glare from the flash off the plexiglass backing, but the to the left (the gold balls) is a spiral staircase that I built leading up to the second floor.
This photo gives you a little bit of a clearer view of the spiral staircase and the rest of the first floor, including the plank flooring. The gold ball spacers for the staircase are wood beads, and the railing for the staircase was made from wire.
This is a view of the second floor. The bookcase, and the sofa were purchased along with some of the books, but I made all of the books with the covers facing out, again from an old book club advertisement. I also built the stair railings and hand laid the parquet floor.
After I finished this project though, I moved on to what I call my labor of love, and has been an on and off project for 14 years now. But I will save that for an upcoming post. so stay tuned.
I hope you enjoyed today's post. Comments are always welcome, so please feel free to drop me a line or send me a tweet and let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.
