{Thrift Shop Temptations} Fancy Dollhouse Furniture...or it Will be Someday....

There weren't any exciting needlework kits to be found, but just look at these miniature kits I found buried in the office supplies! (That's probably why I so rarely find wonderful things at Goodwill. They're well hidden under the old calendars and scrapbooking paper.) 

I'd actually drooled over this organ kit when we visited the dollhouse shop at the coast and passed it up because it was polystyrene, which didn't sound good. Since then, I've read some online reviews and it turns out that these kits come highly recommended.

My hesitation worked well for me, since I got all three of these kits for half what I would have paid for the organ and although the boxes are crushed the bags inside look undisturbed. (They've got staples, so I'm not positive.)

I'll have to find some special plastic glue before I can put them together, and research the right kind of paint.  And work up the nerve. Fancy kits like this always make me nervous.

Walls and a Floor and a Hutch

Look what I did! 

This kit has a million little parts and pieces, but that means that if I really mess one up, the room will probably be okay without it, right? As long as it's not the piano. That's the best part of the whole room.

A New Little Obsession

I'm not sure where I stumbled across these little room kits last month. It was probably Youtube. They're 1/24 scale, half the size of regular dollhouse rooms.  They contain everything but the glue and tools and the wooden pieces are pre-cut. I can the cut paper myself, right? And decipher the instructions, which are in Chinese but have lots of pictures and diagrams.

I've found videos that show both of these kits being assembled and I'm confident that I can get at least the walls and furniture together. It's all of those adorable little accessories that make me wonder what I've gotten myself into.

Which kit should I start with?

Itty Bitty Chips

This may just be a printable and some packing tape, but I'm pretty dang proud of it. My first couple of attempts at little things for the dollhouse didn't turn out nearly as well.

I followed the Miniature Doll Chips and a Bag of Chips Tutorial from Yolanda Meow. I cut some corners and left out the bit that allows the bag to be resealable. The rest of the project was fiddly enough to challenge me, but I hope practice will make my fingers more nimble.

{Guest Post} Camille Minichino

Thanks for hosting me today, in all my personas: Camille Minichino, Margaret Grace, Ada Madison, and Jean Flowers.

With four pen names and as many mystery series, I'm always looking for ways to bring things together, such as having all four protagonists meet for lunch! Gloria Lamerino, retired physicist (the Periodic Table Mysteries) enjoys meeting miniaturist Gerry Porter (the Miniature Mysteries), math teacher Ada Madison (the Professor Sophie Knowles Mysteries) and Cassie Miller (the Postmistress Mysteries) in several short pieces and blog postings.

Other meetings of the protagonists come about when I build the series settings in miniature. I've included a photos of one example.

Here, I've turned a bookcase into a funeral home with an apartment on the top floor. It's Gloria's residence in 8 novels and 2 short stories in the Periodic Table Mysteries.

On the lower floor is the embalming room—it's not easy to find embalming tables, trocars, or mortician's pins in miniatures catalogs, so I had to do some improvising. The laundry room is on that level, too (on the right in the photo). No wonder Gloria's laundry is backed up—she's afraid to go down there alone, or after dark. I felt this scene needed some comic relief, so I added the ruby slippers under the embalming table. See what you think.

The next floor up holds the parlor, where the mortuary's clients are laid out for viewing. The casket started life as a box of paperclips. How embarrassing—while taking this photo, I noticed that my dollhouse floor needs vacuuming as much as my real life living-room floor!

Gloria's apartment is on the third floor. It also needs dusting and vacuuming! (The scale is standard dollhouse scale: 1 inch = 1 foot.)

The latest in this series is "The Neon Ornaments," included in the exciting new anthology Happy Homicides: Thirteen Cozy Holiday Mysteries, available online on October 15.

For more on my series and a gallery of miniatures, visit http://www.minichino.com

A Dollhouse for the Dollhouse

It's a dollhouse.  A little dollhouse scaled so that it fits in the actual dollhouse... 

And it's got furniture...

As an adult, I don't love that the house is flimsy plastic and the furniture is cast metal. As a kid, I thought it was the greatest thing ever (especially the claw foot tub which seems to have vanished over the years), but today I'm drooling over tutorials for making the furniture with real wood.

 I don't know if I can develop the skills to do something like that, or if I'll ever carve out the time to try, but it's sure fun drooling over the tutorials and other people's projects.

My Second Attempt at Furniture

Look what I made! It's for the dollhouse. I probably should have put a quarter or something there for scale to make it more obvious, but I was too busy figuring out how to position it in a box so that I could get a picture of my nifty little table without everything else I'm working on in the way. 

My first attempt at furniture went badly, for a lot of different reasons. I'm much happier with this one, but all I did was stain (sort of) the precut pieces and glue them together.

While Hubby was recovering his surgery last spring, I spent a lot of time browsing Pinterest and a bunch of different miniature blogs. I kept coming across references to House of Miniatures kits and how wonderful they were and how people kept finding them for dirt cheap.  I found a bunch of affordable ones in an ad on Craigslist, but they were too far from home to seriously consider.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I found another ad for an antique mall that had (according to the ad) lots of dollhouse kits and furniture. Teenage Daughter was invited to a sleepover in that neck of the woods, so we made a detour and got lost and I found out that "antique mall" really meant dusty storefront where you have to squeeze in between industrial shelving and dig through plastic bins.

But looks what I got, for close enough to dirt cheap. I would up paying around three bucks a kit.

The little table was easy enough, but these may be over my head. Look at those working drawers and hinges and all of the little details!

My hope is that if I can manage these with their precut pieces, I'll have the gluing and finishing part figured out and better luck next time I try making furniture from scratch.

For the Dollhouse

For a first attempt at wooden dollhouse furniture, it's not a complete disaster. 

There was no bloodshed. And by the time I got the bits of paper towel caught in the glue, I'd realized that the pieces weren't fitting together right and decided that this attempt probably wasn't going to be a keeper. I'll do better next time.

If I do try another cradle, it's not going to be from this pattern (which I found in a library book.) I don't like the proportions.  It seems too short and chunky. Probably because the life size cradle my boys slept in was way too long and skinny. There's got to be some happy middle ground somewhere.

I don't think I've shared the link for the $2 Thrift Store Dollhouse Makeover yet. Erin at Lansdowne life found the saddest looking dollhouse at a thrift store, covered in crayon scribbles and Disney contact paper. I don't think I would've looked at it twice, but she used stuff from around the house and furnished it for her little girl. It's adorable, not to mention durable enough for little fingers. There are so many gorgeous dollhouses online, and drooling over them is just the distraction I need lately.

Miniature Food

Thirty-some years ago, when my mom painted these for my dollhouse, they were the most amazing dollhouse food I could imagine. I  do swoon a bit over those little strips of bacon, and the edges of those plates are so thin. I'm glad they survived my childhood!

But have you seen the things they're doing with polymer clay now?  Hurry up and Google polymer clay dollhouse food images if you haven't. It'll absolutely take your breath away.  Especially the meats. I saw a whole display case of food at the miniature store in Lincoln City and it's even more swoon-worthy in person.

It's all completely out of my budget, but there are books and youtube videos and Teenage Daughter has a stash of polymer clay for her jewelry projects....

I made eggs using the technique from this youtube video as loose inspiration. The ones in the video had a shiny gloss coating and pastel chalk along the edges to make them look just a little bit burnt. I was having enough trouble just getting my bits of clay small enough.

Those first two weren't to scale, so I made smaller ones. 

I'm so overwhelmed and intimidated by all of the tutorials I've been reading, but I really want to learn to do this!

This post is linked to Show and Tell Saturday, Inspired Friday

My First Dollhouse

I blamed the library for starting my fascination with dollhouses, but I had my dates wrong.  This is what must've started it --

You can just barely make out the little battery operated lamps and the fireplace. I had completely forgotten that fireplace. (A quick Google search and I found one just like it on etsy. Someone please tell me that it would be silly to order it, even if I am swooning over the little clock and hurricane lamps and little red and orange plastic flames.)

My grandparents made the house and most of the furniture. The kitchen cabinets were made from lengths of 2x4 with washers glued on for the stove burners and nails for handles. I think there was a staple for the oven door handle. And the refrigerator was orange. Because it was 1974. What other color could it have been?

That furniture gave way to "real" dollhouse furniture when I got a few years older. I really wish I had it now. I have a feeling that they must've followed plans... if I could find the pattern, I'd recreate it.

All of the original furniture is long gone, but the dollhouse currently lives in my sewing room. Which hasn't been this empty since we first moved it up there and I took the picture eight years ago.

I'm linking up with Vintage Thingie Thursday, Ivy & Elephants, Time Travel Thursday, History and Home, & Share Your Cup

Restraint

These pictures have been on my camera for weeks now, waiting for me to do something with them. 

I think window shopping is best done in antique stores. It's rare for me to find something that absolutely has to come home with me. And when I do find one of those things, it's usually either out of my budget or I don't have room for it in our house.

Can you guess what made my heart go pitty-pat in  this display? It's not the sewing machine. 

But there's no place for an old television in my life, even if it is that neat looking.

If I tried hard enough, I'm sure I could find a place for an adorable toy sewing machine. But only if it works. I don't think this one did.

I've got exactly the place for that cabinet...

And for this bedroom set...

The detail on that fireplace is absolutely amazing and, compared to the prices I saw at the dollhouse shop a couple of months back, these pieces were actually affordable. But part of me is more excited to try out some of those tutorials I keep pinning.

Dollhouses

I have a dollhouse. (Actually, I've got two -- one in the attic and one up in my sewing room with yarn stuffed into the empty rooms.) I've always had vague plans to get the fancy one set up again one of these days, either when my kids are older or when I think of an inaccessible place to put it. It's been low on my list of priorities. 

Then Joanna Campbell Slan started making dollhouse furniture and posting about it on her Facebook page. Which led to a Pinterest search for dollhouse tutorials. Which led to a birthday trip to Dot's Dollhouse on the coast and much drooling and even more Pinterest searches after we got home. I'm now following about a dozen different blogs about making miniatures and pestering Teenage Daughter about polymer clay techniques. 

I can't remember when or how I got interested in dollhouses. But I think that might be the culprit:

I walk by this thing every single week, but I stopped actually seeing it a long time ago. When I was little though, a trip to the library was not complete without looking at the contents of every room.

I love that parlor. My dollhouse needs a vacuum cleaner. And a clock like the one on the mantel. 

Taking pictures through glass is not one of my skills, but you get the idea, right?  I don't know when or if I'll get around to making any of these tutorials that I keep pinning (here if you want to see what I'm obsessing over), but it's sure fun to look and daydream!