Catching Up

I haven't done much miniature work for the past few days, so when I took a look at my dollhouse - it was a mess!

George's room was especially messy - I hadn't done much work there for a few weeks, so I figured, there's no better time then the present!

So I emptied it, and decided to get right down to business. The first step, of course, was to fix the stained glass in the window.

Here it is from quite a few posts ago. As you can see, I left the stained glass messy and unfinished - an error I needed to fix right away! The first thing I did were quite a few experiments - I wanted to make a window valance. My only problem was that I didn't know how, so it became a little bit messy.

I picked a pretty fabric that I assumed would match with the blue-green color scheme of the room.

All of those images you see are a quick succession of making the window valence (or, what was supposed to be the window valance.

When I was about halfway done, I taped it up to the window to get the general effect, and I didn't like it at all. Back to the square one!

I decided to go back to my original idea - bamboo window blinds. Above where the two choices I had: plain blinds, and a sort of green-distressed blind. I chose the plain blinds, and we were off again!

I held it up and liked it, but you didn't get the effect I wanted - that is, it was a bit unhospitable, and it covered up to much of the window to see out of, and after all, I just needed enough for it to cover up the stained glass window. I thought that it was a bit unnecessarily long.

So I cut it in half. It looked swell, but I disliked the long white string that was danling from it - it was needed to pull the blinds up (if they worked), but I thought it needed to be attached to something, so I made a tiny piece of fake tape.

You can see the fake tape in the photo above - I made it stick using my sticker machine from Paper Source.

With that sorted, I took that oppurtunity to photograph the little outlet I had promised to show a photo of. There are actually two in the room.

And with a penny for scale.

Then I positioned two rugs on the floor and liked the effect. I especially like the green colors - they are both fabric samples.

There is also a little hole in the wall to thread any wires through when I add the electric lights.

Luckily, even with the blinds up, you can still see light shining through the stained glass windows.

I added a bit of knick-knacks on the shelves. I still need some toys for the top shelf.

The entire room - you can see that on the middle shelf I added some kind of horn - apparently George plays an instrument!

I made some little pencils and stuck them in a little jar with a label - there is an eraser next to them.

With sun streaming through the windows, it makes George's room look very cosy! All I need to do now are fill up the top shelf and reattach the airplane that felt down! See you next week! Signing off with a old fashioned-looking photo of George's fireplace - I think it looks very 1930s!

High Flyin'

High Flyin' - like the Jeaneatte MacDonald song from Broadway Serenade. Which is what George is doing - or imaging doing - as I continue to work on his airplane themed room. Or, using the definition Merriam-Webster dictionary gives: marked by excessive ambition. Yes, it was very ambitious of me to try to finish George's Room today. . .

I am still working on George's room - and trying to make it messy. It's easy with real life, but seemingly harder with miniature life. . . And hurray - I have finished the parquet! I actually manged to enjoy gluing in the last pieces quite a bit, mainly because I was watching Lucille Ball's The Lucy Show while doing it.

What an image - I really need to work on my photography skills. The airplane hanging from the ceiling isn't at a particuarly good angle - it looks much better in real life. (I hope!) I have tacked up quite a few paintings and posters - all airplane themed, of course!

And here's the picture of the fireplace - with the grate-y thing I keep referncing. (In case you can't see it, it's inside the fireplace.) I made the little clock - I think it's a cute addition. And there's also a much better picture of the art deco (ish) fender I was trying to show you before!

I love the painting above the fireplace - I love views of fields - and that airplane is gorgeous! Those little shelves were an addition I added to give George more room for books and games. I need to print out and assemble some 1930s board games - hopefully very soon!

This is the ceiling photo I have been promising you for so long! The little hole in the ceiling is where the electric light will go. I added the crown moldings - I've been too lazy to add them to the rest of my dollhouse but I really need to - the rooms look so much more complete with them.

And here's a terrible photo of a little outlet I made for the room - a dollhouse never can be too complete, I think! Also, I should probably add some to the rest of the dollhouse - they are such a cute detail, I think. I tried to copy outlets from the 30s, but there weren't many photos of them.

Here is a little crossword game I made - not scrabble but definitely close. It's very small - about the size of a penny. It took me a very long time to cut up the tiny little pieces of wood and write letters on them!

A little paint set and paintbrush in water for George to paint with - I think he needs some newspaper and a little airplane to paint, too!

Here is a little print out of a 1930s airplane kit that George is cutting up with scissors (which are a charm). Do you think he needs a little desk? It'd have to be very little to fit in the tiny space between the fireplace and the wall.

And here is a not very good, out of focus image of the window and the bedside table with a little lamp (non working, although I did attempt to electrify it, it failed).

Here's a much better photo of the airplane that George has strung from the ceiling, and his bed! The airplane was made from a miniature print out of a 1940s airplane, I believe.

You can see the window much better in this photo, and the fact that I still haven't managed to cover up the stained glass on the interior side - I'm waiting for inspiration to strike!

I cut up a coffee stirrer into a very thin piece to make matchsticks, and then dotted red paint on the tips - for one I colored black on the tip to make it look used.

Here are the shelves on the wall - do you have any ideas on how to fill them? I can't think of a thing! Well, that's it for George's room - sorry for such a long post! I still have a few things I want to show you, however, such as a tiny rotary phone I got for my birthday!

I made the table using a piece of wood and Houseworks spindles.

Here are some vines that magically made their way to the side of the nursery overnight :-)

A little gate I'm working on for the servant's entrance - I added hinges! And, last but not least, a beautiful rug I got for my dollhouse - right now it's in the Grand Entrance Hall. (Sorry that the photo is on it's side!)

Thank you so much for visiting - signing off with a photo of the Master Bathroom in the dollhouse!

George's Room is Coming Along! (Very Slowly)

From my last post, you can see that I wanted to add depth to my dollhouse, but to do that I need four more IKEA drawers. Luckily, my birthday is coming up, so I might just pop that onto my wishlist! In other news, I have been really slowly working on George's Room. Currently he's sleeping in the bathtub, poor kid. I did have some problems with the fireplace - I wish he'd decided he wanted a radiator instead, but George insisted it had to be a fireplace, so I had no choice in the matter. The reason I was having so many troubles with the fireplace was so that the fireplace could fit into the little nook, the walls of the fireplace had to be reasonably low, creating a gab where you could see the wood of the dollhouse through. Of course, this wouldn't do, so I had to compromise and make a sort of grate-y thing. It took me an hour or so to ensure the fit (who knew painting three coffee stirrers could be so tiresome?), which makes me even more amazed that people actually managed to do this in their real-life homes. They must be born with superpowers! I really wish I'd just waited on the parquet floor until some coffee stirrers came my way, but I didn't, so now I'm stuck cutting up tiny pieces of wood. Very, very fiddly, especially when you get to the edges and have to cut a tiny piece of wood even tinier, and it splits in half. Ugh! Luckily, the little grate-y thing that I made fixed the fireplace, so now I just have to insert the wires through a tiny, tiny hole, and glue in the fireplace. Which, I'll frankly admit, I'm scared to do. I really don't want to glue it in wrong! Luckily, the floor is more than halfway finished.

It's come a long way from this:

I could probably finish it this afternoon, if I worked up the enthusiam. Also, I made an Art Deco (sort of) fireplacae fender.

You probably can't really see it very well in the photo, but it's there. The shiny metal sheet is from this dollhouse kit I had, and I cut it up to cover the wood that formed the fender, and glued it. Imagine my surprise when, as I was working on the finishing touches of it, I discovered that the shiny metal sheet was a sticker! How did I not realize that before?? It would have saved me a lot of time! Also, I got a very large stash of coffee stirrers which I was using to finish the very messy edges in my dollhouse. For example, in the attic:

After I added the finishing edges:

Much better, don't you think? I will be back soon with more news on George's Room! Stay tuned!

It started in the Middle Ages. . .

I decided that because my dollhouse was set in the 1930s, I could have at least one 'modern' room! It all started with the Middle Ages. Well, not exactly. It really all started when I had two awkward window spaces in my dollhouse.

Ignore the wallpaper, that was a spur-of-the moment idea I regret. I did have two window frames that would fit, but the only problem was: they had no mullions. I guess I could have made my own but I was lazy busy! :-) So, I decided to make my own 'mullions', drawing inspiration from the diamond lead panes in the Middle Ages. Well, it sounded great in my head, but. . . in reality. . . it was awful!

See? I didn't even bother to make the lines straight, and well - it looks exactly like it was drawn with Sharpie (which it was!) If you aren't convinced on how awful it looks - let me explain. The image above is what it will look like on the exterior, but as for the interior - you could see where I had drawn the lines!

See how terrible that is?

From the inside. Yuck!!!! Well, needless to say, I couldn't live with it - but I gave uphad run out of ideas, so I put that on hold for the time being. Then, one day - out of the blue, an idea struck! Although, clearly, the mini people who lived in my dollhouse hadn't bothered to update their house since the Victorian times, the little boy who was going to inhabit the room in my dollhouse wouldn't stand for it! So, he managed to convince his parents to redo his room. Now, with the story in place, my next task was: where should his room be? A long, long time ago, I had the brilliant terrible plan to have the Library in my dollhouse on the second floor. Don't even ask my why. So I cut, or rather, my father cut (he's good at saws, I am not), a whole for the window, using, as a template, the terrible medieval diamond windows I have shown you previously. Here is how it looked like, after I ripped out the paper ceiling I had inserted in another spur-of-the moment idea. The red bulb hanging from the ceiling was me attempting to add light(and failing!).

Well, it's a bit icky, isn't it? Never fear - a new ceiling is here! (I don't have photos of it, because I forgot, but I promise I'll attach one pretty soon!) Well, I decided to have the Library in one of the massive, grand rooms downstairs, and to use this as the boy's room. (Besides, it looks out to the Servant's entrance - not a particularly beautiful place!

Apparently they haven't cleaned it up since 1899! Well, after I figured out where the Boy's room was going to be, I had to redo the window. After all, it all started with the terrible window - I could never leave it like that! So, I ripped out the plastic with the diamond panes, and inserted beautiful, clear glass!

Aaaaaaaaaah!!! How sweet! What do you think of the stained glass? I just had to insert it! Of course, on the downside, the stained glass doesn't look that great from the interior - but that can be fixed very easily, and I have a genius idea for doing so!

The not so very pretty view of the window from the other side. Well, all my window problems are (almost!) gone - pooof! So, I printed out a beautiful Bradbury and Bradbury 1930s wallpaper sample - and I liked it!

Calming, isn't it? Wallpaper and windows are gone - but I wanted a fireplace! After endless searching on the web, I found an idea that might do - and I created a mini version.

What do you think? Soooooooooooooo 1930s, right? Well, I liked it! So now I will (sort of) show you how I made it! It was all basically constructed from a Cork Board and wood, and glued with paper tiles I made.

Here's the back. Yes, I know, rather ugly, but hey? Nobody's going to see it!

All of the tiles were cut from a piece of thick wide cardstock I painted with a beautiful green!

The grout lines are basically just the wood showing in between the tiles. Well, that's the fireplace, folks! If you made it this far - congratulations! Just a couple more things! (Sorry!) Here's the bed I made for the boys room. Tidy, yes, but maybe they have a maid?!?

I love the green - this room will be very green, and because the boy (whose name is George, by the way!), loves airplanes - it will also be airplane-themed! Thank you for reading! Coming soon:

The beginning of the bathroom saga! And - the Egyptian Bedroom is finished!

The entire room - I like it!

A detail! Rumor has it Jean Harlow and Katharine Hepburn stayed here! :-)

The chandelier! It works - but - ugh!!!!!! I accidentally detached some wires - going to fix that ASAP! And - I'll sign off with a picture of the little rascal that's playing with a big red ball in the Servant's Room!

Farewell!