The Dollhouse Venture Part V

Well, it's been quite a while since I have updated on the Dollhouse Venture. Since we have been doing quite a bit to it in the last little while, I figured there was enough of an improvement to show another installment.

Here is a bed that Wood Genius designed, & I strung together. It's 1:12 scale & would be a queen-sized bed. See the little cedar chest in the background? Yup, he made that too.

And of course you can't have a new bed without some new bedding, sooo... I had to make a mattress & pillow, plus a sheet set to fit.

And then of course, what is a new bed & everything without a quilt & bed pillows? And yes, of course I even hand-tied it ~ ;-D ~ I used quilting thread as the string, and actually, although this may look like bitty pieces of fabrics, heheh... even I am not THAT dedicated ~ that pattern & a few other may be downloaded at Dollhouse Miniature Printables . I just starched a thin piece of muslin, & put it through my printer with a pc of paper, set on high quality print, and VOILA! ~instant dolly quilt. Also, you can play with the sizes, by stretching your printer settings or saving the printie to my docs, then running it through a photo-shop program.

Wood Genius & I have also been hard at work on the exterior of the dollhouse. I added most of the window fittings ( all right, just easy ones, it's true, in fact, if you click on the pick, you can see that I have still left the difficult fitting to him to cut ~ it's just better that way.) ;-D I might draw some attention to the NEW doorway & walnut front entrance door. We are painting the fireplace, entrance pillars & some floor trim as I write this, but the walnut door is getting stained. Plus I still have to add hardware to it ( handle, name-plate, doorbell, etc).

Here you can see that while there have been quite a few improvements, I am still definitely ~in process~. I am in the middle of adding ceiling mouldings, wallpapers, chair-rails, and in some cases, even partitions & closets, & such. While most of the wallpapers came from Jennifer's Free Dollhouse Printables, ( which, by the way, is a MOST FANTASTIC site!!), a few came from those old-fashioned dollhouse papers books, and ~ believe it or not ~ some of those chair rail papers & such came from a Martha Stewart line of scrap-booking stuff. Man, if I had the fundage, I would have used SO MANY of the ADORABLE scrapbooking goodies from Martha Stewart. I don't care if she DID go to jail, that lady is CREATIVE!

Another thing I have been working on is the interior window & door trims. What door trims?, you might ask ~ I don't see any door trims! Well, ok, so that's true, I HAVEN'T done any door trims... hence the "working on it" qualifier. ;-D

At any rate, this little room doesn't NEED any door trims, so HAH! What house can be complete without a sun-shiney sewing room? Now if only MY sewing room were this ...ahem.. ORganized... ;-D

Here you can see the important work getting done ~ the little girl is getting measured for her new dress! And that lovely old doll doing the measuring? She is something I picked up off of eBay, an interesting china head with only her head left as original, everything else seems to be either pasted back together or even whole new parts made ~ entirely out of paste. As a result, once the other dollhouse dolls are done, I'm afraid she is going to be relegated to maid status. tsk tsk tsk... such biases! ;-D

Here we have the little baby girl's nursery room, complete with a pretty china doll that seemed to want to be in the room, & therefore the picture as well. Note the basket of flowers ~ they are real dried Hidcote lavender, from my Mum's garden. Obviously a necessity next to a changing table, as they don't have disposables in this house.

Here is the formal dining room, complete with baby chair. I suppose in all reality, the baby chair should really go in the kitchen, & the table should be larger, however, the kitchen isn't quite done, and neither is the table, so... these old, not-quite-to-scale pieces will simply have to suffice.

I might point out, however, that Wood Genius was genuinely annoyed that I might mix both scale & non-scale pieces... and therefore has been talking about designing some more scale furniture.

hehehehehe

Do you see my clever plan? Naturally, once sufficiently bothered, he will have no choice but to make a few more scale pieces.

heheheheh ~ MWAahahahahahahaaaaaa....

Here is the parent's room, with that bed & cedar chest that Wood Genius made, as well as the dresser from Grandma G, & the bedding & perfume bottles that I made. The pictures are made from scrapbooking plates, and old stamps as the artwork. The yarn balls are from some dollar store decoration.

Here you can see that I did get some of the ceiling moulding in ~ the bathroom & a few other rooms. The moulding is trim picked up from Micheal's, very cheaply, I might add ~ about $1.95 for 3 ft. lengths. Also, if you click on the pic to enlarge it, please o please o please ~ DO notice the little tiny handmade soaps! It can't be a 1900's house without handmade soaps, you know. ;-D And the bathing beauty there in the tub isn't to perfect scale, but who cares, she has a funky blue bathing cap, and that's what matters! ;-D

Now in this pic, we have the largely unfinished playroom. It still needs mouldings & door trims ~ true ~ but more importantly, I still haven't finished a wall in the background ( as represented by the stripey wallpapers) which I will be putting in to add interest & depth to the room.

There is still much to do in the dollhouse, but at least it is starting to look inhabitable, if only by dustbunnies & non-eating or nanny-needing dolls. Yup, you guessed it, still have the kitchen & the nanny room to go, plus the parlor, the entrance, both floors of the library, the music room, the schoolroom, & the attic. Oh, and did I mention the hallway? And I thought it would be so COOL to have so many rooms! HAH! A love-hate relationship if there ever was one. Much like our real house, actually. Nice, large, many rooms... but UGGHH> the cleaning that that much space requires. Still, let me dis not my abode, lest I be found ungrateful. ;-D

And what, you may ask, is THIS pic of? Well, it's a start. Because, you see, this little 6" dolly is a FAIRY. That's right, a fairy... I mean, she obviously doesn't have her wings on yet, and she is naked as the day I stitched her together, HOWEVER, she is a START. You see, the next dollhouse update that I do will include pics of her tree-stump fairy house! That is right, Wood Genius is right now, even as I write, shaping the fairy house. It is 4 stories high, with a slide, and a swing, and once the doors & windows get cut out, it will really start to come to life. I will include a few teaser pics at the bottom of the post, just to get the gears turning.

He truly IS a Wood Genius! This is a totally engineered tree stump, carved to look real. And like I said, this isn't the half of it ~ when it's done, it will be a 1:12 scale fairy tree stump dollhouse.

~Red