The final room in my little tour of my first dollshouse is the bedroom on the top floor. I must say that I definitely learnt my lesson by building this particular room. It is such a crazy shaped room that it is difficult to furnish and very difficult to photograph!
It is built in the triangle roof and even though I made it a couple of centimetres taller than the plan said, it is still very annoying having the two sloping roofs on each side - there is no room for the furniture (let alone a door - so there is no way into this room!) and there are not enough walls on which to put pictures. Oh well, we live and learn!
I really like the bed I have in this room. It is a Phoenix white metal kit - quite soft metal, but really finely detailed....I've seen the same bed painted really nicely in gold and white (that's probably what I would do now, and then add rust!!), but I like this old-fashioned look. Since I can't really sew, making the bedding was a huge challenge for me! I was really proud of my pillow case, which is made from an old linen handkerchief.....I love the cut work edge. The pillow was embroidered by a lady called Judy and it goes really nicely with the old broach that I found to use as a picture on the wall.
I like the dressing table, and had great fun making pefume bottles out of old beads. The dressing table set is a Chrysnbon set, which my friend Trish has beautifully handpainted. I made the hydrangea that you can't quite see behind the chair.
This beautiful doll was my "special" purchase at our national Convention about two years ago. I think she is gorgeous!
Another favourite thing in this room is this sweet Alice in Wonderland doll. She was knitted by Helen Palenski, who is a New Zealand IGMA artisan.
She sits on the chest at the end of the bed. This was already a very nice plain wooden chest, but I have messed around with decals again here to make it resemble the Norwegian Rosemaling folk art painting. The pretty green shoes on the floor are by Sylvia Rowntree, the Dolls Cobbler.
Actually, silly as it might sound, I am really proud of the floors in this house. I found some pieces of paper that looked like wood, and before putting the house together I painted the floors black, then cut strips of the wood paper and glued them to the floor, leaving tiny gaps between so that the black showing through looked like the "gaps" between the floorboards. Then I painted the floor randomly with watercolours so that it wouldn't look so uniform, and finally it got two coats of varnish. I like this floor that I made so much better than any of the readymade floor papers I have seen.
This is the window in the bedroom. Yes, blinds again....you know I can't make curtains. This blind is also made from an old handkerchief. The cranberry glass vase is so pretty and here is one of my absolute favourite miniatures....the little "Butterfly Girl" bronze by Neil Carter. It is just so beautiful!
So that is the tour of my first dollshouse...I hope you enjoyed it.
The cider turned out very very nice! I'm making my second batch now.
Thank you so much for your kind comments and thoughts...you are all so lovely. I really appreciated it! Funny how you can get support from people this way. It made my day a bit easier waiting for news.
This is my beautiful sister, Emma. She and her husband live in Cairns in the path of cyclone Yasi. She rang yesterday to let us know that they had left their home to stay somewhere safer with friends. We are waiting to hear how they got through the night. She is such a wonderful person - the most happy, postive, likeable person I know. It's hard having her live far away in Australia. I have three sisters and a brother and I love them so much!
