First Dollshouse - Bedroom

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.

First Dollshouse - Living Room

I started a little tour of my first dollshouse - quite a while ago now, so you have probably forgotten all about it. Here is a photo of the outside of the house. I found a pattern for this house in a dollshouse book from the public library (this was before I had managed to track done a dollshouse club so I was doing it all on my own). The house is a bit Dutch looking - I didn't mind this even though I'm a kiwi girl, because my husband is a little bit Dutch (born there, brought up here). But it's very English on the inside.


I thought I would continue the tour today, with a look at the living room. Here is a photo of the whole room. Yes, there is no door into this room..... .....but I have a good reason.....

I needed room for a bookcase! So the bookcase is now hiding the door. I guess I could always pretend it is a movable bookcase hiding a secret door. Anyway, I don't care and no-one ever notices the missing door - I mean hidden door.

Books are very important in my life, so I had to have a little reading corner! Quite of few of these books are by Treefeathers. I love the convex mirror and the butterfly collection. You won't see many home-made miniatures in this house, I'm afraid, because this before I thought of doing that!!

The gorgeous Fruit Charlotte cake is by Lesley Burgess.

This is the other side of the room. I hankered after a leather sofa so I put one in the miniature house. (We have got a leather sofa in real life now, yay!) The picture of the sleeping girl is one of my favourites - it is called Sleeping June and was painted in 1895 by Frederick Lord Leighton. The picture of the nasturtiums (I love nasturtiums and have them growing outside my front door) dates from the same era. I love the dragonfly stained glass lamp because I have one in real life.I quite like this little doll still, although I don't put them in my scenes any more. I embroidered the footstool for her.

Just one room of the house to show you now....the little bedroom at the top of the house. I'll do that soon. Thanks for dropping by.

My First Dollshouse

Well, just as a change from shabby chic, I thought I would give you a little tour of my other dollshouse. This dollshouse is the first house I built, about four years ago - from a pattern in a library book, with my father-in-laws help. This was back in the days when I thought you had to BUY all the furniture and accessories for inside the dollshouse. This dollshouse is Victorian/Edwardian (hmmmmnn??) and has three rooms.

Today's tour is the kitchen. Here is a photo of the whole room, populated by the cook, her friend from the country who is visiting, and the butler, who would quite like to have a cup of tea with them! I don't really like to put dolls in my scenes any more, but I did put dolls in this house and so they have to stay there!

I am especially attached to these two dolls because they were made by a lovely New Zealand lady and they have such a lot of character in their faces! They look as though they would be very nice friendly people to get to know!

I love the stove, which was "as cheap as chips" (that means very cheap!) I love all the ornate details! The copperware on the stove was made by Ken Wyman here in New Zealand. I really love the little kitchen rack you can see in the top photo, with all the copperware on display. Isn't it great that you can have the things in miniature that you would like to have in real life but can't afford!

This shelf was meant to be a bathroom shelf, but I am pretending it belongs in the kitchen because I really like it. It looks like someone has used one of those old parcel racks from a train carriage as a shelf in the kitchen. The coffee pot is totally out of era but I don't care at all because I am a coffee fantatic in real life.

It was great fun filling up the dresser....I have ginger beer bugs there because the cook is making ginger beer every week, and there are some wonderful preserves. The "shawl" hanging on the hook is an old lace collar that was given to me by my lovely 90-year-old neighbour, Elsie, who has since passed away. She enjoyed visiting and looking at the dollshouse.

I made most of the preserves but the asparagus spears are the wonderful work of Linda Cummings at Linsminis, who makes wonderful miniature food!

This is my favourite item in the kitchen and I made it myself! I made lots and lots of jam and jelly last summer (in real full sized life) and this is a miniature apple and blackberry jelly board I made. I love the little blackberries!

Finally, here is the kitchen window, which is on the opening front of the dollshouse. My husband's family are Dutch, so I made the little Dutch plates above the window. The little windmill on the windowsill was a bracelet charm. The gorgeous blue art nouveau "plate" is an antique French enamel button. The picture to the right of the window was a broach that was in my little boy's kindy play box....his kindy teacher said I could have it for the dollshouse. I made the little jams on the windowsill and the peaches. The lovely pink bowl that holds the peaches was made by Bill Helmer.

Well, that will do for now. I have lots more to show you but will do that another day. I hope you have enjoyed this visit to my "old" dollshouse! And have a lovely, lovely week!!!!!