Connie

It is adorable and so inviting... thanks for the good ideas for my "Fourth of July" cottage!

Like Emily, I ran tapewire on the floor above and drilled small holes for the ceiling fixtures, then covered with flooring. In a couple of other places, I ran the tape down the wall from the floor above and then wallpapered.

My father designed and built me a dollhouse when I was about 7. It was huge... 18 inches deep, 36 wide and 28 tall... acted as a room-divider in my bedroom. Then a few years later, Queen Mary's dollhouse went on tour to raise funds for World War II relief, and my mother took me to see it at Olvera Street. (Why it was displayed there, I'll never know) That was it, I was really hooked... and went home and tried to replicate some of the things I had seen. I remember making a knitting by casting embroidery thread onto straight pins, for example. When my daughter was about 7, we dusted off the old relic and set it up for her. About that time, I discovered the Realife and Xacto kits and some good diy pattern books. We had fun together making furniture and accessories until she was in high school. After she went off to college, I decided it would be fun to build a house that was in scale. The big old house was given away and I'm on numbers 8 and 9 of my scale houses.

Usually I paint them with gesso first, then sand well and apply my finish paint. These cupboards make cute gifts that my friends have really loved...(they aren't miniacs). I just uploaded a new little gallery with them, if you'd like to see them.

Love Love Love it!

Mini people from the model train store, in say HO size make great porcelain figures. As others have said, books and magazines are great. For pictures, I took photos of some of our family pictures from a distance so they are really small on the print sheet...then cut and framed them - it's fun to have great grandparents wedding photo in the front hall. Those unfinished plastic plates etc can be decorated with fingernail decals to become decorative items. I save the glossy ads from different stores that feature paintings or prints and coat them with a matte finish clear contact paper before framing them. A couple of strips of framing wood is a small investment and will make many frames. And of course beads in all sizes and shapes... if you have a good bead store in your area, you can often buy just one or two of a type rather than a whole package.

Lookin' really great!

Looks fantastic! - love the pillows and the bolster and everything! It's beautiful!