Do it yourself projects

[elfprincess]

They're your houses. You can do with them what you want.

Thanks so much for your support. It's so hard for an empathetic, nostalgic, respectful person to find a house that is part of doll's house history and then seriously consider bashing that house! Then again, that is why I bought both houses in the first place. I feel a duty of preservation towards the Model S, more than the other, probably 1970s house. But both were created for children, and intended to be filled with Tri-ang children's furniture. The house I hope to create will be for adults, i.e. ME!

Edited January 14, 2014 by elfprincess

[Blondie]

I fully support both restoration of old houses AND bashing them into something else. Do what your heart leads you to do, not what you think you "should do."

Think on it for a week or so to see what your gut says about it. Then roll up your sleeves and dig in!

[havanaholly]

Whatever you do, do it without guilt or regrets! :hug:

[elfprincess]

Thanks for your continuing support! I am still thinking it over. There's a website you will all know - Sherpa something - I came across it a few days ago. The lady who owns the site has a Model S, which she's restored to an impressive degree using materials that closely approximate the originals. My S is missing doors and windows and, also, a set of wee green stairs, three or so, that should be attached to the far right corner of the green base. Sourcing authentic fittings, paint etc is difficult and pricey. Authentic wallpaper is now very scarce. Should a restorer get even one feature wrong, the house loses value (~trembles~). Incidentally the Tri-ang Model T (reminds me of the famous Ford automobile!) is basically an S with a wee garage on the left side.

Tri-ang houses come up regularly on UK eBay, in all states of repair/disrepair. They are popular with collectors. For example, a good-condition Tri-ang 45, with a cream-painted metal front decorated with a 'tree-in-flower' sticker, was recently offered at a buy-it-now price of £350! I've seen fair-to-good condition 45s sell for around £30.

For now I'll start work on the house with the garage. The surface area of the garage roof is pretty small but could be extended to make a sun deck. The house roof will be replaced with a flat one, which I'll cover with 'blue slate' or 'faded pink slate' tiles and surround with 'ocean liner' railings. The latter have so far proved near-impossible to source so I'll make some.

I'll enlarge the window apertures and fit rectangular frames. Last year I bought a set of 'Georgian' frames that had been painted black. Not sure yet whether to use those, or the identical off-white ones I bought around the same time. Somewhere on the front of the house I'll attach a decorative panel that matches or echoes the colour of the roof tiles.

The rooms are small. I hope to enlarge them, a difficult task so I'll have to ask for your help. I've sourced lots of gorgeous period wallpaper - some from Jennifer's Printables, the rest from The Doll's House Emporium. I went a bit mad last year buying furniture. Deco-style furniture is always expensive. I bought lots of 1950s Barton stuff because it can easily be modified. I also bought a tiny black 'stick' telephone! I'll be making period fireplaces, mirrors, headboards, etc out of embossed tile sheets, FIMO modelling clay, etc. I bought cheap acrylic paints, brushes, varnish, powder pigments, and so forth. Later on I'll probably need more expensive materials.

The front door - quite small, since Tri-ang houses are 1/16 - 1/18th scale - needs to be enlarged so I can fit a gorgeous door. I've been stockpiling deco door images for months. Hopefully these will inspire me to create something beautiful and unique. I need to learn how to hang a doll's house door!

I'm thinking about adding a curved edge to one exterior wall, and fitting curved windows - easier to say than do. The entire exterior will be painted white. Which prompts the question - what type of paint should I use? Would textured paint be suitable?

I'm glad I decided against bashing my DARTMOUTH Georgian house. It's huge and, since it is made of MDF, incredibly heavy. I read recently that MDF houses are hard to modify because MDF is difficult to cut even with a saw!

One of my Christmas gifts, bought by my younger son (following a few broad hints), was a Silverline Hobby Multi-Tool - basically a budget DREMEL. It comes with lots of wee fittings. I've never used a multi-tool before, but I've wanted one for a while now. I don't know 'which fitting to use for what'!

This ambitious project requires the creation of a convincing moderne house that boasts a reasonably 'professional' finish, high-standard interior decoration and cute period furnishings. All I can do is give it my best shot.

[havanaholly]

You will find yourself ascending some steep learning curves if you do as I have had to do, and start making a lot of things for yourself. Back when the Fanceys still published Dolls' House & Miniature Scene they ran a multi-part series on Tri-ang dollshouses.

[elfprincess]

For sure, Holly! I have a lot to learn and I look forward to learning it! I know that I will probably get a ton of things wrong before I get them right LOL. But I am worried about the problem of scale. I don't want to create empty, sterile miniature homes with no people in them. I realise that many enthusiasts prefer to avoid using dolls.

It's supremely difficult to find 1/16th scale dolls. Those that are available - Lundby 1/18th scale - are not only hideously ugly, they also tend to be frail - the thin limbs break off easily - and the clothes supplied with them are flimsy, often held together by a thread or two. I don't want to populate my 1930s house with such awful faces! I could of course commission a few dolls, but that would be costly. I am now thinking of making my own. I already have two flexible doll moulds, as yet untried. But they are 1/12th scale! The entire doll's house universe now seems to revolve around 1/12th scale.

I've read that you make your own 'people' Holly. Good for you! I used to make pipe cleaner dolls as a kid, pad them with cotton wool and cover that with cut up tights ('panty hose') to seem like tanned skin! But the faces and hair were as you might imagine - sewn on features, bald heads topped with strands of wool or cotton. I need to learn how to sculpt life-like facial features. I bought lots of fake hair months back. Attaching it will need some prior study!

If I cannot resolve the doll problem I may have to give up my 1/16th scale art deco ambitions and settle for 1/12th. I intend to create at least one house in that scale, anyway. But my heart is set on bashing one or two 1/16th houses, and to have to also scale them up to 1/12th seems like too much work. I can convert a 1/12th scale house any time I like! I don't have room for any more huge houses LOL.

How do you make your dolls, Holly? I'd love to see a few!

Edited January 17, 2014 by elfprincess

[elfprincess]

PS

I just bought another house. The pix are in my gallery. I could not resist its history, nor its unique design!

[havanaholly]

Using James Carrington's and Sue Heaser's books I make full-body sculpt dolls and when making them poseable I use pipestem pieces for the joints: http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/index.php?app=gallery&album=8 I started building in 1:24 scale, and modifications of the poseable dolls in that scale means I sculpt lower half arms and legs and use the pipestems for the upper limbs.

[elfprincess]

Holly, I can't get that link to open. I get a message that says I don't have permission, and that suggests I log in. I am already logged-in. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, if anything! I'd love to view your creations.

I've been thinking for a while of crafting my own dolls. I bought lots of 1/12th scale ones on eBay and elsewhere, of course, mostly during my summer-autumn 2013 'wildly enthusiastic returner;' phase LOL. As I said before I loved making pipe-cleaner dolls as a kid because I was mad keen on crafts and had a passion for dolls. They were fully pose-able (when the pipe-cleaner knees eventually snapped, they were easy to repair). Had I the materials, right now, I'm sure I could make one. I could surround the finished head part with clay and then sculpt a pleasant-looking face (she says, blithely!).

How do you go about crafting facial features? Do you go for quirky character, or realistic? I will try for the latter. I think I could produce a reasonably satisfying result (I am, like so many, my own harshest critic). Some of the porcelain dolls I've seen come with comically-elongated arms. Making my own dolls might be the only practical solution to the scale problem.

Edited January 19, 2014 by elfprincess

[kat57]

Pauline,You did nothing wrong-I got the same message. There's a lot of that with the older galleries.

[havanaholly]

Pauline & Kat, I think the link mechanism is wonky, there are a lot of site links I try that I come up with a "Oops" message and a link to the Greenleaf home site. Hover your cursor over the username and click on the wee icon that looks sort of like a framed picture to get to a member's albums. I go for realism, based on facial features of people I have seen and noted their faces. Here are my pub couple, Porter and Emma Little Stout, whose faces started out in push molds/ moulds and got tweaked before baking (they are also my avatar). Theirs are the only faces I used the push molds for:

Horace, Marcia,Jeremy & Junior (with different names) used to be a patrician Roman family who lived in the atrium I built for HBS' Creatin' Contest one year, until DS#3's roommate's cat destroyed the atrium and ate parts off the rest of the dolls (Junior is new, the cat ate sister Claudia and the baby; we later had to evict the roommate AND his lousy cat!); they have morphed into a family of Florida Crackers and live in Maggie. You can see their joints.

Hyacinth started out as a commission whose prospective owner changed their mind, so she and Gladys habituated the Sprig of Holly pub. Hyacinth eventually weent off in the mail to become the proprietor of KathieB's quilt shop, but the USPS postal sorting equipment in Jacksonville pulverized her and she is no more. Gladys became a stripper and ran off with Herbie to another member.

I'm never sure just who is going to emerge from the clay. I did a couple of commissions, my first was a Victorian family of color who were all based on a family I saw in a restaurant in Albany, GA; and a Tom Baker/ Dr Who doll; the last one I did was Graham Greene in Native American regalia. I no longer do commissions.

[elfprincess]

Wow, Holly! Well done.

How did you manage those joints? Did you buy them? What's the best clay type to buy? The Sculpey so-called 'flexible' stuff is said to be great. And I had no idea until very recently that you need to put wire inside the clay to strengthen the component body parts or they might shatter! Another problem I've noticed is that most moulds are not 3-D. You need to sculpt the back 'view' of each doll, yourself!

I have two sets of Sculpey woman doll moulds that offer sweet facial features. I also have a Fimo mould that offers faces, arms/hands and legs. However the arms and legs look huge, particularly the hands, and the facial features look over-large AND kinda comical.

It dawned on me yesterday that I could certainly make my old pipe-cleaner dolls - you make a pipe-cleaner skeleton, pad with cotton wool, shape with 'cut sections of nylon stockings or ladies' tights and pad the chest according to the sex. However I would have, for doll's house use, to overcome the hand and foot problem. I could I suppose craft lower arms/hands and legs/feet, and maybe glue them on. That way I'd have a reasonably lifelike head/shoulders, and lower limbs.

I've just bought more pipe cleaners and a pack of cotton wool. I also bought more 'lolly sticks' (no clue what you call those) to make a deco fireplace. They're also great for making fencing. Since last summer I've done things in reverse order - bought lots of houses and lots of carefully-sourced budget art/D.I.Y materials. I should have bought just one or two houses and started work right away. But then, the order doesn't really matter.

I just had a mental picture of my completed first-attempt 1/16th scale doll! It made me giggle. By choosing an unusual scale I am making things harder for myself but what the hey! Getting around this problem will be part of the fun.

By the way my hobby multi-tool has kinda sparse instructions. I don't know what the wee 'bits' are called, nor what to use for which task LOL. I'll have to research this online.

[elfprincess]

PS

Graham Greene! I love his work. I particularly like Brighton Rock and The Honourary Consul (UK spelling). The latter, I have read, was one of the author's favourites.

Reading back from the 2006 start of this thread I must add to earlier comments about the doll's house/miniature suppliers whose businesses no longer exist. I did the same thing the other day online, searching for UK miniaturists. Most companies named on multi-list web pages are long gone.

To be honest the majority of UK suppliers over-charge. The prices they ask are often ridiculously inflated. I'm talking about mass-produced items here, not bespoke, vintage or OOAK. People in the UK are currently being crushed by a sadistic and callous government (no exaggeration). Those who have always been well-off are now even moreso. Those on low incomes are really suffering, and that suffering is being inflicted deliberately.

Most of us of course have to wait for sales. I could never afford, say, the regular catalogue Doll's House Emporium stuff. Sure, it's nice, but by no means unique, and most items, even small ones, cost a fortune. As for eBay, there are TONS of bargains to be had for the careful, patient buyer, as I've discovered since last summer. There are also sellers who over-charge quite shamelessly. One example - I hope to transform one of my shops into a 1930s Tea Room. To this end I bought, on first sight, a cute wee white wire table and four chairs set, with red checked table-cloth and seats. I paid £4.99. At that time several sellers offered this set at that price so I bought mine along with other items from the same seller, to save on postage. I wanted to buy a total of 4 - 5 matching sets, so I began to watch-out for others. Within two weeks I found one for £.5.99. Not too bad! From that time onwards every set I saw cost upwards of £7.99. Then £10.99. Then, outrageously, £14.99!

Finally I spotted another £5.99 one so I bought it and asked the seller if she perhaps had another. She did! She agreed with me that some sellers ask crazy prices. To me this is just greed. She remarked that recently the cost of items from China - which is where most sellers source their supplies - has increased, but not to the extent that someone is justified in charging £14.99 for an item that cost maybe £2 or less wholesale. I don't know what £15.00 is in $US but for the tiny set in question it is a totally unreasonable charge. Just about everything on sale in the UK is more expensive than it would be in the US or Canada.

Greenleaf/Corona houses, for example, cost in pounds, sterling DOUBLE or more what they originally cost in dollars. It's a money-making racket! There are a few US sellers on eBay who charge very large sums for shipping, and others who, for the same item, charge way less. A wee item of furniture - a rolltop desk, say - ends up costing five times more in shipping charges than it does to buy! Madness. Larger items such as doll's houses - which I know can be heavy - require so much in shipping costs that the UK buyer might as well not bother. There are a few websites that specialise in Greenleaf/Corona and other US/Canadian doll's houses but they charge A LOT. I have no objection to sellers making a profit - that's why they're selling in the first place! - but I don't care for serious over-charging.

What do others here, think?

[elfprincess]

Not a tutorial, just tons of stained glass windows one can size and print on transpericies.

stained glass windows

Melissa

Thank you so much - many years later! - for that link. The stained glass panels are beautiful. I'll be able to use a few in my projects.

[havanaholly]

Not Graham Greene the author, Graham Greene the actor: https://www.google.com/search?q=actor+graham+greene&rlz=1T4DMUS_enUS290US291&tbm=isch&source=iu&imgil=gbloexVfKlLXzM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcQYPaeW-ZCECY7ijvbqjRs3t0teW1I6ui28SrLq8NmyOk-wmomm%253B194%253B250%253BeW5QlNnEYVeQaM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.northernstars.ca%25252Factorsghi%25252Fgreene_graham.html&sa=X&ei=LbnfUuSUHvDLsQT5_oKoBQ&ved=0CIoBEP4dMA0&biw=1264&bih=601#imgdii and a great favorite of mine. He was the medicine man in "Dances With Wolves" and I sculpted him for Melissa (of darrellandmelissa).

[elfprincess]

Oops, Holly! LOL. Graham Greene the author also wrote The Quiet American. So I just assumed it was to that GG you referred.

I've never heard of GG the actor, oddly enough. And I am very into films, TV, Theatre, etc. from silent onwards!

UPDATE (two minutes later!).

YES, I recognise this actor! I never forget a face.

[elfprincess]

Holly, I'm thinking of turning my Worthington into a glamorous Hollywood silent film-star home. I have lots of furniture, period items and dolls in 1/12th scale. The rooms are fairly sizeable and will be fun to decorate. Should I alter the 'Greek revival' style Colonial exterior, or just leave it? I want to get rid of the lower bay windows; their presence kinda jars.

[KathieB]

I like the idea of a sparkling gem of a dramatic interior in a conservative, somewhat pedestrian traditional building -- sort of like a geode.

[elfprincess]

My 'Tenement' house just arrived! It's HUGE. Yippee! I'm about to remove the packaging...

oh, Lord. The (sweet) seller secured a ton of bubble-wrap to the brick-paper exterior using thick brown parcel tape. As a consequence this lovely and unique house will have to be re-papered all over, sides, back, front and roof.

Who sticks packaging tape directly onto a fragile paper surface? I can't keep the original brick effect now.

The rooms are really large. Four in the main house and two in the attic.

What can I DO to remove that tape without lifting the top surface of the paper, also? I very carefully tried to remove some - and of course the pattern came along for the ride.

[Sable]

Do you know if she or a parcel service wrapped it? If a parcel service wrapped it and it was insured, I would file a claim. Take pictures of the damage.

[elfprincess]

No, the seller wrapped it. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw all that brown tape stuck to the brick paper! She evidently didn't realise that she shouldn't have done it - or didn't think at the time.

[elfprincess]

I'll just have to bite the bullet and strip the entire exterior. Even if I were to try using glue remover (!) or some such on the brown tape the brick paper would still be damaged beyond repair.

There are FIVE rooms inside, not four - the fifth is a small first floor landing for the central stairway which is unbelievable chunky LOL. That just has to go. I don't like staircases inside houses to begin with - unless we're talking a gorgeous 'feature' spiral staircase, or a beautiful period one. I'd love to make a spiral staircase but this would be very difficult to get right. I will most likely remove the chunky stairs, seal the landlng floor opening, and place fake doors here and there to suggest the presence of stairs and other rooms, elsewhere!

The rooms in the 'Tenement' are large (oh joy) but as with so many houses they are more long than wide - the part that faces when the front is opened is the narrowest. This is bugging me LOL because I'd much prefer the widest part of each room to be facing. To make this happen I'd need to saw the house in half and turn the rooms around and.... nightmare. This house is SOLID. Not MDF - strong wood.

I need to replace a few bent hinges, reposition the front sections, mend a few windows, clean it all up, strip all paper and carpeting, etc, and by so doing create a lovely fresh base upon which to work magic!

Do members recommend the use of a hand-held steamer for removing brick and roof tile paper? I have one as yet unused. If not, what should I do? And if the interior carpeting is glued in place, how should I deal with it?

[havanaholly]

Pauline, without knowing what was used to glue things down it's difficult to know what would work. I suggest beginning with 50-50 warm water and white vinegar and a soft cloth (old terry bathcloth) and pat the wet cloth over a section of paper, give the vinegar a few minutes to soften the adhesive, and scrape away.

[elfprincess]

Thanks, Holly. I was worried that even a small steamer might -over-wet the wood.

[Sable]

Thanks to the photo posted by Elfprincess of the white inglenook designed by Baillie Scott, I've been busy recreating that scene for my stone townhouse. One thing I've learned on this project is that the limitations of the materials used turns the project into an "Interpretation" rather than a replica. Case in point, the mini mosaics I purchased and painted are the perfect material, however, in reality they should be a tad smaller. The scale maybe off but the affect is coming through very nicely. So I'm happy.