Something Different - A Little Dollhouse

I don't know if I mentioned in any point that I bought a little dollhouse from a handcraft market thing last year? Not sure if I did or not, but I've been working with it slowly during the spring. I've posted photos to Instagram and Flickr so if you follow me there you've propably seen the photos already. I did have more time to work with it and exitement form the upcoming journey to Ireland and Northern Ireland definitely got me making something like this. I try not to get too exited about the trip as I know I can't sleep at the last night before leaving. So I tried to put my energy with working on the house. ^^; It was definitely fun project and I will continue with little dollhouses from now on among the dolls. I had a lot of advice, ideas and help from my boyfriend with some parts of the house, like sand coating the outer walls didn't come to my mind at all. But, to the photos. :)


The house is made by Gepetto Oy which is a small company in Kangasala (Finland) and they make dollhouses and furnitures in laser cut plywood. This house I bought from them from the fair is Pienitalopuusta 1/24 scale. If I'm correct I paid less than it costs at their site. In this A4 size print has the instructions for putting the house together and how to put on the front door which is the front wall of the house. It seemed to be a bit tricky, but I did it excactly with the instructions.


Sorry for the quality for the photos, these are my phone photos from last November and I'm sure it was mostly dark when I tried to photograph anything. The house is easy to put together, at least when you use no glue and just try the pieces together. I left the dollhouse for a while as I had other projects which are still ongoing. It sure is pretty put together like that, but that's one of the last bits I did, so lets get back to the things I did first.




First I chose the material for the floor and used regular PVA glue to glue it to the floor pieces.



Cut the crafting sticks in the correct length, glue them on the floor board (or ceiling, if you want that effect) and then check out the ends are even, sand a little and give it few coats of clear lacquer.


Then I chose paints to the ceiling parts and attic walls. Ceilings are white, I didn't want to coat them with another set of the sticks as that would've thickened the pieces a lot.


Like so, here's the back wall. Blue little flowers and green dots.


Another test, Kiki is approving the attic paint.


After painting the attic I put my wallpapering skills on test for the middle and first floor walls. I've never wallpapered anything and these aren't real wallpapers, just prints I bought from dollhouse and stuff shop in Helsinki, I think it was Minimaailma near Tempera. I didn't manage to have any photos from the wallpapering process as I had to be fast. I first cut the wallpaper pieces to each wall and then basicly I filled all the surfaces (except the cross from the windows) with white glue, so that you can see there's the glue in all parts, and then just put the paper on and smoothed it with my hands. I let it dry for long and then cut the windows open. I tried to be smooth, but alas all of the knives we had seemed to be blunt. I finally found a matt cutting knife with good blade and went with that.


After I finished wallpapering, I decided it was time to make the window frames for the inside of the house. Luckily my boyfriend had already bought a quite large storage of different size balsa tree sheets and sticks so I could use them for my project. Balsa is very light and easy to cut but it does tear off easily if your nife isn't sharp enough. I painted the window frames white with regular craft paint (acrylic) and glued the house together. And since this is the door part, I only painted the top part white, I didn't make the pattern like in the wall parts of the attic.


I had to pull all the parts together with strong elastic bands and the frame that came with the house, it's the size of the base of the house. Sadly I did have to reglue some parts. Using any PVA glue (white glue) it is surprising how quickly it sets especially if you have several parts to pull together. I hadn't glued the front door on this at this point yet, I wanted to wait until the rest of the house was set so I could do that. So many things went wrong, but not in the way that couldn't be fixed. XD Just things that you don't think before you do it and then decide it would've been so much easier if you'd done things differently.


Next was the turn of frame the windows from the outside. All straigth lines went nicely, the round ones were the hard part from all windows. For the round windows I first cut a circle in bigger piece of balsa sheet. Then fitted it to the window and gently sandpapered it from the inside for the correct size. then I cut the outer frame and smoothed it a little with the sandpaper as well. The frames were painted white again. With the same paint as the inside frames. Then.. I didn't know what do do next. I knew I should cover the house with some sort of paint but didn't have a clue how to do it.



So, my boyfriend suggested to make a glue-sand wall and paint that. I thought it was great idea! I should've had chosen larger brush. I thinned the glue with some water, not much, but a little. Then sprinkled the sand on and tapped the house to get rid of the extra sand.


I chose this pinkish rose colour for the paint, yes, it is quite bright but I wanted to make a fun house with bright colour. :D I made a little bundle from foam rubber by cutting a long piece and tied the ends so that the middle part makes a firm piece and literally stamped the paint to the walls and painted with brush near the windows. After that dried I made a layer of white paint with dry brush technique (also help from my SO!). That gave the house whole new look!


I didn't want just to paint the stone foundation grey, that wouldn't be the same level as the house, so my bf again suggested a technique, for a thin layer of insulation sheet (?) I drew the stone pattern and then rolled some aluminium foil as a ball and....


Roughly pushed and rolled the aluminium foil ball on the sheets to create a rocky surface. I painted the rocks dark grey and then using the dry brush technique painted few more layers. After that had dried I glued the foundation pieces to the bottom of the house.


Looks nice!


I needed a new roof as the plywood ones had bent so much while drying I couldn't use them anymore. Luckily, again, my bf cut the pieces from thin MDF board and I have a straight roof in the house! I decided to coat it with aluminium foil after glueing those thin pieces of balsa on it.


Here is the finished piece! And also made a little steps so the ones who live here can enter their new house! ^__^




And from the inside. :) I might add more text and details to some posts later, thank you for watching! ^__^ I hope you enjoyed the process.