The Living room nearly complete

My grandmother asked me to send her some pictures of my dollhouse, because she hasn't got internet. I thought I'd share those pictures here as well, because I realised there are some rooms and new things I've never showed here before!



This is part of the living room. It is almost finished, but still needs some finishing touches like pictures on the wall etc. Since it is a very small house, the dining and living room are combined.
I have tried to acomplish a modern IKEA-like feeling in this house, by making furniture using an IKEA catalogue as example.

I'll show more of the house later on.

Bricks

I haven't blogged for a while but I've been doing lots of miniature chores. Eventhough I'm building a new and very large dollhouse, I haven't forgotten about my first/old/small dollhouse! There are still a few chores to do before it is completely finished (as far as a dollhouse can ever be completely finished) and I intend to do so this summer.

I've been finishing the side walls with this brick compound.
The effect is wonderfull! And it is very easy to do. Now I'm going to give these brick walls a touch of paint and make some flowers and planters to put under the windows. How about some red geranium?

Now that I'm finishing up I realized how horrible I find this kit, and I remember all the reasons why I wanted to build a new dollhouse, from scratch with my own ideas and adaptions put in...
This house is a Helena from euromini's and I changed a whole lot about it, but it never became as perfect as I aspired. I would never ever buy a dollhouse kit ever again!

some inspiration

When I'm not building or working otherwise on one of my dollhouses, I like to read and daydream with some books. I have collected quite a few house/castle/dollhouse/interior/exterior related books the past few years, some are special and dear to me, others a lot less special but very usefull all the same.

In the first picture you see a booklet with postcards from France. I bought it on my first holiday that I went on, without parents but with my boyfriend. We visited chateaux Rosanbo, such a tranquil and enchanting little place it was!

No picture taking was allowed. Lucky enough there was a small stand with only postcards and pens for sale, and the booklet are the only images I have of the fabulous interior and exterior. That, and those in my photographic memory offcourse;)
This one is a lot less special but nonetheless very usefull! I bought it at the bookshop "de slegte". It is a very heavy and large book, full of lovely pictures and some usefull background information on european gardening styles for estates and casltes. It is very inspirational since I will have to do a lot of exterior work on my castle-like dollhouse soon! ;)

And so my bookcollection is ever growing :)

Doing some dollhouse stapling on a sunny day

Not to long ago my dollhouse was stil a boring pile of carefully measured, drawn out and sawn out pieces of MDF wood... No one could imagine what that pile would look like when every piece would perform its part in this dollhouse play...

We had some sunny days last week and I started building again on the house. My internship has been keeping me from doing so quite often, and it was due time to start again.

Armed with a pneumatic stapler (my worst childhood nightmare! But that's a long irrelevant story), a bottle of glue, and a very sweet and handsome helping hand from bf ;) I have been building the sunny weekend away!


Slowly but surely the house is taking shape... and showing revealing it's karakter.
I'm now working on the atticfloor and roof. They will go onto the structure shown above. The towerpart wil get another extra storey before it gets its pointy roof. And on the right side (of frontview) there will emerge a wing of the building...
I love this part where the hard and boring work comes together and shows some visible results!

Brass vase and fresh flowers

I'm almost finished with my large flowerarrangement. It took many hours but I think the result is worth it. The last thing left to do is attach the leaves and arrange the flowers in a vase.

A vase! Why yes, and not just any vase! The beautifull brass vase my dad and I (but mostly dad ;) ) started making a while back is finally finished! We had to find the time in our busy schedules to finish it: polish it and cut it of, the finishing touches. It shines so bright and truly has the appearal of gold!

Here is the result. It is perfect for the flowers, I'm so happy with this little piece of art!
Thank you so much dad!

I've also done some turning myself but I dare not show the result next to this wonderfull vase! It's not as easy as it looks to turn brass like this!

building progress 2

This week I got some work done on my new dollhouse. The weather was wonderfull and I had a whole week of from work. My boyfriend also had a week of and we spent most of the week in our boat, reading Lord of the Rings, and having barbecues XD

But I also had plenty of time to measure, think, draw and saw on my new dollhouse. After a long dark and cold winter I could finally do the work outside, wich is more fun and les messy!

In the picture above, you can see a piece of wood I used to test the exterior brick on. I'm very happy with the experiment.

It was really tricky to fit in the windows. I used euromini windows, wich have very different sizes than the windows used in the building plan I bought. Also, no 2 of the same kind of windows are exactly the same size :(

The round piece/tower will hang over the front corner. On top of the tower there will be another floor and then a roof. The 3-storey bay won't get another floor.
The building is huge allready, and it is far from finished! There will be a large roof on top, and on the right side there will be an extension that I haven't even build yet!


You can see an example of the finished building here
Mine will be quite different, but I use the same building plan as base.

New tools

I received my new tools in the mail last week, I really wanted to try out this new veining tool. The scissor is great! It's so much easier to use than a normal scissor when you want to cut tiny petals and leaves. And it doesnt make your hand hurt like mad when you cut for more then 5 minutes ;) Guess I'll be making even more flowers now with these great new tools!

My dad has also made/turned me another surprise brass vase! I'll show it later. It is adorable and so shiny! It looks like freakin gold! And it will need flowers too, so there's plenty of work to do :D