Emerging from the chrysalis

It feels very strange to be clicking 'new post' on this blog after such a long hiatus. If you follow my main blog, you know that moving house took us a heck of a lot longer than I ever expected. Meanwhile my dollshouses, including the Fairfield, went into self-storage, then into professional removers' storage while we were renting, then came up on a big truck a few months after we bought our new house, and since then they have been filling up our utility room and kicking around in the basement.

I've been trying to create a room in the cellar for the dollshouses since January, but at first I was trying to buy secondhand kitchen cabinets on eBay with no luck at all.  I gave up on that in July when I spotted a 40% off sale at a big DIY store. I was able to buy the cabinets I wanted, and flatpacked so that we could bring them home in the car without having to hire a van. I used the money I saved towards buying worktops, and the fitter who installed our real kitchen came and installed the cabinets last weekend.  Since then I've been painting the rest of the room, and today I finally started unwrapping dollshouses.

The Fairfield just happened to be the first one I picked up.  I've put it on a little table surrounded by a sheet, so that if any tiny bits have come loose in transit, they will hopefully be caught by the sheet.

Oooo, what's in the box??

Could it be... a Fairfield dollshouse?

Cardboard removed and the giant 'bumper' of bubblewrap revealed, that kept it centred in its box.  Underneath that the house is clingfilmed, to hold in all the tissue paper.

Unwrapping the clingfilm to reveal the tissue-stuffed rooms.

Gently pulling out wads of tissue paper reveals the master bedroom, looking pretty good.  In this house most things were stuck down so they've stayed put.

Each piece of tissue paper is fully unfolded and inspected on both sides to make sure nothing small is clinging to it.

Garden looking ok, bit of 'lawn' has crept into the conservatory though.

Luxury bathroom revealed, and study. The chairs in each room had fallen over but have now been righted.

Boy's bedroom, just had to tidy up the floor a bit.

Girl's bedroom (sorry out of focus) had suffered a lot more with most of the furniture in the forefront overturned.

Bit of an earthquake in the dining room!

I'd forgotten my pictorial wallpaper - love it!

Placed safe on the new display area, with its dust cover over it.  Will need a bit more tidying up plus I know I've got some more 1/24th kits and accessories around to eventually make up for it.

One down (unpacked) and many more to go!

Look familiar?

I was just browsing through a Pinterest board of Victorian houses when I came across this picture of a Victorian mansion which is almost the same configuration as the Fairfield.  It's been extended to the side, but otherwise has the same corner tower.

How cool would it be to live in a house like that for real?  But speaking as someone currently househunting for a real new home, it does rather shriek 'money pit, money pit, money pit' !

The mother of all gothick

I have to blog about the amazing house we visited a few weekends ago: Strawberry Hill in Twickenham.

Created by Horace Walpole in the 18th century, the house is one the finest examples of Georgian Gothic revival architecture.  It's recently undergone a major restoration and the internal rooms are gradually being opened to the public as they are restored.  There isn't much furniture as it was all sold off, but the architectural details are just wonderful.  

The whole thing reminded me so strongly of the Gothick Gatehouse dollshouse that used to be available, which featured the same trefoil windows and Sue Cook gothic details.  I wonder if this house was their inspiration?

You could make an amazing dollshouse out of some of these features.

Gone away for a while

The Fairfield is now all packed up and in a box, as we are packing our house up to get it ready to put on the market.  Over the Easter weekend, the dollshouses will move into self-storage where they may be staying for 6-12 months until we find a new home.  Our real life living room looks much bigger now  :)

Here's an excerpt from my main blog which explains how I packed my houses:

"I'm packing the dollshouse stuff the same way I did last time we moved.  I tend to stick things into my houses anyway, either permanently, or temporarily using tacky wax, so there aren't many loose things.  Life is too short to take everything out and wrap it individually.  So what I do is wad up tissue paper and carefully place it into each room, filling the nooks and crannies until the entire room is held lightly in place with tissue paper.  If there is something heavier that lacks support, for example a doll, then I will wrap it individually and place it back into the room. For big rooms, once I've covered everything with tissue paper, I might fill in interior voids with crumpled newspaper or bubble wrap.  Once all the voids are filled, I either seal the opening with cling film in the case of a room box or 1:48 house, or in the case of a bigger house, wrap it in bubble wrap then lightly hold that on by wrapping parcel tape around the bubble wrap.  So that nothing can shift or fall out as it is a sealed environment.  Eventually, when I unpack, I will unpack on a low table placed in the centre of a bedsheet on the carpet, and I will carefully open out each piece of packing material to check that nothing small is embedded in it.  Last time very few things came loose, and I was able to spot them in the packing material.  Worst case scenario, they fall onto the bedsheet where they can easily be spotted."

In the case of the Fairfield, once it was all clingfilmed up, I wrapped it in bubble wrap.  I then placed it into a large box resting on some more bubble wrap.  I then gently 'wedged' the house with small throw cushions placed between solid walls of the house and the sides of the box, so it can't slide around.  I draped a TV quilt over the top of it to complete the protection and bracing, and closed up the box.

So this blog will be on hiatus for a year or so until we get into our new home - where hopefully I will have both a dollshouse display area and a place to work on my mini!

Shopping at the City of London dollshouse festival

Today I went up to the new City of London dollshouse festival and did very well - you can read more about the visit and see other things I bought on my main blog (linked in margin).

For the Fairfield, I bought these exquisite stuffed animals from Pat Kay Toys and Dolls.  The bear is fully jointed and will go in the girl's bedroom.  The tiger is not jointed but is so cute.  He will go in the boy's bedroom.

From another stand I bought three beautifully made 1:12 boxes, and also this gorgeous little painted carousel which actually pivots.  I am going to try it in the girl's bedroom and see if it looks like playscale size.

Visit to the Tom Bishop Madrid show

We had a weekend break in Madrid last week where I attended the Tom Bishop Miniatures show.  You can read more about the weekend on my main blog.

One stand was selling an adorable range of teddy bears, rabbits and other characters, all very detailed, and made from Fimo.  I picked up these two critters, and the smaller one with go into the Fairfield house.  I love the way the tiny cardigans are imprinted with a 'knitting' texture.  The larger one will find a home in one of my 1/12th houses.

Gothic folly

Today we drove around London to visit Knole Park, a National Trust stately home known amongst other things for being the home of the famous Knole sofa.  Before we went inside, we went for a walk around the extensive deer park (lots of deer running around tame) and came across this Gothic Folly called 'The Birdhouse', built in 1761 originally to house an aviary.  But later it became a private home for an estate worker.  How cool is this?  I love all the turrets and the sticky-out bits and the central roofline - I bet there are one or two really great bedrooms up there with slanted ceilings.  And their shed seems to be behind a facade making it look like a grotto. I would love to see inside both buildings!

Knight's Castle

I bought the kit for this Knight's Castle at the Arnhem Dollshouse Fair from VA-Holzkunst, who had many amazingly tiny laser cut kits on their stand.  I gave them my email address and they emailed me directions in English.  The kits are laser cut from extremely thin wood. The young man on the stand assured me this kit would be very easy to put together even though it looked difficult.  Having now put it together, I'm not sure I would classify it as 'very easy'.  It took dexterity, and ultimately the use of DH's magnifying visor, and lots of breath holding as I desperately hoped that whisker thin scraps representing knights did not go 'ping' out of the tweezers.

I wanted my castle to be grey, so I coloured it in with felt tip pens.  I cut a base from some scrap wood as this is not provided in the kit, and coloured it green with felt tips.  When it came time to position the tiny knights and horses, they were also coloured first with felt tips before cutting them from the background wood.

The towers are perforated at each corner, so you can carefully bend the wood into a box shape using tweezers.  Each tower has a roof piece that slots in, and the entire tower slots into an individual base. After you have bent the tower into a box shape, you insert the roof piece by putting its tabs into the slots in the tower walls, then glue the final corner of the box, then glue the tower structure into its base. 

I found that the corner towers went together well.  However, the wall units gave me trouble as each roof piece was ever so slightly protruding once you inserted its tabs in the slots, preventing the wall unit from closing tightly into a rectangle, which in turn prevent the tacky glue from gripping well.  You make up four corner towers and four walls, and then position them in a castle shape.  Because of the bases, they don't close up tightly together, but it still looks like a castle.

The final step is to punch out the incredibly tiny knights and horses, each with its own base, and position them on the castle.  This is when I needed the magnifying visor as these things are incredibly tiny. The instructions claim there are 14 figures but I only found 4 people and 4 horses.  There were a couple more indeterminate punchouts in the corner of each sheet, DS thought perhaps they were meant to be a mother and child.  I couldn't work out what they were nor how to use them, so didn't.

Here is the finished castle in my boy's room. It was very fiddly to do, but I am pleased with the final effect and it is very appropriate for my castle-themed bedroom.

Pimp my Fairfield

I found some time this week to stick in some of my recent purchases, to add more detail to the Fairfield rooms.

I had purchased a 1:24 scale dressed bar cabinet at the Arnhem dollshouse show in Holland, hoping it would fit into the Fairfield.  I've put it next to the sofas and I think I like it there.

This is a view looking through the window.

I also added a few of the faux books I made several weeks ago, to the coffee table.

In the master bedroom, I added the china floral arrangement to the nightstand, and the Delft blue china opening trinket box to the dressing table - both purchased in Arnhem.

In the little girl's room, I added some of these strange little 'dolls' which I bought at the Kempton Show quite cheaply.  They also had them adorning the ends of cocktail sticks - I assume they are some kind of party favour made in China or somewhere.  These were glued into a balsa cabinet, but I was able to pry several of them out to use as toys.






In this shot, I've added the tiny angel I bought some time ago, and two of the new dolls to the wall shelf, the tiny piggy bank I bought in Arnhem to the top of the bookcase, a doll on the shelf of the bedhead, a dressing table set I bought from Judith of In Some Small Way to the dresser, and another doll on the butterfly bench.

In the kitchen, I added the pink china teapot and four cups and saucers from Arnhem to the open shelf in the kitchen cabinet.

It's amazing how long it took to do all of the above.  I've still got to assemble the toy castle that I bought in Arnhem, which will go in the boy's room.

My dust cover seems to be working well - it's keeping the dust off the Fairfield but was easy to remove to access the rooms, and I can see through it to admire the interiors.

Catching Up

I've been doing a fair bit of dollshouse related activity, just not specifically on the Fairfield.  I went to the Kempton Park dollshouse fair where I got some small dolls for the girl's bedroom that I have still to put in onto her shelf.  Then I went on a Mulvany & Rogers Masterclass, and then I went to the Arnhem dollhouse fair where I did get some things for the Fairfield.  You can read about the latter two on my main blog here.

Now I just need a quiet day when I can stick things into the house.

A dust cover - hopefully a good thing

Since it came downstairs, my Fairfield has been impersonating a mummy, all wrapped up in bandages of cloth to keep the dust off.  I decided it was time to do something more attractive and less concealing.  So I bought 3 metres of vinyl tablecloth from the local bargain store.  This is 1m wide and cost £3.50 a metre. It's fairly flexible and really stinks of plastic which I hope is going to wear off.

I cut the 3m piece in half as I needed to make two dustcovers:  one for the Fairfield, and one for my Ratty's House that I made in a Rik Pierce workshop.

My working method was not very scientific.  I draped the piece of plastic over the Fairfield, tucked flaps under the base, and pinched together the excess at four corners.  I cut off the excess leaving about a one-inch seam allowance, and temporarily held the seam together with paperclips while I was working on the fitting.

Then I sewed the seam on a normal sewing machine using a long stitch length, leaving the seam allowances on the outside.  I didn't think they were going to look any better on the inside because it is all transparent, and it might have made the cover fit less well.  I tried to stitch the seams so they came down to 'ground' level, leaving a loose flap of plastic to tuck under the base.

However, I was concerned that making the cover too airtight might lead to problems, such as a microclimate inside that might encourage mould.  So I decided to stitch in 'air vents' by adding patches of needlepoint canvas.  I added two vents to each cover.

The end result is certainly a big improvement on the mummy-wrapping bandages.  I can see the house now and it won't be difficult to take the cover off.  Putting the cover back on is slightly fiddly as I have to tuck the bottom flaps under, but it doesn't take long.

I'm going to visit the Arnhem Poppenhuisstad dollshouse fair in The Netherlands next month, so I will look out for 1:24 accessories there.

Merry Christmas to me!

Look what Santa brought in the mail!  If you are interested in reading more, the main post is on my Willowcrest blog here.

Books and merry christmas to me

Just copying over a few paras from my main blog because they also apply to this one:

Last Sunday I had some free time and decided to try out this online tutorial for making dollshouse books, on A Lavender Dilly blog which I think I found a while ago when I was looking for printables for the Fairfield. I resized the book covers to be about 1 inch high for 1/12th scale, and 1/2 inch high for 1/24th scale, and printed out a few sets, then glued them onto appropriately sized wood sticks. I'm pleased with how they've come out, and will put some of the small books into the Fairfield.

Here's hoping that you are looking forward to the festive season and if you are celebrating Christmas, I hope you have a very happy Christmas with lots of crafty presents.  I am in the habit of buying my own Christmas presents (so that I get decent ones and not more Body Shop smellies). This year, Santa is bringing me a Greenleaf McKinley dollshouse in 1/12th scale, and a Diana dollshouse in 1/24th scale! They had a 25% off sale recently and I couldn't resist. The big question will be whether Customs decide to take an interest in what will be a relatively big and heavy parcel. The 25% saving may have to pay the duty in that case. Hopefully not. Merry Christmas!!


 

Look what I found

We've just come back from a dream holiday to New England, where I took a few hundred photos of inspirational historic wooden houses.  I spotted this one, in Massachusetts I think.  Does it look familiar to anyone?  A little bit, perhaps, like a sibling to the Lydia Pickett?  Particularly that gingerbread and the pointed windows.

Born to shop

Today I spent several lovely hours at Miniatura, one of the UK's biggest dollshouse and miniatures fairs.  It has a really nice range of traders and craftspeople, from the expensive elite down to the pile-em-high-sell-it-cheap. If you ever visit the UK, try to time your visit to coincide with one of their two shows each year, held at the National Exhibition Centre near Birmingham.  It is accessible by public transport, and some years I have made the trip by train.  But this year I was spoiled as DH drove me up, and dozed patiently in the car park while I shopped.  He came inside to join me for a nice lunch, then went back out to wait until I was done.  What a great hubbie!  He's even stopped asking me how much I spent, although that is the result of 20 years of training so don't despair if you haven't got to that stage yet with your DH.

I enjoyed seeing all the marvelous things on sale, particularly the European traders from France, The Netherlands etc.  I was mainly looking for 1/24th scale accessories for the Fairfield, but as usual it was 1/12th scale which predominated.  There was a small amount of 1:24, but 1:48 seems to be picking up speed here in the UK and I think there was actually more of that scale than of 1:24 this year.

I work in all scales, so I did rather well finding things for some of my other houses as well.  I found some good things for my Willowcrest quilting and knitting shop, but I will blog those on the Willowcrest blog along with a few strays purchased for other houses.

I also want to say 'Welcome' to the new followers that have joined us.  Although you are coming in towards the end of the project, you can start right back at the beginning and follow the journey from cardboard box full of plywood right through to the furnished house.  (You don't have to read it all, you can just look at the pictures...  :)  )

I know what you really want to see is what I bought, so here you are:

• The knitted afghan, teddy bear pillow, fairy doll, and teddy bear are for the little girl's room. 
• The silk cushions are hopefully going to look nice on the kitchen window seat, which is also the destination for the two liquor bottles. The pillows were only .50p so hardly worth making my own.
• The bird feeding table is for the garden and I am planning to improve on the basic kit.
• The knitting bag will probably go in the living room.

The tiny fairy doll and teddy are so cute.  The teddy is actually a very small 1:12th scale bear, but I think he is small enough to be a large 1:24th scale bear.  They are both from Sally Reader Miniatures who had lots of cute toys in both scales.

The very reasonably priced kits for the knitting bag and the bird feeding table, and I think also the knitted afghan, are from Model Village Miniatures.  I used several of their excellent and cheap kits in my house, for example some of the boy's room furniture.  A previous commenter noted that they didn't seem to have a website.  I checked with them today, and they said they do mail order but don't have a website as they 'don't do computers'.  They are willing to mail abroad and have a mail order catalogue, so here are their contact details and Sally Reader Miniatures.

A very nice day and I will enjoy putting things into the house.  I probably won't get time to make up the kits for a while, as work is extremely busy and I am trying to hit some deadlines before we go off on our big holiday to New England in October.

On that topic - can any American readers recommend dollshouse shops I should visit in New England?  We are doing the usual circuit around Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Mass., and Rhode Island and we are in a hire car so have some flexibility on where we go.