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.