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.