Dollshouse for the dollshouse!

I've started to work on the rooms in the attic of the French House - a bedroom and bathroom (although I'm thinking of turning that into a work room - we'll see!)

This beautiful dollshouse comes courtesy of Cynthia Howe - it was part on an on line tutorial for Madeleines nusery. It came in kit form, and was really easy to put together. Its probably the single most expensive item I have purchased for my house, but it as too beautiful to resist!

I have it sitting in the corner of the bedroom, and will post some more photo's of the bedroom later.

French House - Quarter Scale

Well, finally I'm back! It's been the longest, hottest, driest summer in living memory, but the weather has finally cooled down enough to make mini-ing a pleasure again! Sadly though, the progress on the French House has come to a standstill - I seem to have run out of inspiration and all the prjects I've started have not turned out the way I hoped. I'm also used to working in quarter scale, which makes projects quicker to finish, and I'm finding the full scale take a lot more effort and time!

Sooooooooo, for want of something to do, because I was desperate to do SOMETHING creative, I decided to try my hand at a smaller version of the French House. This was a fun little project, as well as been fairly inexpensive, and took only a few evenings of work to get it this far!!!

 Here we have the front of the house - windows and door need to be made, and balconies added.....Oh and roof!

Interior - kitchen, stairwell, Salon and a little Attic bedroom ........I went for a chinoiserrie look wallpaper in all the rooms - I love these type of papers, and they are much easier to do in quarter scale wehn you don't have proper photoshop type software!!!

Kitchen and stairwell........

Thanks for stopping by, and THANK YOU to all my followers - 46 in total!!!!

Sadly, I haven't had much time to working on my minis lately - work has been keeping me far too busy. However, I have managed to squeeze in a couple of hours to work on one or 2 of the rooms in the French House.

                             

The front door is almost finished, and I need to decide what I'm going to do for a bannister. I've decided to keep the walls white, with a plaster finish. Originally I wanted to do panneling, but it is almost impossible to get the correct moulding here, and to import it would be too expensive.

                            
                                

The kitchen so far. I made the table, but still need to paint the bottom half white. The window alcove will be tiled in green and white tiles (Only if they look good!!) The walls have yet to be glued in place - I ran out of moulding so have not been able to finish the back wall yet!

Gifts!

I'm such a lucky girl! Last week the postman delivered the most amazing parcel, all the way from the UK. My good friend Claire sent me these beautiful Jane Harrop kits - perfect for my French House.

I have always wanted the little lavender trug - I imagined it propping open my kitchen door on a warm Summers day, with the sunshine streaming in - the epitomie of a typical French Country Chateau!

This little barrel horse is also one of my favourites. Once finished, it is going to grace the entrance hall. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to finish it off, but it will have a much loved and used apperance!

As if these two fabulous kits were not enough, Claire sent me this beautiful pendant - to continue the French Theme! Isn't it amazing? I love it to bits, and have worn it almost everyday since it arrived. It always gets loads of compliments. There is a picture on the back as well, of the Eiffel Tower.

Please go and have a look at Claires blog if you get the chance. She works in teeny scales, and the amount of patience that she must have always amazes me.

Thank you Claire!

I decided to take advantage of the beautiful spring weather, and show some photo's of the shabby house out in the garden.

I'm almost finished with the interior, so will need to start on the roof soon.

I still haven't decided on what other bits of furniture I want, and I really need to get a pretty chandelier.

Then, some pretty bakery books (cupcakes, obviosuly!) somethings to display at the back.......
Mmmm, it's actually quite a list....

I spent the weekend working on some furniture for the shabby cottage - actually, cottage is a bit of a stretch, it's more like the shabby room!

I wanted something soft, and pretty, and after the trials and tribulations of the shabby sofa, there was no way I was going to try and make another one. So I figured, what about an old rusty garden bench, covered in cuddly cushions? How difficult can fiddling with a bit of wire be? Grrrrr! Hubby, that sweet, dear patient man, ended up having to help. Admittedly, there wasn't much I could do once I'd managed to super glue my fingers together - I HATE super glue! Actually, I think I hate florists wire as well!

Once the structure was (finally!) finished, I painted it and added a bit of rust and after a rummage through the fabric stash finished it up with a couple of cushions. I was wanting to do shades of pink and blue, but somehow these pretty greems just seemed to scream shabby garden room, so I compromised and added in some pink rose patterned scatters.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out....I adore the fabric, it sort of looks like a toile de jouy.

Now I need to finish off the cottage, luckily there's not a lot still to do. I'm itching to make some more furniture to go in, but as it is on the small side, I'm not quite sure what will work....

I've heard that there is a South African Miniature fair on this weekend, which I may go to - I didn't even know we had such things! I really want some pretty shabby crockery to fill up the display cabinet which is going to be on the back wall of the cottage, so I might be able to get some at the fair...I've tried to make some, but I'm really not pleased with the results!

Have a lovely day futher! Thanks for following, and an especially big thank you to the 2 new followers Nuri and Lara! It's really lovely to have you on board!

Firstly, a big thank you and welcome to all my new followers! It's a great impetus to keep on blogging!

The right inside wall of the shabby house is almost completed. I still need to make a decent looking fireplace - I want something a little more whimsical than the one that I originally made. This one looks to stiff - although it may look better with a bit of paint and some embellishments - I'll have to see.......

I wanted to try and imitate pressed ceiling panels on the wall behind the fireplace, so I used some embossed scrapbooking paper, cut into thin strips. I need to age it a little with a light buff of burnt umber oil paint to make the embossing stand out a little - you can't actually see it in the photo.

Here is a close up of the fireplace - I made it out of an old window that was left over from a part works dollhouse - as I said above, I don't really like it, but it will do for now. The "tin plates" are just scrapbooking embellishments, painted with gesso and aged.