Thursday 3 April 2014

living doll

The 3G kept harping on about a doll's house, especially MiddleS. You know, one of those huge, pink things that you see cluttering the front window of charity shops these days. I had always thought I might. one day, splash out and get a massive, old stylee Victorian house, complete with scary little dolls.

Then I found Pinterest.

I binned off the Victorian monstrosity and rubbed my hands in glee as I saw a multitude of doll's houses made out of bookcases, mini wardrobes, in fact any old bit of wood thrown together with a slap of paint and the wondrous beauty that is decoupage. Yippee!

Thanks to a couple of (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) donations that were no longer required by good friends in educational places, I managed to  wangle the frame and roof for my doll's house. The rest was up to me....
The roof was a bit battered, so armed with two cans of terracotta coloured spray paint, I was off.   The house was given a coat of white inside to cover the MDF and the outside walls were sprayed with a spray cream that had a rough texture. The 'rooms' were created using an old bookcase and adding an extra shelf. By the way, because this was a secret pressie for the 3G, this all had to be done in our bedroom over a couple of weeks and hidden in the bathroom everytime we went to bed!!

Next, and this was the fun bit, I gave each room a different feel. Working from the top down:
The playroom was in the 'loft' painted sky with some cool cloud stickers. This is pretty neat as half of the room lifted up, and left a little area for the dollies to play in. The 'toys' have mainly come from other toys I found lying around the house.




Moving down to the children's bedroom,  I got to have a bit of fun here using some wallpaper samples, either collected free from DIY shops or for a small price from ebay. I love the handprints in the wall.





Now the bathroom. I think now I started to project my secret wishes onto this doll's house. I've always wanted a black and white checked floor in my bathroom. You'd think GeordieLad would be up for it too, wouldn't you? But no, so into the doll's house it goes.  Again using wallpaper samples and contact paper using the fabulous MODGE PODGE. This stuff is brilliant. i used gloss to give the walls a sheen look.  How funky is this?





Next door was the master bedroom, *holds little finger aloft*. This is probably my least favourite room because the wallpaper was really heavy and difficult to glue up. But I had been given stacks of it by BrillS-i-L so on it went. Then found a fluffy black piece of material for the carpet. Bit boudoiry but hey ho.






To the final floor and the living room.  Two lots of wallpaper samples here and just a painted floor, nice and easy.  GeordieLad came up with a great idea to lighten up the rooms with small battery powered lights, which had sticky pads making it easy to put up. Bit of a London feel, here.








The kitchen was the hardest, but the most fun. I sprayed it gold to start with, and used these coloured tarted curtain samples as the wallpaper and a rug.  

And that's it. I put some stickers of flowers on the outside of the house, as the garden. Added some black around the roof windows to make it stand out. And bought a stack of furniture from the toy shops. Plus some small people and animals to live in the house, including little One Direction and JLS!! But the girls didn't like them so they were evicted - it's a girl's only house.


 This was definitely on the cheap, and I felt proper proud once I'd finished it. And even though MiddleS did ask if she could still have a pink princess castle, this mummy-made doll's house is regularly played with.  And because it's four floors, they can all play with it together - bonus!


Right, what's next?










2 comments:

  1. Oh that looks great! You have done a really good job!

    ReplyDelete