The first inhabitiants of the doll house.

I was very excited the other day when I recieved another lovely parcel in the post. (Don't you just love shopping on the internett?!) This one came from Ruta - all the way from Lithuania! And inside were two adorable little cats for my doll house. I asked Ruta to make me a mini Bethell and she did such a great job. And I bought a friend for Bethell too as I fell in love with this other brown cat from Ruta's Etsy shop - RutaFelt.

Here they are in the second story bedroom.

Aren't they the cute!

I've made some more progress on the house too but I'll do a seperate blog on that later.

Love Amy.



Other lovely things delivered to my door.

I got another exciting parcel today. Not wrapped in brown paper but rather in one of those yellow bubble bags. Still just as exciting. This one was another Etsy buy. It really is addictive buying things from Etsy! There are so many incredibly clever people selling lovely things. 

I bought this cute wee doll to be a toy doll in my doll house. She is 1/4 inch size.

She is much much smaller than in this photo.

I bought her from PamelaJunksMinis and she even came with a free little doll house kit too.

I only just opened her when I got home from work tonight so I haven't made up the tiny doll house yet. I'll post a picture when I do.

Hope everyone is having a lovely week. 

Love Amy.

Brown paper packages.

One of my favorite movies as a kid was The Sound Of Music and I have to admit that raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, and brown paper packages tied up with string are still among my favorite things. So I was quite excited when this package I had ordered from Etsy arrived today all the way from Milan Italy! 

And when I unwrapped all that scrumptious brown paper I found all these cute as a button boxes inside tied up with ribbons. Such a nice touch!

Aren't they sweet?

I love opening parcels! 

And they each have a little logo on them.

Here's what was inside the wee boxes. I bought them from viliaminiature's shop on Etsy. These are all unfinished except for the trays. 

A pretty little table and two adorable shabby trays.

A nice little hutch. It even has glass in the top cupboards.

And all the doors and draws open too. 

A charming display cabinet. With a real glass window too.

And yes, the door opens.

Of course when I was trying to take the pictures for this blog entry Bethell remembered that brown paper is also one of her favorite things as well. (Whether it's on a package or not.)

After several removals from my piece of paper I managed to relocate her to another piece. (Then as soon as I finished taking the pictures and went over to use the computer she moved as well to sleep next to me on the window seat!)

Here is the lovely bookshelf.

And the mini set of draws.

And the tiny trays up close.

Aren't they all so beautiful! I haven't decided how I will decorate them yet. You will have to wait and see!

 Thank you Alma and Lia for the wonderful service and the outstanding miniatures.

Here's a funny picture of Bethell to finish off with. I caught her mid-yawn...

Hehe.

Okay, I couldn't really finish with that. Here she is looking normal (she is sitting in the box that my doll house kit came in.)

Ciao. Love Amy.

Real wooden doll house floors.

In my mini house I wanted to have real wooden floors. But I wanted to find a way of doing it cheaply that would still look realistic and pretty. I decided popsicle sticks would be about the right scale and they also have a small (realistic) sized grain so when they are stained they look like real floor boards. Like I said in my other post, Tim cut the ends off with his skill saw for me. I used P.V.A. glue to glue them down. (That is what we call it in New Zealand, but if you call it something else - it is just that normal white glue.) Then when it had dried I stained it (two coats).

This first picture shows the left cupboard in the second floor back bedroom. I did this bit cause I thought it would be a mission to do after the back wall was on. Then I decided to do the whole floor cause I realised it would be a lot easier too.

Once I had cut all the bits to the right length and glued them down I put books on them to keep them flat. The books weren't heavy enough so I put my boyfriends diving weight belt on top. That worked well. It was so heavy the floor was sagging! I had just dry fitted the back wall so I could get the boards right along that edge.

Here are some more weights keeping the balcony nice and flat.

And here is what the floor looks like without any stain on it. I was quite stoked with the results.

This is the view from the other side.

And through the back wall window.

This is what I used to stain it with. Bondall Monocel Interior/Exterior Stain and Varnish in Cedar. I got it from Mitre 10. (The people at Mitre 10 are always very helpful to me even though I'm only building a mini house.)

Here's the finished result! (You can see where I have put masking tape around the bottom of all the walls.) 

After I had completed this level I realised I should really do the bottom floor too. So I did that next.

Here it is with all the boards glued down and the bay window masked in place.

And this is the bay window masked in place from the outside. 

This photo shows half way through the second coat of stain. You can see in the foreground that I have not done the floor in the bay window part. I will do this later as if I did it now I wouldn't have been able to remove the back wall anymore and I wanted to have easy access to paint most of the room. Next I need to paint a lot of popsicle sticks white for the skirting boards. (It is really expensive to buy proper doll house ones for a house this big.) 

If you want a handy tip for cutting wood on an angle try this. Just get a piece of paper and place it by the angled wall. Fold the paper over so it follows the line of the wall. Next take the paper out and lay it down on your piece of wood. Now mark it along the angle you have folded and cut it. 

You can also use a piece of paper if you need to measure in a small space that is hard to reach. Just put the paper in the place you want to measure, then fold it to the right length and take it out. Now you can easily measure the space just by measuring the piece of paper!

See ya later! Amy.

The cupboard under the stairs (and other doors).

Putting in miniature hinges is a mission! I nearly went crazy attaching the door to the cupboard under the stairs (it was a really awkward shape to attach the door to and it was my first try at doing this). After trying unsuccessfully to push the teeny little nails into the holes in the hinges while trying to hold them in place with my hands; a job better suited to an octopus than a human, I lost my patience and decided it would be best to go and pat Bethell my cat to calm down. After that calming exercise I decided I would glue the hinges in place with the hot glue first and then make a hole though the hinge hole to get the nail started. I had until this point been using tweezers to hold the little nails by the nail head (resulting in several going pinging across the room never to be seen again) so I changed tactics here too and held them just below the nail head. This worked much better. 

Now... Photos.

These first two are of the cute little cot I bought. I am going to make it even cuter though.

Here's the original cot.

Then I painted it blue. You will have to wait to see what I'm going to do next to it until another post though as I haven't done any more to it yet. Don't you just love surprises?

This next one is showing how I have marked where the holes should go through the hinge using a very fine tipped pen and am now using a pin to make a small stater hole for the tiny nail to go in.

Here's the first tiny hinge attached with tiny nails. That took me ages. This is before I lost my patience and began gluing the hinges first.

There are no photos after that step as I was too busy trying to get everything put together. But here is the finished result! Yay! 

Closed.

Open!

Here's a close up of the door.

I love the cute little door handle. I made it from a pretty glass bead. I then pushed a jewelry pin through it and made a hole in the door with a pin. Next I pushed the jewelry pin through the hole and trimmed it. Then bent it over and I had a little door handle. 

This next set of doors took AGES! There are the two cupboards to do and then the two french doors. Mission. Anyhow, here they are finished. (There is now a 'crack' in one of the french doors where I accidentally sliced into it with my craft knife.)

Yay, they work!

Yay, these ones work too!

Next I intalled the door between the bedroom and the hall on the second story. As you can see in the photo, there is a huge gap down the side of the door as I sanded it too much so now I have to make a new door. Sigh.

You can see how bad it really is from this side.

And to finnish off with, here are the two removable bay windows that I made while I was waiting for the hinges to arrive. My boyfriend Steve really likes these.

And that is all for today. I have done a few more things but I'll tell you about that next time. 

Bye!