An Embarrasment of Dollhouses

First, let me finish showing you Henry's house:

Came with a scooter!

Can you see the tailights of the scooter? The front end is pushed into a cubby under the stairs! A place for Harry Potter!

This is the only non-melissa & doug furniture that came with it, and it is a lovely vintage kitchen set.

at my house, in the window with the cloth over. and my caco peeps.

 So like I said, when I arrived home with this one, there was an email from the lady with a Lundby Stockholm, which actually IS the right scale for my Tomy furniture. (Henry's house is 1:12, too big for Tomy) But the email said she was sick and next good time to come would be Tuesday. I said Ok, I'll come up after work Tuesday, and didn't say anything to my family, who already think I'm a lunatic right now. Because who knows? Maybe I'll end up not buying it, right?
But I did. Buy it. Arrived home Tuesday night with a giant box in my back seat, wondering how I can sneak it in. So I just left it there and went in by myself. The spouse was there, wondering why I had come home so late.
"I had and appointment."
"With?"
"Well, I can't really tell you."
"Whhhhyyyyyy?"
"I gotta figure out a way to break it to you easy."
Then he gets this horrified look on his face, and I realize it sounds like I've got a bad medical diagnosis or something, so I blurt out "It's another house."
"A what?"
"Another house, I got another dollhouse!"
a long silence ensues
"I kind of wish you broke it to me gently, now."
So here's the Stockholm with some of my furniture in it:

The books that used to be on top of this bookcase are now stacked in my son's room.

Living room. Haven't hooked up any power yet.

Kitchen. One of the windows is out of its frame.

Do you have any funny "This dollhouse followed me home" stories? I'd love to hear them!

2017! What the heck?

Well last year evaporated without a return to hobbies, Mom passed away, kid is in the throes of teendom, but I have recently returned to my love of little things, especially houses and the things that go in them. I bought 3 more houses (because the sickness grabbed me fiercely this time, and weird logistics which I will explain) and this is not one of them: 

 But I did have to move this one onto my desk/worktable, in order to make things fit. Which is a good thing because this one has been languishing with paperback books in it ever since we moved (over two years ago now), so it is about time!
This is one I got off Craigslist several years ago, with mold issues, so I had to tear out all the interior walls and have yet to replace them. I love the exterior detail and refuse to part with it, so my family just shake their heads (spouse) and roll their eyes (daughter) and shrug their shoulders (son)  and wait for the next thing to happen.
Anyway, I believe the style is intended to be Brooklyn Brownstone, so the exterior surface needs to be refinished and I definitely need to subdivide the rooms. Also I'm going to make wainscoting for the walls.
So, I have some Tomy Smaller Homes and Gardens furniture that I have collected over the years, and I recently purchased another lot on ebay. This one, as a matter of fact:

I thought it would be nice to have the house to go with it, so I could display it. It is smaller than 1:12 scale, about 1:16 to 1:18, like Lundby dollhouses. Sadly, the only one I found was water damaged, but of course there I was, shopping for dollhouses, always a dangerous situation. I found a Wolverine metal lithographed dollhouse that I thought might be the right scale, and contacted that guy, and I found a free handmade in the seventies house and emailed that guy, and found a Lundby Stockholm, and emailed that owner. I heard back from the Wolverine guy right away, but not the other two. So, bird in the hand, right? I went and purchased the Wolverine (very good condition, no rust, with the box and awful plastic furniture that came with it) in the parking lot at Fry's Electronics 50 minutes away, and went on with the rest of my day.

Forgot to add the chimney for most of the photos!

with chimney!

Has white plastic woman, missing white plastic man tho'.

child's bedroom

This is actually a smaller scale than I intended.

so I think I'll be selling this one.

Later that day, the guy with the free 70's house emailed me back and suggested I come get the house. So I did. It's huge! Took up the whole back seat of my car. But I love it. I call it Henry's house because that's the name of the guy who built it.

This is now residing where the Brooklyn was.

It came with a ton of melissa & doug furniture

It doesn't have a roof, will have to remedy that.

I put a cloth over it to protect it from the sun

all the windows and doors are great!

The photos above are from the ad, before I brought it home.

Then I got home from that trip and guess who emailed me? The Lady with the Lundby!

Back again, and trying to figure out this Bloglovin' thing...

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As ever, January is my month for re-visiting the miniaturist in me. Didn't do it last January because we moved, and such was the year that I just this week unpacked my mini-making things...

These guys are my helpers.

and now the table below is so packed and jammed you can hardly see it.
As soon as I figure out what I'm working on, I'll be back!                                                                                      

Little this, little that...

I have just been making more of the same stuff I was working on. For example, here is another bicycle basket

Still waiting for the bicycle though - perhaps next week. Then I made another chair, hoping to improve on the last one. I did fix the problems I made with the first one, but then created new problems by using the wrong thickness of wood. Once I realized my error, I decided to continue to the end, just to see how it would turn out. You never know - perhaps it's better with the errors. It was not better.

The chair on the left was my 1st chair, and you can see that the proportions are bigger and seem softer. The error I made was to use thinner wood for the back and sides and that resulted in a much more compact chair. My son says it's the difference between a B&N comfy chair (do they still have those?) and a dentist's waiting room chair. Chair number three will get done next week - have to get more balsa. I have bass and I have some hardwood, but I want to get it right before I use it...

Another thing I threw together is a foam-core corner ( a floor and two sides) so I don't always have to display my cluttered work table. I also made that broom, but my last one, which I cannot find right now, was better. The floor is just a bamboo placemat. The little green cat-head pillow is wool felt, sewn with embroidery floss in the blanket stitch and stuffed with more wool.

Pretty sloppy, but hey, my amateurish blog exists to demonstrate why one pays the big bucks for professional work. I should rename it "The Cautionary Tale"

So I made a chair...

which is riddled with faults, but looks OK from a distance:

I made a bigger cat to read to the littler cat, and my daughter was horrified that it was 'naked', so she quickly wrapped the blue cloth around. How come when she does that it looks like a proper robe, and when I do it  it looks like a piece of scrap cloth?







Anyway, on to another project - a bicycle basket!

This is a basket I embroidered to look like  bike baskets I remember from when I was a kid, but it needs handles. To the left is a  leather upholstery sample, and I thought my paper cutter would be a good way to cut a fine miniature strap:

It didn't quite cut through all the way...

but just a little bit left to cut through, and a nice straight edge.

Just used jump rings for the hardware...

then attaching is fairly simple!

Now I need a bike!

Hey, I'm on a roll! 2 posts in 3 days...

So yesterday, the lovely (at least in our neighborhood) first day of the year, I played at my table practically ALL DAY. You'd think I'd have more to show for it, but glue drying takes up a lot of time...
I was making shirts, but I ran out of hangers, so while glue was drying, I went online and searched for anything on miniature hanger jigs, finding just the thing! "Amber's House" is the blog of a very talented miniaturist, and on  this page, you will find instructions to make a jig too!

Then of course, I needed something to hang the hangers on...

No, something better than that!

 Lego jig in action! These are bamboo skewers, by the way...

 taking forever! but hey, if you give a moose a muffin...

and at last, a clothing rack!

Time for my yearly post!

Every year at about this time, I think "this will be my resolution, to post regularly", because I get a week off work between Christmas & New Years Day, and it feels like I have all the time in the world! Then reality hits when I go back to work, and the kids go back to school and I'm driving driving driving my life away, then the fun just sort of goes out of posting, because I'm doing less and less creative stuff and I just feel boooring...snore. So this year, the resolution is more about staying creative,and less about the blog. I figure, if I have something to post about, I'll probably post about it!
So here's the latest thing I've been making (click the pictures to make them bigger)- these little cats:

Oh oh - I forgot to tell you! The OTHER reason I might be more creative is that finally my work table is empty! After 3 years, the spouse finally got his engine in the car (this was my xmas present) and now it's MY TURN! Here are some cats:

This was a project I started in 2012

I got a string of these cat bead heads, and I saw Miyazaki's animated movie "The cat came back"

which inspired the kimono, because I thought it would be easier to make than Victorian formalwear...

Then I thought it would be nice to have a little meditative companion,

And here's my table now!