Every year, the Half Scale Yahoo Group does a swap, and I participated this year for the fourth time. It’s a fairly large affair — this year we had 39 participants — so it’s important to come up with items that don’t have too many steps and can be made relatively cheaply. The value of […]
Tag: Half scale (Page 12 of 22)
When I chatted with Jim Marcus about the Little Belle, he commented that it’s hard to paint a house like this because you have to be a really good painter to do justice to all the small details. He pointed out that when the house is all white, the shadows serve as a sort of […]
First things first: someone who read about my Little Belle tipped me off to the one pictured at the right, which was sold in a silent auction in the Texas Showcase of Miniatures in 2012. (See here for details — I got the poster’s permission to repost the photo, though it’s been so long she […]
I just finished the bay window trim in the Victorianna’s little girl’s room, realizing too late that the header is crooked (it’s higher on the left than on the right). I thought hanging something from the ceiling near the right side of the header might distract from the crookedness. I looked online for miniature mobiles […]
Usually with a die-cut house, if I’m using the windows that came with the kit I’ll apply wood filler to the inside edges of the window to smooth them out. I do this once the trim (either interior or exterior) is glued in and then carefully repaint, to give the edges plus trim a nice […]
With my new workshop complete, I can get back to work on the Victorianna. (Yay!) This house (and all the others) got packed up in September for my move to San Francisco, so it’s been a while. When I left off I was working on the upstairs bedrooms. I want to finish the little girl’s […]
My gingerbread dollhouse looked pretty good the way I had it, but I wanted to finish the roof and front door, and play around a bit with frosting. And… I might have ruined it. I mean, it’s still adorable, and I had fun with it, but I went WAY overboard on frosting — past the […]
My parents came to visit last weekend, and gingerbread houses were on the agenda! Here’s what we started with (read the earlier posts here and here to see how I got the houses to this point). I already built a puzzle house like the one on the left, so my mom decorated that one and […]
With the puzzle houses assembled, it’s time to make them look (sort of) like gingerbread. But first, here are some pictures of my mom’s real gingerbread houses, for context. The stained glass windows are made from crushed Lifesavers, and the pieces are glued together with melted sugar. Note the open doors. As a wee lass […]
I just moved from a house that had a dedicated dollhouse workshop to one that doesn’t. Eventually we will build a room of some sort into the garage but for now I have a corner of the garage that doesn’t have all the storage and shelving I’m used to. Last weekend I was able to […]
In one week (gasp!) I will be moving back to San Francisco and leaving the suburbs behind. The past six weeks have been busy with packing and de-cluttering and moving things to the (considerably smaller) new house, including everything that once lived in my beloved dollhouse workshop. The new house doesn’t have a dedicated dollhouse […]
Here’s the second little house I got at the miniature flea market in August (the first being the House of Hidden Treasures kit from American Craft). This one’s named Garden of Delights. This was a NAME national convention souvenir in 1996. I recognized it because I’d seen one on eBay fairly recently, and I assumed […]
With the clothes neatly put away in the closet, it’s time to finish the second girl’s room, starting with finishing the closet. I bought these 1:24 plastic crates from Shapeways and painted them pretty colors. I thought about putting something in them, but once they’re in place you can’t really tell they’re empty, so I […]
The sleigh bed I made for the Victorianna’s little girl’s room is a kit I bought off eBay, and the instructions didn’t come with it. I went online looking for pictures and ended up on Karen Benson’s website. One piece from my kit is stamped HCC which I think stands for “Heritage House Collection.” I […]
In August I went to a miniature flea market, which is always dangerous for my wallet. I got some great half scale things I’ve been meaning to blog about, the first being a House of Hidden Treasures kit by American Craft that I bought for $15. This kit is similar to the Queen Anne Rowhouse […]
Want to make your own clothes with hangers? Scroll to the bottom of the post for a tutorial! I have always loved the idea of closets in dollhouses. Usually mini closets are bump-outs, like the Timberbrook closet kit I used way back when in my Orchid. But adding the laundry closet to the Victorianna’s bathroom […]
My back-to-back Victorianna will have three bedrooms besides the master, decorated for girls of various ages. The first one I’m working on is the front bedroom on the second floor – it’s on the mirror image side of the house, where the stairs would normally come up. The little girl who lives here is around […]
Half scale dollhouses often need to be decorated as they’re built, or else you end up with spaces where it’s too hard to reach your hands in. I give you Exhibit A: the Victorianna’s upstairs hallway. Because of how I’m bashing the house, this is a long skinny hallway that takes up the whole luan […]
Moving on to the second half of the Victorianna, here’s the back side of the part I built first, ready to get the back wall glued on. The back wall was a bit warped so I used lots of clamps. I had previously glued together the back walls from the two Victorianna kits, so this […]
I just put together the second half of the Victorianna and have to do something with myself while the glue dries, so here are pictures I never posted of the practically finished bathroom. The tub, toilet, and laundry basket are 3D printed pieces from Shapeways. I scratch built the linen closet, vanity, and plantation-style louvered […]
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