Working on Lily again!

I have a week off work so in between Halloween costumes (I made great Marilyn Manson hair for my boyfriend today!); Murder Mystery costumes (the following Saturday, I'm a Geisha, thankfully a Kimono shouldn't be too hard to make at short notice...) and generally catching up on the housework, I have finally got back down to working on Lily... hurray!

I started work on the floors today; I was lucky in that the wood was good quality and the same colour on each floor so I have decided to stain them with the Sandolin that I used on my decking! It's a natural colour with only a hint of stain and contains restorers and preservatives; as Lily's wood can be quite dry (sitting under a bed for 7 years will do that..) I wanted to try and do it some good as well as decorate.

I'm pleased with the results, the grain has come up beautifully - a coat of varnish and they should shine! I have also decided not to try and create floorboards, something I was very keen on before my dollhouse hiatus. I spent hours researching how to score floorboards, but when I looked closely at the wood before I started to stain, the grain was long and wide (especially on the ground floor) and I think it would have looked odd squeezed into 12 scale floorboards. I will instead concentrate on getting beautiful, shining floors which I think will be just as effective. Now I'm going to finish the rest of the wallpapering; I want to do it all, whilst the walls can be laid flat and the patterns matched as accurately as possible. Then I need to start painting the coving and skirting; again, I think it will be easier to cut and prep for installation before the walls are put together - it's going to be a busy week!

More distractions..

now that Halloween approaches! This year's theme is Alice in Wonderland and anything inspired by it. After lots of thought and general fiddling (I'm not a fan of Alice, never a good place to start), I think I'm going as an interpretation of chapters 1 and 2 :) - all the good bits, the White Rabbit in his rabbit hole, Eat Me/Drink Me, an oversized pocketwatch etc.

I always make my own costumes and they have to have a vintage theme so this year I decided to pintuck the waist of my skirt to give it the volume I need as it's a low skirt which sits on my hips. I fit 4.5m of fabric onto a 36" waistband... lots of pins, lots of pinpricks and lots and lots of fun! I had planned to machine stitch the tucks down but liked them so much that in the end I handstitched each tuck. I'm pleased with the overall result.

I've gone for a "gothic" Alice, taking my inspiration from an advertisement for a art show of work inspired by AIW and Violet's dress from A Series of Unfortunate Events. A pair of black and white stripe tights, Cher-esque wig, beaded necklace (an hour and a half of threading 635 beads!), black net petticoat, 5" White Rabbit and a navy blue Victorian jacket. All I need to do is decorate the skirt and dress my White Rabbit in a waistcoat etc. I found some beautiful black, dotty patterned voile at my local fabric shop, so I'm thinking of appliqueing shapes onto the skirt.

And one day this blog will go back to being about dollhouses!

My Willowcrest arrived!!

I know, I know, I've barely started my Lily and already I've bought another dollhouse, but this one is special. After so many years of looking, I finally own a Willowcrest, it arrived a few days ago and I can barely contain my excitement! Not only is the kit complete, it's in great condition; I couldn't have hoped for anything more. It sits on the floor of my workroom and distracts me from everything else I try to do...

The decorating is done...

...finally! One last room to go - and then it'll be time to tidy up the other rooms and we're already planning new things for the kitchen and bathroom! My favourite part of the hallway is the stairwell, we bought a selection of large white picture frames and hung them pretty much the full height of the wall. They draw your eye upwards and remind you of just how big a space it is. The plan is to fill them with our own photos, which will have to be blown up; the contenders are blu-tacked to the glass at the moment, we all get our vote and I can see it taking a while to decide on which pictures to use!

Autumn approaches...

I can feel the chill in the air. I love the slow and steady fall into Autumn but it reminds me daily how quickly time seems to be flying by. I look longingly at my dollshouse sat in the corner of the living room and promise myself daily that "tomorrow I'll work on it"! So far, no joy... this weekend, I promise!

That said, life is just so full of other things at the moment and I have been crafting away on lots of little projects; cards and invitations, and some poster campaigns for work. Plus we have an addition to the family, Lucy arrived last week...

I was worried that our old boy, Rascal, wouldn't know what had hit him, but I think he likes having another cat about the house, though his general bemusement at her fickle feminity is very amusing to see!

The guineas are slightly less enthused; the fact that Lucy thinks she's one of them was amusing at first, but now I think they want their home back, if not shooing her out they're standing guard!


The big house decorating went very well and has sparked all sorts of inspiration for the last few remaining rooms. Having come so far with what was once an empty wreck of a house, there is now a palpable sense of healing in the air. I grew up in Asia and believe in Feng Shui; the spaces that we occupy hold a legacy of their past and react to what we do with them. My poor old house had a hard time before I bought it and it's taken a long time to get it where it is, but I have restored all that I can and been sympathetic with what I have added and I can honestly say that it finally feels like a home. It is a stark contrast to my wonderfully eccentric dollhouse, all pale colours and muted tones, but it is now light and warm and I was paid a great complement when a friend came in and announced that he always felt "so very comfortable" in my home!

Busy, busy, busy...

decorating the big house; it's looking good but my Lily is looking abandoned! However, as we decorate, we're repainting over all the off-colour white architrave and skirting and I do love it when my house looks all bright and shiny new, it's a pleasure to come home to. Decorating also brings out my inner-spring-cleaner and I am creating a lovely new (slightly bigger!) dollhouse workspace for myself in the kitchen, so Lily will benefit in the end... and it should all go so much quicker at 1/12th scale... ok, ok, the paint fumes must have got to me!

The joy of repetition..

It may just be me, but I find a welcoming quiet in repetitive work and I am getting plenty of it in the sanding, filling, sanding, painting, painting and painting (with a little more sanding and filling in between!) of the 85 pieces to finish the majority of Lily's windows (part B in the instructions).

It was a struggle to get the pieces out, most of them needed some TLC (as the pictures show) and there were a couple of breakages. The sheet that held all of the casings and pediments was particularly bad, thankfully I had a duplicate pediments sheet so where breakages were too bad to repair I was able to replace them all. There was a huge sense of satisfaction once the sanding was all done and things looked better!

Before:
After:

I painted two coats on everything and have started assembling various parts before a final fill, sand and third coat of paint. The corner blocks I blu-tacked onto newspaper - they held fast and I didn't need to be too careful or fussy when painting!



Slightly off topic, there was huge excitement earlier in the week when I finally bought a Willowcrest dollhouse! Buying it also helped me finally decide the external colour scheme for Lily, so all white trims for her. The Willowcrest will indulge me and take a stronger colour scheme, so I can leave Lily to a quieter scheme: a soft green, white trim and extra railings on her roof lines - I'm thinking New Orleans pretty!

Speaking of paint, I had a slight panic with the white paint I have been using (an off the shelf, good brand, white satin). When I matched up the windows (painted a couple of months ago) with the newly painted frames I noticed that the windows were off-colour. This sent me shooting round the house, and I have a lot of full-size repainting to do as all my newly decorated skirting and doors are also discoloured! I was shocked as I have always been a huge fan of this paint and I'll have to see how much I need to do to repaint over it - I doubt anything as simple as just a coat of another brand's white satin will do the trick! I was also in a panic about the dollhouse as it would be far less easy to paint over everything, especially with plastic in the windows etc. However, I have reached a compromise, I held the green I've chosen for the siding up against the off-white and it works better than the bright white does so I am going to take the chance. I am touching up all the windows as I put the final coat on the frames etc so that everything starts again at the same colour and then I will let fate take it's course and hopefully not be kicking myself in a few months time!

Panic slightly abated and buoyed up on the success of the near completion of the sanding, painting marathon, I started to put up the wallpaper. I may be being a little pedantic, but each section of wall is being measured and a template drawn up before I cut the final sheet, I don't want any mistakes and I'm working hard to join the patterns too as a number of them are quite bold and I don't want bad joins to detract from the overall look.

I am using normal wallpaper paste which I blitzed to ensure that there would be no lumps and which is mixed by eye to a thicker and drier consistency that I would normally use. I then paste the wood and leave it for a few minutes before putting the paper on and the system is working extremely well. Also, most of the papers that I picked are heavy-weight so I'm having no issues with bubbles etc. The only (bubble) exception has been the stripes, but I am not changing it! It was hard enough to find in the first place as I wanted a striped paper as I'd decided to bash out the wall between the hallway and downstairs main room and needed a wallpaper that would sit well in such a large space and also be quite calm against the stronger kitchen and bathroom wallpapers (Basic Grey's Archaic "Rock", I just love those Klimtesque circles!)





In rooms (i.e. the kitchen) where the wallpaper covers slots for other walls, floors etc. I was originally going to cut out the slots but thankfully realised in time that doing so would leave an unfinished piece of wood visible right in the middle of my wall! I am particularly pleased with the kitchen, the pattern is so pretty and the join onto the back of the staircase is perfect.

I can feel the house coming together, it's lovely to see and spurs me on to do more. I'm now going to start to paint the skirting and coving so that the walls will be complete for when they are slotted together.

Time flies..

The summer holidays are so busy I've not had a chance to do anything on the dollshouse lately and I've missed it! Once the first batch of wallpaper arrived I was able to choose the rest and I am generally very pleased with my purchases... including all the extra "I'll just have one of those sheets" which I've added to my general stock! I have also decided not to put any lighting in Lily, I was looking forward to trying it but couldn't find any lights that I liked. Best not to do it, rather than put in something I will not be 100% happy with.

I'm back to part B, R&P of the first batch of walls, all visible ends I am sanding, filling and painting white. Then the wallpapering starts and I am jumping around like a kid at Christmas in anticipation. I also have a lot of window casings to R&P too, plus all the sills, casing bottoms, pediments, corner blocks... and much the same for the doors...

Chalk and Cheese...

I've been busy since my last blog; wallpaper has been ordered, I'm getting an idea of what the exterior colours will look like and I have been thoroughly enjoying myself making up the staircases. However, as happily as the first floor staircase went together, the second floor staircase was (to put it politely) a challenge!

Some of the pieces I had duplicated from the replacement window sheets so I never envisaged any problems, but the main back piece (where the shelves go) was snapped on one sheet and the wood on the second crumbled whenever I went near it - I cut and punched the pieces out as carefully as I could, but sanding proved even more damaging. The fronts of almost all the pieces were damaged too but the back of the pieces was a much better quality wood, just a lot darker. In the end I glued everything together to avoid any more damage, trimmed the excess on the tabs etc with a hacksaw blade and then filled, filled and filled some more.



I drove my very patient family mad with two days of obsessive filling and sanding but I'm pleased with the results. By putting the filler on with my fingers I was able to manipulate it easily and rub off any excess straight away, and then I sanded with a very fine paper just before the filler went off, which is easier and results in a very smooth finish. Both staircases, Chalk and Cheese as they are now fondly known, are now being painted white. Mental note to self for the next time though, paint the interior piecess of the (oh so teeny, tiny) shelves before gluing them all together!

Well, I've finally uploaded some photos...

The first is of the dry fit - a very shaky affair! We did eventually put all the tabs in and she looked much better, but it was a tight fit in places and last thing I wanted to do was snap a piece of wood just for the sake of a test run.

I also, as I've only just noticed, had dry fit Lily together handed, I was testing the stairs earlier this evening and turned Lily round to see the front, it was only then that I noticed that the doors were on the right and not the left! No wonder no chatting has been done, Lily's all back to front!

The doors and windows are safely tucked away; the front doors are black and the back door white (which will need filling, it didn't fit together as well as the front ones did). All the windows are white.

And finally, the stairs (D in the instructions). One of the backers was damaged when I punched it out so I turned it round when I glued it to the side panels. It came from one of the darker boards and the rest of the stairs are a pale blonde wood, but as they will most likely be painted white I'm not too concerned, even if I stain the stairs instead, the piece is the underside slope and in shadow. I decided to build and then paint/stain the stairs, firstly because it would be a lost less fussy and secondly because I guessed correctly that some filling would be necessary and I'd prefer to paint over the fully "finished" stairs. The stairs went together very easily (apart from a couple of comedy moments with the first two backer pieces). A couple of risers were a little too narrow but the pieces held together with a little masking tape till they dried.

Still at a loss on the wallpaper... far too much choice out there! I'm going to look in my local scrapbooking shop at the weekend, the paper may not be exactly 1/12th scale but I think I could find some really interesting options.

People say that dolls houses talk to you as you build them, but Miss Lily is obviously feeling particularly reticent at the moment. I've spent the last few evenings sat on the floor, lovely boyf chuckling at me, moving walls and measuring gaps and trying to gather some sense of whether or not to make any alterations to the original layout, what each room should be and how I would like to decorate it; basically any clue as to what I should be doing...!

I think the only thing I'm certain of is that I'm going to do exactly what the instructions say I must not do and make a few things out of sequence. The stairs, for example, should help me get a better feel for the flow of the left hand side of the house.

In the meantime, miniature catalogues are arriving thick and fast and thanks to the wonder of ebay I have more mouldings than I will probably ever need but which were half price: £8.73 postage included :) Even for an admitted "non-miniaturist" I can see how this could get addictive....

My very first blog...

and a thank you to shineynewthing and her Willowcrest blog which inspired me to do this; a great blog and a wealth of tips and information that I intend to make the most of ;)

It took over a year to decide to buy the Lily dollhouse, having discovered Greenleaf/Corona Concepts a couple of years before, and eventually wittled my choice down. Since then she has moved house twice and kept her spot under the bed. To be honest, I'm not sure why I bought her as I'm not a fan of minatures, I have just always wanted a dollhouse of my own and I think the birth of my daughter gave me the perfect excuse! I had made a tentative start on the windows about 4 years ago but became obsessed with making them look "perfect" and probably did more harm than good! They were lost in the last move and back under the bed went Lily. I eventually ordered new windows from Corona and under the bed they went too!

I don't really know what's changed now (one toe stub too many??) but the new windows are now painted, as are the doors, and I've learnt from my mistakes. Everytime I try for "store-bought perfect" I look at my daughters (lovely) Sylvanian dollhouse and know that this dollhouse is not the same thing; Miss Lily will be a testiment (good or bad) to the time I spend on her and the thought I put in.

I will post pictures soon but in the meantime, I have a very wobbly dryfit frame looking at me and far too many decisions to make: lighting, wallpaper, finishings - I'm confused, somewhat bemused, and discovering whole new worlds - minature shops...blogs...Hobbycraft...!